Chapter Two

When I threw the door open again, the Council chamber was gone. There was only the colorful garden that Papa tended and the oak tree I’d climbed as a child. It was as if the Council, their meeting—Xavier—had been nothing but a dream.

But it was no dream, and soon my magic would be tightly, painfully bound.

I ran outside, sheltering myself beneath the oak’s branches. I squeezed my eyes shut, held my palms out to the sunlight, and breathed in the perfume of summer: flowers and dew and earth.

Some people believed that magic came from the sun, spilling into the ground and bringing life. It was why our magic wove together so beautifully with nature. When I was like this, basking in a summer morning, it felt like I was back where I belonged.

Perhaps if I tried hard enough, I’d come up with some sort of plan to convince the Council to keep my magic intact for one more week, one more day, one more moment. . . .

Far away, softer than an echo, sounded the faintest clap of thunder. I shivered. That was me. My magic, worming into the world around me without my permission. “Behave yourself,” I whispered to it. But the clouds continued to loom in the distance.

“Clara!”

Papa marched down the hill and plopped into the dirt beside me. His forehead was deeply furrowed. “What happened in there—well, how are you feeling about it? What are you going to do?”

I let out a bitter laugh and pressed my knees close to my chest. “There’s nothing I can do, Papa. The Council has made up their minds.”

“I think you’re giving up too soon.”

“No.” I rested my chin on my arms and watched the sun sparkling on the dew-slicked grass. “I’ve tried for five years. I’ve fought so hard to tame it on my own. Maybe it’s better this way.”

The sounds of teachers shouting at me, of breaking glass, of my own sobs, filled my head.

“Something’s wrong with me,” I murmured, more to myself than to him. “With my heart, perhaps. If—if I was a really good witch, then I’d be able to—”

“No, blossom, no.” He shifted closer to me, draping an arm around my shoulders. His other hand, callused from years of gardening, covered mine. “You are a good person, you hear me? Nobody bad would have worked so hard to become a healer.”

I wiped my sleeve against my teary eyes. “It shouldn’t have been a struggle at all,” I said. “Magic reflects what’s in our hearts. Every teacher’s said so. It’s this force inside of you that harnesses your emotions. So my emotions must be horrible.”

Papa was painfully quiet. The silence echoed my own words back to me so I could hear how silly they sounded.

“I think it’s more that your magic can hardly keep up with you,” said Papa eventually. “You’re ready to save the world, but your power . . . well, it just needs a little more time.”

The brightness of my love for him was clouded by the dark reality of my situation. “I don’t have time.” When I closed my eyes, I could see those Councilmembers surrounding me like birds of prey, claws at the ready to snatch away my magic.

Papa’s hope for me was constant and sweet. But it was also naive.

I turned from him, folding my arms tight against my middle, where magic thrummed impatiently. The dark storm clouds that had loomed in the distance now hovered over our cottage. “You don’t know what it’s like. You haven’t seen me in my apprenticeships. You don’t know what my magic does.” I could almost hear Madam Ben Ammar’s scream that day when my hands had gone up in flames. How even she, calm and brilliant, had been frightened by what my magic could do.

“I just . . . I just think you should fight. Fight to keep your magic the way it is.”

“Fight the Council?” I fiercely shook my head. “Papa, I don’t know what you see when you look at me, but when the Council looks, they see her.” My voice broke on the last word. The fire in my heart grew. My mouth tasted like ash.

She was everything I hated. Wild, thoughtless, impulsive. Just like my magic. The magic she had prayed that I would possess, too.

“My magic is all I have,” I said between staggered breaths. “The power to help someone. And still, it’s not even mine—it’s hers. She gave it to me.” Tears rolled down my cheeks. “I was foolish to think I could be different from her.”

Papa carefully drew me close, my head resting against his heart.

“I hate her,” I said—to the air, to the sun, to my magic, to myself.

“Clara. Listen to me.”

The more I thought of her, the more my magic seemed to be a real, white-hot flame emanating from my body. My chest tightened; my shoulders quaked; heat rolled through me—

Papa gasped and pulled back from me. Over his heart, where my cheek had just been, the yellow fabric of his shirt was scorched, curling and black. And from his skin, small pink blossoms poked forth.

I screamed.

Papa clasped a hand to the flowers on his heart, shuddering. His face turned the color of bone as more pink blooms poked out from the gaps between his fingers.

“What’s happening?” I asked, my voice quivering and weak.

