Page 71 of Flowerheart

Amid the soft birdsong outside, I could almost hear their laughter, their desperation. Emily’s. And now Daniel’s.

“Xavier was the one who first made that potion, Papa. It wasn’t supposed to make people react like that. It was supposed to help them. He wants to set things right again.” I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and continued to stare out the window. The glaring light was easier to bear than Papa’s tears.“He told me he loved me, Papa, and yet he made a bargain to take my magic from me. Perhaps... perhaps he thought he was doing me a kindness.” I shook my head, pressing my hand to my eyes. “Heiskind, though. He lets me be silly; he lets me cry; he’s taught me more than any of my other teachers... and he cares so deeply about his customers. I think perhaps he could truly do some good with my power.”

“You need to talk to him. Maybe after—after this assignment of his... could he give you your power back then?”

Xavier had said he hoped to work with me as his partner. He’d wanted me. As a friend. As a partner. As anything, as long as we were together.

“I suppose,” I murmured. “He needs to prove himself. He needs to show me that he’s not what everyone says he is.”

“Do you love him?”

Thinking of him, his blushing cheeks, his hands gently cupping mine, how he stood at my side and shouted over that cliffside and held the umbrella over me and celebrated my victories—he reminded me so much of that boy he’d once been. The boy I had loved.

I had loved.

I still loved.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Papa’s hand rested atop mine. “If your heart does not align with his on what is right and wrong, you must know now. Before you break your heart trying to change him.” Hesighed, bending his head. A lock of ginger hair curled over his brow. “I truly loved your mother. But she and I—we did not see the world the same way. I’ve not told you much about her. It’s an old wound, and I regret not telling you more. But she disagreed with the Council in a great many ways. She made potions that hurt people and twisted their hearts. She had the power to do great things. The problem was, she believed what she was doingwasgood.”

He closed his eyes, remembering. His forehead wrinkled deeply in thought. “She said that her magic was a gift, thatshewas a gift, and that it was not her job to keep her magic from people who needed it. She believed her customers had the right to take their futures into their own hands, for good or for evil. She said the consequences didn’t matter.... I disagreed.

“We can love someone with all our might, but we cannot force them to change. That’s up to them. Does that make sense?”

It did—but something about his words made something shift inside my head, clicking like a key slipping into a lock.

Madam Ben Ammar had been leading an investigation into who was selling Euphoria. If my mother was selling heart-bending potions, surely Euphoria was among them. Perhaps Imogen even knew of some sort of antidote to Euphoria. Perhaps I could report her location to the Council; they could arrest her and force the answers from her likethey’d always wanted. Perhaps that could help forgive some of Xavier’s wrongs.

I slid off the bed, scrubbing my face with my hands and lifting a ribbon from where it had been tied around the bedpost. I shook my hair loose and hastily bound it into a braid again, my fingers working as fast as machinery. “I need to talk to her.”

He sat back, blinking as I zipped across the room. “Your—your mother, you mean?”

“Yes.” I paced back and forth in front of him, lacing up my boots as I tried to think of a way to reach her. I’d never cared until today. “I can’t use my own magic,” I muttered, “and Madam Ben Ammar—”

“I have something,” said Papa.

I halted, frowning at him.

He lifted himself from the chair, wide-eyed. “I’ll be right back.”

He returned moments later and pressed a long rectangular box into my hands. It was made of pale wood, with a jagged C carved into the top. It had been months since I’d seen it. Months since it had shown up on our doorstep for my birthday.

I gaped up at him. “But—but I threw that away!”

“I didn’t want you to regret doing that one day,” he said. He rubbed his hand up and down my arm. “She hurt us both. But I loved her dearly. And you... you deserve theopportunity to speak with her if you wish. To ask her things. To say goodbye.”

With shaking hands, I removed the lid and found the gift she’d sent for my birthday, untouched.

First, a folded-up note:Happy birthday, Clara. You will soon be a witch, and I hope you follow your heart in all that you do. Eat plenty of cake and have a beautiful life. If you wish to pay me a visit, just burn this charm. —Imogen

Then, tucked beneath the note was the charm. It was unlike most of the magic I’d been trained to use. It was not a calling card or a powder or a bottle of beautiful, jewel-colored liquid. It was a bundle of bright green leaves, now dried with time.Oregano, to find one’s way. The bundle was wrapped around a tube of paper and pierced through the middle by a needle. Instead of twine holding it together, there was a long lock of ginger hair.Herhair.

I didn’t remember her at all. I’d never cared to. After the hurt she’d caused us, she deserved no place in my life. By burning this, by seeing her, I knew I would be opening a door that I could not close again.

My chest tightened as I set down the box on the floor and shifted the charm back and forth in the sunlight.

What would she be like? Would she like me? Would she make me doubt myself, doubt all that I’d learned with Xavier? Would she twist the way I saw the world?

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