Page 54 of Flowerheart

I raced to Xavier’s side. “We have to do something.”

He nodded frantically and then darted to the back of the shop. In a moment, he was back in the entryway, slamming a wooden potion case onto the nearby table. With trembling fingers, he unlatched it and chose a phial filled with midnight blue liquid. He turned to the man, grimacing. “Sir—Mister...?”

“Kinley.”

“Mr. Kinley,” said Xavier, “I’ll need you to restrain your daughter. Sit her down right there.” His dark eyes met mine. “Help hold her down. The potion gives her nearly endless amounts of energy.”

Anxious magic writhed in my chest as I looked at her. Herfather tried to hold her hands behind her back, but she wriggled and squealed like she was a little child playing a game.

The two of us taking an arm, we sat her down in a chair and held fast as she squirmed and pushed against us. Xavier tremulously tipped the contents of the blue potion into her mouth.

“What is that?” asked Mr. Kinley. “A cure?”

“Possibly.” Already, Xavier was reaching for another phial. “I am in the process of trying to create an antidote for the effects of—”

“Create? You mean this isexperimental?”

By the sound of Emily’s laughter and the dazed smile on her face, the first potion had failed. So Xavier tried another.

“There isn’t a cure, not yet,” he explained, carefully cupping Emily’s chin and pouring an orange potion into her mouth. “But perhaps one of these will—”

“What kind of wizard are you?” snapped Mr. Kinley. “You’re supposed to help her!”

Emily thrashed beneath my grasp. She grinned at something I couldn’t see. Tears and sweat matted the dandelions on her cheek.

“I—I can try another potion,” said Xavier as he reached for his case.

“No.” Mr. Kinley released his daughter’s arm and knelt before her seat, taking her hands in his. “Sweetheart, please,tryto wake up... I know you can break out of this.”

Xavier shook his head. “Mr. Kinley, it’s magic. Powerful magic. She can’t—”

“My daughter is a good girl!” His voice shook with rage. Emily didn’t notice—she just sang to herself, an empty, distant look in her eyes. “She wouldn’t fool around with illegal potions!”

The shouting, the fear, the uncontrollable singing of the girl—it stirred the magic within me, humming like an angry swarm of bees. My chest was tight, my heart hammered, and it ached all the more as I looked at Xavier. At the anguish gripping him. He trembled, silent and pale, as the desperate man shouted at him.

It was too much for me. And my magic was a hair’s breadth from unleashing its power onto all of us.

I acted without thinking. In a blink, I left the foyer and was standing in the shop, riffling through our potion cabinet. I found a box labeledFor Sleep,grabbed a pill, and ran back into the entryway.

Mr. Kinley was berating Xavier for his incompetence when I said, “Sir?” The older man turned to me with a frown.

I held the pill out on my open palm. “Can I give this to her?” I asked over the sound of her laughter. “It’ll just help her fall asleep. I don’t want her to hurt herself—”

Mr. Kinley took the pill and popped it into Emily’s mouth. Her laughter stopped in an instant. Her face fell. Her head drooped, and her posture started to sag. Both her father and Icaught her before she could collapse to the floor.

“Come—come, there’s a sofa in the salon. She can lie there,” said Xavier.

The room adjacent to the shop was a small salon, with a fireplace and several chairs, as well as a sofa. The Morwyns used to entertain important guests in this room. It was also a place where, on a normal day, customers needing a consultation could wait and have a cup of tea before Xavier would attend to them.

Today, Mr. Kinley laid his daughter out on the crimson velvet of the sofa. The misery in his eyes as he set her down—I knew it so well. It was the same sort of hopelessness I felt as I watched Papa shake with coughing fits. It must have been even worse for Mr. Kinley, having no magic, being completely at the mercy of magicians... only to find that those magicians were helpless, too.

Xavier appeared in the doorway of the salon, carrying a new, larger potion case. “Sir,” he said, “it will not address your daughter’s mental state, but... if you’d like, I can remove the flowers on her skin. I have seen other patients, and the dandelions don’t seem to grow back, since they’re only superficial—”

“Just... don’t hurt her.” Mr. Kinley pulled up a chair beside his daughter and cradled her hand in his.

Xavier set his supplies upon the nearby tea table: a bottle of numbing ointment. Forceps. A jar of salve with the labelFor Wounds, the same he’d used on my father. While he carefully applied the numbing ointment to her cheek and her arms, I moved a chair to sit beside Mr. Kinley.

“When did you notice that Emily was acting strangely, sir?” I asked.

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