Page 92 of The Scent of Intuition
As Bea’s slender fingers wrapped around the vial, he watched, every sense heightened. The beauty of the setting—the lush green of the garden, the delicate arrangements of flowers,the music that floated on the air—all of it dulled to a mere backdrop against the peril Bea faced.
In that moment, Alfie’s resolve crystallized. His love for Bea, the depth of his feelings, demanded action.
“Please drink—” but Alfie didn’t hear the rest of Bea’s father’s words.
He left the balcony and dashed down the ancient stone stairs, his heart pounding in his chest as though it sought to escape. The grandeur of the castle blurred into a streak of indistinct shapes and shadows. With each step, his urgency grew, his boots slipping on the worn edges of the steps.
After mere seconds that felt like hours, he hoped he wasn’t too late.
“Bea!” he called. “Bea!”
Bursting through the double doors, he emerged into the garden and saw Bea standing between her parents, the metal flask in hand and close to her lips. She was a vision of innocence and grace, her hand trembling as it clasped the vial, its contents a sinister shadow amidst the splendor of the gardens and the golden glow cast upon them from the ballroom.
“Bea!” The garden around him was a blur, the fragrance of the blooming flowers a distant note beneath the pounding of his heart. As he neared, the world seemed to narrow to the space between them, every step charged with the weight of his resolve. The closer he got, the clearer he saw the confusion in her eyes, the slight tremor of her hand. Alfie’s mind raced with the gravity of what was to come, the act that would expose the poison for what it was, an act that would irrevocably alter the course of their lives.
With a final, desperate burst of speed, Alfie closed the distance, reaching out to snatch the vial from her grasp. The motion was swift, decisive, leaving no room for hesitation or doubt.
“Don’t!” Alfie threw it into the darkness. By the sound of it, bushes stopped its fall with dense foliage. Alfie cupped Bea’s cheeks and examined her. A pallor, stark like the moon above wrung his heart. “Please tell me that you didn’t drink any of it!” He pressed his mouth to hers, desperate, for he couldn’t bear to live a day without her.
But Bea barely returned the kiss, her arms hung limp from her sides.
Had he come too late?
He deepened the kiss and dropped his hands to her back, pulling her toward him lest she faint from weakness of the poison.
“Alfie!” She mumbled onto his mouth. “Alfie?”
He broke the kiss, breathless. He didn’t taste the poison on his own lips or smell it on her breath, but couldn’t be sure. He needed to know.
“What has gotten into you?” Bea asked, licking her lips as she turned to her parents with the look of a schoolgirl caught in the act of stealing the headmistress’ quill.
Alfie’s breath caught in his throat as he took in the scene, time stretching into an agonizing eternity. The music and laughter of the ball inside seemed to fade into oblivion, leaving only the sound of his own heart racing in tandem with the realization of what he’d done.
“Didn’t you drink the cinnabar?” he asked, for her well-being was the only thing that mattered to him now.
“No,” she waved toward the bushes behind her. “How dare you throw away my only chance at a cure?” An estranged look in her face gave way to a redness that wasn’t at all a blush but sheer anger. He’d never seen Bea like this before.
“Who is this rogue?” Her mother exclaimed in a high voice that made Alfie wince.
“Young man, this is between my daughter and us. That was a rare and highly-concentrated mixture you just tossed away!” Her father was a little shorter than Alfie and still managed to cast him a superciliary glance that instantly reminded Alfie that his station was far below him—nonexistent, to be precise.
“You didn’t drink it?” Alfie asked Bea who’d stepped away from him.
“No, I told you. How could you do this to me?” Hurt flickered in her gaze.
“I thought you’d been poisoned, and I wanted to… I don’t know, cinnabar is dangerous… I cannot imagine a life without you, Bea. If anything happened to you, I would rather die than suffer the pain of losing you.”
The air tensed among the assembled and Bea’s mother’s countenance was dark with suspicion. But Alfie could only watch Bea, waiting for her to trust him, to believe in the sincerity of his warning.
When Bea hesitated, her mother’s impatience grew palpable. Alfie did what he must. In choosing Bea’s wellbeing over his safety, he’d crossed a line from which there could be no return.
The garden, with its intoxicating blend of aromas, the castle with its centuries of legacy—all faded into a backdrop for a moment defined by sacrifice and love.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bea stood, frozenwith shock and disbelief, as Alfie’s sudden dash toward her culminated in the snatching of the vial from her grasp. Once filled with the harmonious symphony of the wedding, the garden now seemed eerily silent, save for the racing thoughts thundering through her mind. She watched, helpless, as the vial—a symbol of her desperate gambit for freedom—was unceremoniously discarded, its contents seeping into the earth, lost forever. Her parents had procured a cure for her on a journey to Asia that she couldn’t repeat.
They’d brought her a medicine that they promised provided the only chance to tame the beast within her.
