Page 63 of Scent of Desire
The aconite.
I dropped the letter to the ground, a silent scream shattering my cells. Memories flashed through my mind in flashbacks, and I felt the earth opening below my feet.
“No, it can’t be…”
How could I not know?
“What does it mean?” Hugo’s voice echoed from behind me.
I crouched to the floor, my watering eyes locking on the portrait of the child.
“It was him,” I cried out. “All those years, Hugo, my guardian angel had always been him.”
13 years ago
Acloud of steam escaped from my mouth.
Don’t be scared, Lily.
My skin turned the color of blue hydrangeas with unstoppable shivers. My nightgown wasn’t enough for the cold winter. Even the old tree in front of me screamed in agony. Its branches were like a dark monster who wanted to catch me and make me plummet to hell with him. The grass was wet. My feet were bare. The moonlight owned the night with a wicked smile that inspired only nightmares.
“It’s okay, Lily… Nothing will happen.” I curled my toes on the grass. “It’s still better than the dungeon, right?”
At least I hadn’t heard the silent screams of the phantoms of young girls. Tonight, Mother Anne hadn’t locked me in the dungeon. She said I was too bad and that I should stay the whole night standing up in front of the ghost tree that looked like wandering specters to think about my behavior. If I sat or fell asleep, she would strip me and inflict much worse. I should never look behind me either. My hands were tied behind my back with a rope so I wouldn’t flee.
Maybe I did deserve it? I did burn a Bible with my scented candle. In my defense, that was a mistake—one of the girls had startled me, coming at me with a broom and asking me to make it “fly” into the sky. To be honest, I liked that Bible. I’d used it as a notebook for my ideas.
The wind cried out in a shrill noise like a banshee.
Monsters were coming.
I focused on something else: the smells.
“Wet grass…” I took a deep breath. “Bark…” My nose frowned. “Smelly mint.” Then, I picked up the last note, my eyes switching to the flowers near my feet. “Aconite.”
I tried to kneel without falling backward and plucked out the flower to take it in the hollow of the palm of my hand. Mom always told me to stay away from that purple flower—it looked beautiful, but it was evil.
It was a deadly poison; that’s why she called itthe queen of all poisons. Its roots were lethal and could kill a human. If we ingested it, we would die in excruciating pain. It was fatal. I tightened my grip on the aconite until she gave me her venom. Just by touching her, I would feel her toxicity, and that’s what I wanted right now.
Make me suffer.
End my torment.
A cracking noise echoed, and I let the crushed flower drop on the grass because of my leaping heart.
“Who is it?”
No one answered, but I heard footsteps, and a shadow loomed behind me.
“I didn’t move,” I defended myself, knowing that it’d change nothing. If they wanted to hurt me, they could.
I felt the touch of a stranger caressing my hand. My shoulders jumped to my ears in apprehension, a spider crawling up my back. But the touch was gentle and kind; I wasn’t used to it. Most of the physical contact I’d had since Mom died was through fights. In the space of a breath, the knot on my wrists broke free and fell to the floor.
The air of freedom called to me in a note of vanilla and burnt wood. “Thank you. How did you—”
As I started turning around, the raw voice of the stranger left me frozen in place. “Don’t turn around.”
“It’s you.” I obeyed, my eyes locking on the spooky tree and my back still facing him. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
