Page 74 of Flowerheart

“What sort of magic could possibly be worth more to you than your own child?”

Setting aside her drink, she got up from the arm of the sofa, walking past me to run a hand along one of the shelves filled with a rainbow of potion bottles. “It’s not that simple, Clara.”

“Is it not?” I joined her beside the shelf, lifting a red bottle.For Telling Lies, it said. When I glanced to her, her eyes shone with fear, until I set the bottle back upon its shelf. As though I was holding a newborn improperly. Had she ever worried about me like that?

“I bring love back where there was none,” she said, lighting her fingertips against a pink bottle. “I bring happiness where it was lost. I have even brought a man back from the dead. Those are good things, beautiful things, and it is in our power to make such miracles happen. How can the Council call such work evil?”

I bring happiness.

“Do you sell Euphoria?” I asked her.

She nodded casually as she plucked a phial off the shelf.“It’s very popular. Do you need some?”

My heart was a galloping horse in my chest as I accepted the phial. So small and simple, filled with violet-colored liquid.

For a moment, I wondered what it would be like to live in a dream. To no longer feel sorrow, or the shame of having lost my power. The fear of the years ahead of me; years without hope, without magic, without any prospect for a career for myself.

I shut my eyes and imagined it. A perfect place. My cottage, among sunlit flowers. Papa tending the garden, healthy and happy. And Xavier—to see him at all would be a dream.

But in my mind, I could also see Emily Kinley, laughing until she was red in the face, even while her father wept and begged her to stop.

Tears seared my eyes. The slight weight of the potion belied all the destruction it had brought. To Daniel. To Emily. To so many others.

All at Xavier’s hands.

“Do you sell a cure as well?” I asked.

Imogen folded her arms. “No one’s made one yet. But when people buy from me, I tell them what to expect. I warn them of the madness, of the unparalleled pleasure. They make the choice to buy. I am not like the Council. I would not take my customers’ freedom away. They accept the potion’s consequences.”

Rage rose, hot and acidic as bile in my throat. I brandished the potion in her face. “You’re taking their minds away! I’ve seenchildrenlose themselves because of this potion.” I imagined Xavier, tears in his eyes, thorns wrapping around him. The anguish in his eyes. How desperately he’d tried to help the Kinleys. “Do you feel no remorse?”

“I don’t hold myself responsible for the choices of my customers.”

“Then you’re heartless,” I said.

She stepped closer to me, her eyes flashing. “It’s heartless to hoard magic and keep it from those who arebeggingfor help. The Council won’t even try to make treatments for people suffering from melancholy, or mania, or nerves, since they’re too afraid to address any issues of the heart—”

“It’s not safe to bend hearts,” I said, my voice growing softer, because I was less certain now. I knew heartache well. I knew loneliness well. If that pain could be madebearable...wouldn’t I want someone to make it so?

“It is not safe to let people suffer, either.”

She was right.

Silence lay heavily between us.

“The Council isn’t always just,” said Imogen. “That’s why I sought help elsewhere. My coven and I, we don’t let these arbitrary rules keep us from helping people—”

“Your coven,” I said. “They sell Euphoria, too?”

“Yes, but—”

“And poison?” I moved one step nearer to her, our eyes locked. “You offer that, as well.”

She said nothing.

“You aren’t as noble as you make yourself out to be,” I said. I thought of Madam Ben Ammar, a woman I’d easily call a hero, and how she was searching so desperately for these criminals. These people like my mother. “Who are these people in your coven? Where are they?”

Imogen shook her head at me again, her arms wrapped tight around herself like a vice. “I’ll not talk about that.”

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