Page 22

I n all Hellebore’s life, she had never worked harder at anything than she did during the last month she had to save the irises and save her husband. She was both hardly conscious of anything, the days all blurring together, and also conscious of everything as her mind spun in a million different directions; the well-developed habit of meticulous notetaking and recordkeeping of experiments drilled into her from a young age was the only thing saving her.

Each day that went by without a cured iris, Taiyo’s protests about her overworking herself and her health got weaker until they vanished completely. She felt it in the way he held her at night. She knew it from the tears that occasionally fell onto her skin in the darkness. It was burned into her from the way his hands trembled against her.

He didn’t want to die.

Hellebore brushed her fingertips over the sloped, pointed edge of his ears. She ran her fingers through the orange ends of his hair. But she never had the words. She was trying.

It wasn’t enough.

She couldn’t give him what he wanted. She couldn’t even give him what he needed.

He probably wouldn’t even get the honor of being turned into a fond folktale. No. He’d be a cautionary one. So the next generation and the one after that and all throughout time knew better than to rely on an alchemist, and certainly to never marry one.

Just another Sun Elf tragedy.

The king with a rotting heart and his alchemist wife without one.

Just over a week before the eclipse, and after several weeks trying as many different ratios as she could, Hellebore and Taiyo walked into her lab and she let out a choked gasp.

Taiyo quickly wrapped his arm around her waist as his head whipped around, but she grabbed at his arm, shoving it away and racing toward the table. “Look! The iris!”

Taiyo raised an eyebrow but followed her. “What about it?”

She picked up the pot and practically shoved it at him. She gestured to the leaves. “Look! Its color is back! This was the third dose, and the rot is gone and the iris is alive!”

He looked up, a smile twitching on his lips. “You did it.”

She set the pot on the table and turned back to him. She whispered, a smile tearing across her face, “I can cure the irises before the eclipse. I can save you before the eclipse.”

Taiyo stared at her for a moment. She opened her mouth to repeat herself to ensure he understood what that meant, but then his lips were on hers and she was stumbling back into the table to catch herself from the force. One hand of his caught her, palm splaying out against her back as his other tangled in her hair, cupping her cheek and steadying her.

Before she could even rationalize her own actions, her hands found his waist as she kissed him back, heart racing and elation flooding her.

It was a wild rush.

The success of her alchemy. Finally having something to prove she wasn’t worthless. Taiyo’s devotion. It was overwhelming, it was too much all at once and not enough.

She’d never felt anything like this before.

Would she ever feel anything like it again?

Why was she kissing him back? Why did she never want to stop? Why did she so desperately want this—want him for the rest of her days?

She was breathless when he finally pulled back, thumb brushing over her cheekbone as that intense longing was fixed wholly upon her, and she had nowhere to run from it now.

He breathed out, “Do not speak. Do not breathe a word to me, sunshine. Let me have this.”

She did not. She stayed silent.

“Let me have—” He leaned in again, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth before dropping to her jaw. “—this one moment—” Then her neck. “—where I can pretend my desperate, aching love for you is met with the hope you can return even just a fraction of it.”

He pulled back up to look down at her once more. “You know… Hellebore, you must know I love you with every beat of this rotting heart. And you must say nothing. You will not say anything to me, do you understand? You will not pretend a heart is just something that pumps blood when you hold mine in your hands. You will just… Just let me love you.”

“Taiyo—”

He kissed her again, and whatever she’d been about to say was gone. All she could feel was him and his heart beating beneath her fingers and the certainty that within a week it would be twice as strong.

But her heart was beating against her ribs, and if she wasn’t an alchemist, she would swear that she could hear it screaming at her, begging her to let it out. To let her husband take it and keep it all the days of her life.

He pulled back once again, this time eyes closed and forehead resting against hers as he whispered, “Please, wherever you have hidden yours, at least let me give you all of mine.”

And she did as he asked. She said nothing. She just closed her eyes and tried to steady her own heart back to where it should be. Could she? When this was over, could she finally be able to tell him something more than “I don’t know”?

Could they be something more than a tragedy?

None of it would matter if she didn’t finish the job and save him anyway.

His love would be a waste if she could not ensure he had more than a few days left to make use of it.