I touched a trembling hand to his cheek and he yelped, flinching away. A bright pink burn was left behind.

My head whirled like a seed spinning from a tree. Thunder crashed, and suddenly, buckets of rain fell from the sky, soaking our cottage as well as the village of Williamston below. I became drenched as I scrabbled to my feet and stumbled back from Papa, afraid to look away, but equally terrified to see my magic ravaging him.

He coughed, an awful, rattling sound. He covered his mouth with his hand, and when he drew it back, five pink petals lay in his palm.

His eyes were wide and bloodshot. For the first time, he was looking at me with the same fear as the Council had.

“Clara.” My name was faint and hoarse. The flowers on his breast were blooming.

Azaleas, that old book had said. A sign for care—and for stubbornness. Poisonous if ingested.

Papa glanced at his chest and seemed to realize it the moment I did.

“Get help,” he breathed.

I laid Papa on the sofa and darted to my bedroom.

I couldn’t help him, even if I knew how; not after my touch alone had hurt him. I needed a magician who was skilled enough to save him.

Beside my bed was the case of flowers and spare supplies I’d brought back from my time with my most recent teacher, Master Young. I unlatched the lid and threw it back, digging through little glass phials and stems of lavender and lilac.

A green maple leaf was tucked neatly at the bottom, a charm used for sending messages—although it would take too long to reach anybody, especially given my wild magic. And I couldn’t waste a moment.

There was another option. The Morwyns lived close by. If Xavier could not help me, then his parents would.

I set aside the maple leaf and dove under my bed to pull out the small jewelry box that contained my life’s savings. Every coin I’d scrounged up from selling scraps of fabric or doing chores about town. Every tip from a generous patron, from my time assisting various witches and wizards. The pearl earrings Papa had given me for my sixteenth birthday. The gold band my mother had thrown at Papa before disappearing in a cloud of smoke fifteen years ago.

I dashed into the hallway. Just beside the front door, Papa’s boots and mine lay cast aside. I tugged on my dusty gardening gloves along with Papa’s overcoat and the bowler he wore when we traveled. It would be little protection from the rain, but judging by the growling thunder and the turmoil in my heart, the storm—and my magic—would not let up any time soon. As I stuffed the coins and jewelry into the coat’s pockets, I dared to glance at my father.

He had grown quiet, eyes shut and chest heaving. Sleep would help. But there was no telling what the azaleas’ poison could do, given time.

I swept into the sitting room and hovered over him, cautiously touching the cracked leather of my glove against his index finger. His eyelids fluttered open.

“I’m getting the Morwyns,” I whispered. “I’ll be back before you wake.”

“I love you,” he said, the words jumbled and slow.

My teeth pressed hard into my lip as I tried to tamp down the tears and the magic writhing in my chest. “I love you, too.”

When I strode out the door, I did not look behind me. If I told myself I could be seeing Papa for the last time, I’d start to believe it. And as I’d learned in my time as an apprentice, once my heart took hold of an idea, my magic might very well act upon it, whether I wanted it to or not.

My boots strained against the mud as I sprinted down the road out of town. I climbed hill after hill, and at the top of the final one was the strange and beautiful house I knew so well.

Morwyn Manor had a cobbled-together look: a mix of a watchtower and a palace and a cottage, a combination of several different eras of architecture. On one side, a turret seemed to have been taken from an old fortress and made to adhere to the mansion. On the other end of the house was a chimney covered in ivy that crawled all the way up to the roof. At the top of the roof stood a weathervane with a blazing sun, a sign for “magician” that anyone could identify even from afar.

When I was a child, my time at the Morwyns’ mansion had been spent rolling down hills, weaving crowns of daisies, and playing hide-and-seek in its wild, twisting halls. Every Saturday, Papa let me ride in our wagon filled with flowers on his way to the market, dropping me off at the Morwyns’ while he worked. I’d bounce eagerly in the back of the wagon, jabbering to Papa about the games I would play with Xavier and his little sisters, Leonor, Dalia, and Inés.

Now an altogether different, altogether more frightening sort of anticipation filled me. Every step was a second in which Papa was suffering. Today I was at the Morwyns looking for a savior, not a playmate.

I climbed the slick path snaking up the hillside until I passed under a swinging sign reading Morwyn. Standing on the porch, I leaned against a square, faded-white column to catch my breath. My sides ached. My head spun. My boots had rubbed my heels raw where my stockings were worn thin.

