Page 87 of Flowerheart

“You know very well the importance of a name. Or you once did.” Master Morwyn huffed. “Madam Ben Ammar wrote to say that it’s over and done with. You’ve lost your power.”

“I should have lost it months ago.”

I pressed myself against his side, wishing him courage with all my might.Remember how brave you are.

Master Morwyn ground his teeth and glanced at his wife over his shoulder. “Take the girls to their rooms, please, Montserrat,” he murmured.

Madam Morwyn slipped past, her hand lighting on her son’s shoulder for just a moment before she escorted Leonor, Dalia, and Inés up the stairs. I could hear them grumbling and whispering as they left.

Xavier’s father strode closer, looking down his nose at his son. “I worked hard to get you the time to restore our reputation.”

“Our reputation is why I made Euphoria to begin with,” Xavier said. “I would rather someone,anyone,cure this mess I’ve made than receive the credit for it! Father,thatis whyClara deserves a place in this shop as much as any Morwyn—”

“The decision is mine alone, and I refuse!” He whipped his head towards me, his black eyes glinting. He was just as frightening and severe as I’d remembered him to be. “Miss Lucas, I think you should go. Whatever brought you here, I certainly didn’t approve of it.”

Magic flared in my middle—and so did the lamps in the room. Master Morwyn glanced around him, scowling. Xavier took another step between his father and me.

“Enough, Father,” he said. “You owe Miss Lucas an apology.”

I gasped.

Master Morwyn’s brow furrowed, and blood rushed into his cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”

“You forbade me from writing to her. You judged her to be a bad influence on me, simply because of who her mother was.” He laughed, soft and humorless. “And look at me. I made a proper mess of myself all on my own.”

“You’re being a child.”

Xavier flinched. I stepped closer to him, and he breathed again.

“If this is me being a child, then I don’t care. I didn’t defend Miss Lucas before. I feared you too much then. She deserves as much respect as any other magician, and if you won’t grant it to her, we can go elsewhere.”

“So be it,” snapped Master Morwyn. “You’ve no magic;no title. You’ll not ride on the coattails of our family anymore. That’s what you want, isn’t it? So go.”

The wizard marched past, not giving his son a second glance.

Xavier looked to me and back at his father. His eyes shimmered.

Master Morwyn had been so wrong. Xavier had been terrible on his own. He hadn’t thrived as a Morwyn. He’d been a bird trapped in a too-small cage. This shop, this mansion, this place that I’d loved—it had been his prison for three long months.

We didn’t need this house.

An idea flew into my mind, fast and ridiculous and utterly perfect. Over my shoulder, I could see his father stomping towards the staircase. I swept up Xavier’s hands in mine, looked him in the eyes, and said loud enough for his father to hear, “Xavier Morwyn, will you open a shop with me?”

He blinked. “What?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Master Morwyn halt at the foot of the stairs.

“You don’t have to,” I said, “but if you’d like, you could come stay with Papa and me. We’d set up shop in my house! My father would grow our ingredients, and you could help me with customers, and I could cast the spells, and you could help me learn new magic, too!” My voice quickened; magic was a warm, sunshiny flood in my cheeks and down my armsas I thought of the possibilities. His expertise, my magic—together, we could help so many people.

“We could find a cure for Euphoria,” I said. “We could work as hard as possible, and we—we’d make a great team.”

One last look. Xavier’s father had left.

Xavier squeezed my hands, and I looked into his eyes again. Warm, forest-dark, and dripping with tears.

“Do you mean it?” he whispered.

“Of course I do,” I said, and I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “We can get started on the cure first thing in the morning. If—if you want. If you’ll work with me. We promised each other, remember? We’ll be ‘Morwyn and Lucas.’”

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