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Chapter 23

Morgana

“T his is where we’ll find the healer?”

I haven’t seen many healer shops in my time, but I can’t imagine a dryad living here . The building is gray with grime, and the windows are covered in black curtains. There’s a pile of broken wooden boxes stacked against one wall, and above it, graffiti has been scrawled with a black substance.

“ Ruin maker ?” I read. “What does that mean?” I ask Alastor. He squints at it.

“No idea.”

One more mystery to add to the list. The biggest one weighing on my mind is what kind of dryad would work in a city like Hallowbane. I’d expect human healers here, sure, since every city needs someone handy with herbs and a scalpel. But Etusca used to tell me about her dryad homeland—how beautiful it was, how pure and unspoiled, particularly the deeply magical forest known as the Miravow that feeds the souls and the healing powers of every dryad. Hallowbane…well, it’s about as far from pure and unspoiled as you can get. I can just imagine what Etusca’s reaction to this place would be. Horror, most likely.

My mind goes to her now. Did she go home yet? Is she back in the Miravow, healthy and well at last now that she no longer needs to look after me?

And am I about to find out that all the years and all the work she put into caring for me were all a lie?

Leon tells most of the unit to stay outside, but he beckons me into the shop along with Hyllus and Alastor. Even with his glamour on, Hyllus is big, and I suspect Leon knows he’ll be suitably intimidating to anyone who might be reluctant to help us. Dryad healers all take an oath to never knowingly harm anyone, but that doesn’t mean they’re required to be helpful.

A bell dings forlornly as we enter the shop, and a mildewy smell hits my nose. It’s dark inside with only a few candles and a dirty skylight illuminating the gloom. Shelves hang behind a counter, boxes and bottles stacked on them. The labels are written in Agathyrian, and I’m trying to read some of them when a hunched figure shuffles out of a back room.

“How can I help?” the dryad croaks, his voice brittle as dry bone. As we get closer, I try to hide my stare, but the sight of him fills me with deep sorrow. He’s almost completely colorless, the green of his skin leached from him, his gaunt face pale as a ghost. What little hair he has is just as pale, the straggly tendrils hanging limply around his ears. This must be what happens to a dryad who stays too long away from the Miravow—but why? Why subject himself to such a life?

Unless he can’t go back.

There’s only one reason I know of that a dryad can be exiled from Agathyre: if they break their vow and knowingly harm another. Then they’re given a fate worse than death—eternal separation from the enchanted forest that gives them their vitality.

“I hear you’re the healer to come to with unconventional cases,” Leon says as the dryad eases himself behind the counter, supporting himself with thin, knotted fingers.

“That depends on the price you’re offering—and who’s paying,” says the healer, eyeing us calculatingly.

“We’re people who need a certain amount of discretion…but we’re more than willing to be generous,” Leon says. He places a large bag onto the counter which the healer pulls toward him, looking inside. Whatever he sees convinces him because he nods and closes the bag again.

“In this city, I’d be out of business very quickly if I couldn’t keep things to myself,” he says.

Leon seems satisfied and gestures for me to come forward.

“Go on. Show him.”

I hesitate, unsure about giving up my secrets to this strange, sad dryad. Not to mention I’m not completely sure I want to hear what he might have to tell me. But Leon puts his hand at the small of my back, and it feels like an anchor, connecting me to solid ground.

I take the vial from my pocket and lay it on the counter.

“I need to know everything you can tell me about this potion.”

The dryad squints at it before picking up the vial and holding it up to a candle to examine it.

“Interesting,” he says, eyes never leaving the potion. “Is this all you have?”

“Yes. Is there enough for you to analyze it?”

“There should be, but I’ll need a few minutes.”

I nod, relieved, as he shuffles into a back room and returns with a small stone basin. We watch in silence as he sprinkles ingredients from various bags and jars into the basin—leaves and powders and a piece of bark. Then he unstops the vial. I hold my breath as he slowly tilts it over the basin, allowing a single drop to fall onto the concoction he’s created. He returns the cork, then places his hands over the basin and prays.

It’s old Agathyrian, so I can only catch a few words here and there. There’s lots of reference to the earth, but that’s just dryads for you. As he speaks, I feel the fizz of magic emanating from the basin.

“ Aduar gain esquan ,” he finishes his prayer, then plunges his hands into the bowl. After a moment he lifts his eyes, fixing them on me.

“This is not an ordinary potion you’ve brought me,” he croaks.

“What makes you say that?” I ask. The knot in my stomach tightens.

“It must have been created by a very gifted healer, because it does a very difficult thing,” he says, lifting his hands out of the basin and brushing them off. “It suppresses a person’s magical power without killing them. The magic of a person who takes this will become dormant, but otherwise they will mostly remain healthy.”

I knew it was coming, but it still feels like I’ve been hit by a charging bull. I close my eyes, mortified by the tears suddenly springing to them. I haven’t cried since I was a child, but I can’t stop myself now. I hadn’t even realized before this moment how much I was hoping to hear that there was more to the potion. That it treated some mystery ailment, and the magic suppression was just a side effect. But no. This is the truth. The medicine I forced myself to swallow down every day—the one that Etusca assured me I needed to stay alive—was created solely to take my power away.

All this time, I thought it was my fault I was so weak and powerless. Never for a moment did I consider it was being done to me by the people I was supposed to trust.

I sense Leon behind me, his warm breath on my neck.

“Ana…” he says.

“What else?” I open my eyes, rubbing away any moisture and addressing the dryad. “What else can you tell me about it?”

