Page 56 of Flowerheart

“I need to be alone,” he rasped, “just for one minute.”

“No,” I said, “you cannot isolate yourself again, not like—”

“Please.” His voice was desperate. Frayed at the edges. Beads of sweat clung to his brow. He was breathing like he had just run for miles.

Worry burrowed in my gut. His breath hitched, and he pressed a free hand to his face and began to cry. His weeping grew louder, and something scratched against my ankle. I leapt back.

A withered gray vine covered in thorns had burst from the floor. More vines circled around his feet, crawling up the door, winding around his wrist.

I threw myself at the door and ripped the vines away. Xavier gaped up at me, eyes sad and bloodshot. He staggered away from the door, torn and withering vines crumbling beneath his feet. For his magic, as weakened as it was, to express his emotions like this—he must have been in true anguish.

The vines wilted in my gloved hands. I looked into his eyes, desperate for answers, but he turned from me, shaking free of the weak, sickly brambles.

“Curse me twice. I’ll tend to that later,” he mumbled, making a fast exit towards the shop in the next room. Without even glancing back at me, he said, “That’ll be all fortoday, Miss Lucas. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Anger and heartbreak mingled within me. I tossed aside the vines, and they disintegrated to dust as I marched after him into the shop.

Already, he was at the shop counter, opening his notebook and dipping a pen in ink. He scratched out some words with one swift strike of the pen, and then scribbled something down. With a free hand, he hastily brushed away tears from his gaunt cheeks.

“You don’t mean to keep working, do you?” I asked.

His eyes grew bright with fury. “I am not so depraved that I’d let my own emotions get in the way of making the cure—”

“It’s not depraved,” I insisted, crossing towards him. “Look at yourself! You’re exhausted. You can’t work like this.”

After a final glance into his notebook, he shoved it into a drawer and then locked it with a key he’d pulled from his pocket. I frowned at the drawer—he’d been scribbling in that book the night I caught him brewing a Euphoria cure.

“She’s our age,” Xavier murmured. He set a bowl against the counter and ripped a dried sprig of lavender from where it hung on the window frame. “She’sour age, and she got her hands on that horrible potion—how many more lives will be ruined? I cannot simply stop my research—”

“You’ve already done so much. You tried a cure on her,and it didn’t work. You’ll find another way.”

“But what if I don’t? What if I’ve spent months for nothing; what if there’s no hope for these people?”

I grabbed his arm. His eyes grew wide. “Listen to me,” I said. “You’ll do no good to anyone if you don’t get some sleep. You have a brilliant mind. You’re letting it waste away abusing yourself. If you want to help these patients, you need your rest.”

His eyes softened to the warm, chocolatey color I liked the most.

“What would you do, if I was in your shoes?” I prompted.

“I’d have sent you to bed at once.” A small, timid smile crossed his face. “Though I’m certain you would have fought tooth and nail to keep working, too.”

I tugged him towards the staircase. “Go to bed. I’ll clean the shop, and you and I, we can attempt to make another cure in the morning. Together.”

He let me drag him all the way up the stairs and to his bedroom. He halted me just outside his door.

“I can take it from here,” he assured me.

I raised an eyebrow. “Canyou?”

His cheeks reddened. He tilted back against his door for support. “Yes, and I’ll sleep, I swear it.”

I sighed. “The way you’ve shut yourself off from the world, tortured yourself, it—it isn’t good for you. You...” The thought I’d had was better advice for myself than for him, but he was waiting, watching with complete attention.He always looked me in the eye when he was truly listening. “If you get too trapped in your own head, you’ll start to think that there isn’t a world at all outside of your own thoughts. The voice in your head telling you that you’re rubbish... you’ll think that it’s right.” My throat had gone dry as old parchment. There was a faint whisper in the back of my mind from my magic, but I focused on him. “And, well... I don’t think you’re rubbish. Not at all.”

Xavier laughed his one-beat laugh. “I don’t think you’re rubbish, either.”

Something fluttered in my middle and made my cheeks start to burn. Noticing how long his eyelashes were certainly didn’t help. I pointed a threatening finger at him. “If I find you stayed up reading all night, or if I hear you clanging about with your potions downstairs...” But the warning tapered off. He and I both knew that I wouldn’t do much besides yell at him.

He smiled at me. “I wish I was like you.”

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