Hellebore was up to her elbows producing enough of the tincture for it to be delivered across the kingdom in time for the irises to be back to full health just in time for the eclipse. Haruko oversaw the distribution and riders and wagons were in and out of the courtyard every five seconds the same way Hellebore’s maids and the other servants were in and out of her lab every five minutes to collect the next batch. Taiyo made a surprisingly competent assistant, ensuring she was able to keep up with creating the supply needed for a whole kingdom.

By the time they’d finished, with only one batch left, she shut the door behind Elaine and looked over at Taiyo. He hovered by the last batch. He raised an eyebrow. “Is this just in case?”

“I thought… I thought we might do the garden here together.” Her voice came out weak and breathy and an unsure smile flickered across her lips.

He lit up brighter than the sun, and within seconds they were out the door with the last batch. They would have run through the halls—totally unbecoming of two monarchs—if there wasn’t the risk of dropping the batch of vials. Instead, they went as fast as they dared until they came through the door and stepped into the rotting garden. With their droppers and their vials they went iris by iris until they had distributed it all. Taiyo turned on his heels. “How long until it’ll take effect?”

“By tomorrow morning we should see them start coming back. And within three days…” As Hellebore looked around, she took a deep breath. All these irises, would they be enough to cleanse Taiyo’s blood? They had to be. There was no other option. “We’ll be ready to start on you.”

But even with her confidence, it was only a theory. What if she was wrong? Now that the chance to try was within her grasp, what if she still failed?

That night, Hellebore’s head rested on Taiyo’s chest, listening to his heart sluggishly thudding along.

What if she still lost him?

She could not sleep. She could not wait for dawn to begin ironing out the details. She hoped Taiyo would forgive her this one last time sneaking away with the eclipse bearing down on them.

She ducked into her lab, checking in on the only iris left. The only one in the castle brought back to full health, still missing the bloom she cut off it. Her wedding iris. The others had been taken and sent to the farthest edges of the kingdom, closest to the Moon Elves so they could use them in an attack.

She brushed her fingers gently over the petals. If it was supposed to be some superstitious symbol of the health of her marriage, what did it say that she’d healed it?

Hellebore opened up her notebook and carefully measured how much magic her Sunrise Iris held. If every individual iris had a level around that average… Or was it based on the number of blooms? If the more blooms there were, the more magic they held, the better. If each bloom held around the same amount as hers…

Were there enough irises in the garden to cleanse him?

She was not going to be able to sleep peacefully by her husband’s side until she knew exactly how many blooms the garden had. She’d sleep when Taiyo wasn’t dead.

She ran through the empty halls, notebook in one hand and key in the other to the secret passageway. But when she reached the corridor, instead of the smell of rot greeting her, it was something else.

Something worse.

Smoke.

She ran faster, flinging open the door, yelping as the metal knob burned her. She was immediately blasted with a painful, searing heat. Hellebore recoiled instantly, eyes watering and stinging from the smoke. She coughed and opened her eyes to see the massive flames tearing through the garden.

The orange and red flames were blinding, making it impossible to see anything else.

No.

It was because there was nothing else to see. Everything that mattered had already been overtaken by them. The whole world in front of her was on fire.

Hellebore’s whole world was up in flames.

All the irises were burning.

Taiyo’s life was burning before her eyes.

Hellebore screamed, clutching the castle as the boiling heat and the flames creeping toward her hem kept her from being able to run into the garden. Her knees buckled as tears spilled over and her keening tore through the night.

The fire raging in front of her didn’t care.

It just kept burning.

Taking her husband with it.

She clutched at her heart. She’d been right. Oh, how much she wished she hadn’t been. Seeing the rot on the iris was nothing compared to this agony.

How—How could this have happened?

No one else knew where this was save for Taiyo, Haruko, and Hellebore.

Water. She had to at least put it out before it spread to the castle. Maybe there were some there she could save. Maybe some alchemy she could do to—She fumbled for her charcoal and started to flip to an empty page.

No. First, she needed to alert someone and get back before she could try transmuting any water in the atmosphere. She spun around, ready to keep screaming the castle down for help when she crashed right into two familiar figures. The Moon Elves.

Before she could do anything, one grabbed her head and the other stuck a needle into her arm and was injecting her with the same sedative she’d once given to Taiyo. Her legs crumpled beneath her and the first elf caught her as her eyes fluttered shut.

“Sorry, Hels, no time to explain.”

But why would a Moon Elf speak Chymesian?