The dryad taps his fingers on the counter thoughtfully.

“Because the potion is very potent, it’s possible there were side effects,” he says. I think about how I’ve always been a bit slow on my feet and how my joints have always been a little achy, but the dryad’s tone suggests something more significant than that.

“What kind of side effects?”

The dryad looks cautious. “Would I be right in thinking this potion has been used on someone for a long time?”

“Yes,” I say. “It was used on me for years.”

The dryad makes a noise of concern.

“Viatic magic is meant to bring the body into balance. Magic that pushes the body too far out of nature’s alignment will usually end up reversing on itself—like a pendulum swinging back in the other direction. There are spells that will keep you awake for so long you may slip into a coma. Some healers sell viatic treatments that bring great happiness to the user,” the dryad’s eyes darken with disapproval. “But if a patient takes too much, they will sink into a melancholy they can’t escape.”

“What does that mean for me?” I ask.

“May I examine you?” the dryad asks.

My eyes go to Leon. If he examines me, will he be able to tell I’m a solari? Do I trust him with that?

“If you do, healer, promise that what you discover won’t leave this room.” Leon glances at Hyllus, who shifts his huge frame in front of the door. “Or you’ll find that you don’t leave it either.”

The healer swallows, but nods. “I wouldn’t betray a patient, sir,” he says. Leon looks at Alastor now.

“Is that true?” the blond fae asks the dryad, his sensic power humming in the room.

“Yes,” says the dryad, his eyes slightly glazed.

It’s as much assurance as I could ask for, so I step toward the counter.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask.

“Your hands, please,” the dryad says. I hold them out, and with his spindly fingers he takes my wrists and flips them over so the palms are facing upward. Then he places his hands over mine and begins conjuring in old Agathyrian again.

The fizz of his magic tickles along my nerves, up into my shoulders and along my neck. It settles there, and I think he’s finished until a strange sensation tugs inside me, like a hand gently pulling on the handle of a door I recognize: the same one that opens when I call on my magic.

The dryad retracts his fingers, his eyes alight with curiosity.

“Did you say you’ve been taking this potion for years? Since you were a child?” the dryad asks. I nod.

“Yes, that makes sense. I imagine you’re aware that your magic has survived its suppression all this time?”

“Yes,” I say, waiting for him to say the words—to name me as a heretic—but his eyes go to Leon, and I think he remembers the fae’s warning.

“Not only did your magic remain intact, but I believe this potion increased it.”

I blink. “It gave me more power?”

“Indeed. I’ll be direct: You have a lot of magic, my lady. Deep wells of it. Far deeper than most. And I believe the potion was indirectly responsible. From your childhood, your magic grew up constantly fighting the potion’s effects and, like a muscle meeting resistance every day, that made it stronger.”

I shake my head. My parents were so desperate to keep my forbidden magic hidden that they actually gave me more of it. The gods do have a taste for irony. Something occurs to me then, as I picture Etusca handing me the goblet each morning.

“So if I was getting stronger all along, would the doses of the potion need to keep changing?”

“Yes, a skilled healer would know to tweak the suppressant to make up for any long-term resistance,” the dryad says.

Unless the healer in question was suffering with separation from the Miravow and wasn’t being quite as careful as usual. Perhaps she’d missed it when my increasing power meant she needed to strengthen my dose again. She’d been becoming more distant and distracted, after all. Add in the fact that I was reducing my intake of the potion during preparation for my escape, and there could have been several days in a row when my regular dose was much weaker than it needed to be. Enough so that, in my hour of desperation, my power was finally able to break through.

Etusca was so careful after the incident with Bede, constantly examining me, measuring out the potion two, three times. It was because she knew she’d slipped up.

Understanding exactly what happened doesn’t make me feel any better. In fact, a wave of nausea hits me as I contemplate just how careful and precise Etusca had to be as she kept my power in check. Is there any possible explanation where she didn’t completely betray me? Could she have been kept in the dark?

“Would a dryad have to know what this potion was and what it achieves in order to make it?” I ask the healer, still clutching at the feeble hope. “Is there a chance they were just following someone else’s instructions? A recipe they’d been given?”

The dryad hands the vial back to me.

“That, I have no way of knowing. If there was only one dryad administering the potion for all those years, then they would have had to understand the potion well enough to know how to modify it. It’s not as simple as following a recipe. But how much they knew about the intended effects…that’s a question only they can answer.”

It’s not a no, but it doesn’t lift my spirits much as I slip the vial back into my pocket.

“Thank you,” I say, though I can’t say the dryad’s news has been welcome.

“There’s another matter,” Leon says. I’d almost forgotten we weren’t just here for me, and I turn to the prince now, wondering what was so important that we came here instead of heading straight to the border.

Leon doesn’t meet my gaze, instead addressing the dryad.

“It’s something we must discuss in private,” he says, then gestures to Hyllus. As always, the huge fae falls in line without a word, stepping aside from the door and opening it. The three fae look at me expectantly.

“Oh,” I say, finally realizing Leon wants me to leave. Whatever he’s here for, I mustn’t know.

I know it’s stupid to feel hurt—after all, the prince and I barely know each other—but I do. Maybe because I’ve just been forced to confront all the lies I’ve been told, this feels like another shade of it: another set of secrets, another person hiding the truth from me.

I exit the shop to rejoin the others, but I can’t help glancing over my shoulder as I leave. Through a sliver of the doorway before it swings fully closed, I see Leon holding something out to the healer—a bottle of dark liquid that looks disturbingly like blood.