My legs wobbled like a fawn’s as I approached the emerald-green door. Above it hung a little golden bell that rang as customers came and went. Garlands of white heather streamed from the lintel—a charm against robbers.

On either side of the door were square, white-trimmed windows, aglow from the light inside despite the sign that hung in one declaring the shop Closed. The interior was warped by the glass; I could make out the outlines of shelves and a counter and perhaps a chair or two, but no people. Still, the lamps were lit. Someone was home. Someone could help my father stay alive. I imagined Dalia, Leonor, and Inés racing to call their parents and then their brother.

I tugged on the handle, but the door was locked. I beat my fist against it. My magic was already whispering eagerly in my ear that my efforts were hopeless. Instead of yielding to its teasing, I took out my anger on the door, hitting it harder.

“Madam Morwyn?” I shouted. “Master Morwyn?”

Why did you even come here? asked my magic. You’re too late!

I kicked the door, scuffing the bright green paint. “Xavier?”

Perhaps he was upstairs. My cynical magic insisted that he was ignoring me—Just like he ignored your letters.

“All right,” I mumbled to my magic, “if you’re going to be so chatty, you may as well help.”

I stepped close to the door and inhaled deeply, concentrating on the way my power boiled inside my middle, on the burning in my cheeks, on my outraged thoughts, on the way my elbow quivered as I held the handle. I imagined opening the door fluidly, as if it had been unlocked all along. On my exhale, I whispered, “Open,” and then pushed.

There was a loud crack, and the door flew off its hinges, ringing the shop’s bell with fervor as it slammed to the floor. I yelped, hopping away from it with my hands over my mouth.

Frantic footsteps pounded close by.

I stepped into the shop, tracking mud over the fallen door, and craned my neck towards the sound. At the far end of the room, at the bottom of a spiral staircase, Xavier appeared, still in his prim, Council-appropriate suit, but with mismatched socks and a butter knife he wielded like a dagger. His dark eyes, ringed purple with fatigue, darted from the door to me.

“Miss Lucas?” he asked. The hand holding the knife fell to his side. “You broke down my door?”

An explanation was on the tip of my tongue, but I thought better of it—my father was forefront in my mind. The fear in his eyes. The flowers bursting from his heart.

“I need help. From you or your parents or anyone; I just need a magician.” I crossed the room, turning out my pockets and holding out the ring, the earrings, the coins. “I’ll pay—”

His hand lightly touched the back of my glove, slick with rain. With his other hand, he tucked away the knife into his pocket as subtly as he was able. “Miss Lucas, please—I, I don’t understand. What’s happened?”

I took a long breath and kept my gaze averted. The confusion and worry in his eyes only made my own panic grow. “It’s my father. He collapsed. He . . . he has azaleas blooming from his heart.”

His already pale face turned lily-white. “Was it your magic?”

The monstrous thing squirmed inside my chest at the mention.

Tears muddied my vision as I nodded. This was precisely what the Council had feared.

“That doesn’t matter now,” I said, the tremor in my voice breaking any illusion of resolve. “Please, he’s in danger.” Once more, I held out my dripping, gloved hands filled with payment. “This is all I have. Heal him, please, you must—”

“Of course I will,” he said, his voice stern but soft, like he was calming a child. “Let me get my case.”

I dropped the money into his cupped hands. With long strides, he entered the room I’d blasted the door off of, which served as a storefront and a kitchen all in one. The pouch and jewels clattered against the countertop where he set them down. My heart lurched at the sound, at losing all I had ever saved, and to someone who I’d thought was my friend—but I would make any sacrifice if it meant saving my father. I wrapped my arms around myself to keep from trembling from the cold and from fear.

Xavier kept his back turned to me as he plucked bottles and jars from cabinets. He stuffed a large green jar into his potion case and then snapped it shut.

“Follow me,” he said. “I’ll make the portal.”

He approached the kitchen’s pantry, which would serve us in lieu of his broken front door.

In a language I didn’t understand, his voice gentle as a lullaby, he sang over the door, pressing his forehead against the wood. A few times in my life, my teachers had created portals for me to visit Papa in Williamston. But never before had I heard the portal spell sung. Listening to his song, my heart pounded. As I stood there by his side, I felt like his friend again for just a minute—despite the horrid purpose of this visit.

When he pulled back the door, the air was heavy with a sickening, flowery perfume.

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