Chapter Three

I stepped through into the comfort of my own living room—the table with our broken tea set from this morning, my old cross-stitch on the wall, and Papa on the sofa where I’d left him, his chest rising slowly, still sprouting flowers.

With wide eyes, Xavier halted in front of my father. “Curse me twice,” he muttered. “There really are azaleas.”

I stood a pace away, folding my hands tight to keep them from trembling.

Kneeling, Xavier unlatched and drew back the lid of his case. He looked to Papa and touched a gentle hand to his cheek. “Mr. Lucas?”

Papa’s eyes opened. His forehead wrinkled with confusion. “Did . . . did I forget your delivery?”

“No, sir. Your daughter called on me.”

Papa grinned, his head lolling against the arm of the sofa. “She’s a gem, she is. You should be her teacher.”

Xavier averted his gaze. “A little delirious, I see.” His fingers hovered over the flowers blooming from Papa’s chest. He tenderly tugged at one of the dark green stems, but stopped at the sound of Papa’s sharp, frightened gasp. I flinched, and Xavier leaned back, his lips pursed. “It’s possible they’re latched in deep.” He glanced back to me, a notch in his brow. “If we’re lucky, there aren’t any more growing internally.”

My blood chilled. “He—he coughed up some petals. Do you think these flowers are connected to the ones inside him?”

The very idea made bile rise in my throat. My magic, infesting his heart as well as his lungs with flowers like parasites . . .

“Perhaps.” He withdrew a stethoscope from his potion case and then lightly tapped Papa’s shoulder. “If you would, sir, I’d like to listen to your heart.”

Your fault, your fault, your fault, chimed my magic. I forced my palm against my chest like it could smother the sound.

Xavier pressed the metal of the stethoscope over Papa’s heart and ribs.

“Your heartbeat is irregular. And I do hear something in your airway.” Xavier reached inside his case, where each bottle and jar had been tucked away perfectly like little soldiers in formation. He selected a long phial filled with a thick, dark green liquid. “Miss Lucas, I’ll need a large bowl or a bin.”

“Why?”

He jostled the little potion bottle. “I want to see if an expectorant will help in expelling the flowers.”

I sped out of the room and into the kitchen, swiping a mixing bowl from the shelf over the washbasin.

When I returned, I found Papa clutching his chest, moaning in pain. My throat pinched shut and I squeezed his hand through the thick fabric of my gloves.

Is this truly my fault? Had my magic acted on its own, and I was just too weak to stop it? Or was there something within me, something unknowable and awful, that would drive my magic to hurt him?

With the mixing bowl in his grasp, Xavier turned back to my father. “This will be a rather unpleasant experience, sir.”

Papa released my hand and rested the bowl against his lap. His head was bowed, like he was ashamed of himself. “You don’t have to see this, Clara.”

I pulled a chair close to his sofa and kept my hand braced against his arm. “I’ve been an apprentice several times over. I’ve seen my share of foul things.”

He sighed and then nodded to Xavier, who passed Papa the little green bottle.

Within moments of drinking, Papa was coughing into the bowl, expelling bright pink petals as well as leaves, whole stems, and long, spidery roots, wet with saliva. As his body lurched, trying with all its might to cast out the magic, I clung tight to his arm, biting hard on my lip to hold in tears.

Eventually, my father collapsed against the arm of the sofa, chest convulsing. His cheeks were waxy, and his pale ginger hair was slick with sweat. Though he was exhausted, his breathing was clearer and no longer so labored.

After a quick inspection with his stethoscope, Xavier confirmed that the flowers had been cleared. But his face was still troubled.

“What happened there on your cheek, Mr. Lucas?” he asked, pointing.

Papa touched the raw spot where my hand had been. He looked to me before mumbling, “I’m not sure, myself.”

My stomach tied itself in knots. Of course he’d try to defend me, even when I had hurt him.

The lamp on the table beside us started to rattle as I grew unsettled again. “It was me,” I said. I stared at my tan gardening gloves. “I just touched his cheek, and it burned him, somehow.”

Xavier procured a small silver pot from his case and applied a buttery mixture to the burn. “That could scar,” he noted softly. “Magical wounds are hardly predictable.” He wiped his pale hands on a handkerchief and then lightly felt Papa’s pulse. Xavier’s frown made my own heart leap.

“What is it?”

His brown eyes flitted to me. “Miss Lucas . . . did you say anything hostile towards your father before he fell ill? Did you have an argument?”

I bristled. This was how people spoke about curses. Dark, cruel spells. A young woman who had begun rapidly aging. A boy with thorns growing from his fingertips. They said my mother had done that sort of magic. But I never would.

“No,” I said.

“You weren’t cross with him at all? You didn’t . . .” He cleared his throat and glanced at his socked feet. “What did you say in your curse?”

I clenched my fists, anger burning in my middle. “I did not curse him!”

There was a piercing, ringing ping, and the lamp on the table exploded, littering the floor with shards of glass.

I leapt from my chair, away from the sofa. Papa turned to look back at me, his face white.

Even after causing him such pain, my magic still wasn’t satisfied. It craved destruction.

“I’m sorry,” I said from behind my hands.

Meanwhile, Xavier took a calming breath, stood to his full, alarmingly tall height and extended a hand towards the mess of the broken lamp on the floor. He swirled his finger in a circle, as if trying to make the rim of a goblet sing. The shards wobbled against the floorboards and zoomed upwards, fusing themselves perfectly around the flame they’d been encasing moments ago.

When Xavier turned back to us, his cheeks were bright red, the rings around his eyes were darker, and sweat glimmered on his temples. I’d seen such simple repair spells before, but I had never seen them make a wizard so weary.

“Mr. Lucas,” he said, smoothing the front of his vest, “may I speak with your daughter in private?”

Papa tipped his head to me. “It’s her you should be asking.”

“I’ll talk with him,” I said. “Stay here and rest. Can you do that? Can you keep still for a few minutes?” I flitted to his side to fiddle with the thin blanket thrown over him.

Papa let out a wry laugh before nestling himself among the worn cushions and shutting his eyes. “Yes, yes. Go on, don’t fret over me.”

An impossible request.

Still, I strode to the kitchen door and held it open for Xavier. He swept up his potion case before following me dutifully into the next room. I shut the door behind us, but stayed pressed up against it, my eyes on him. It ached, how the years had flown by, and we were suddenly two different people.

We had been apart for so long, and now he’d visited my home twice in one day. It was like a cruel joke.

Xavier set his case atop the table and leaned against the kitchen counter. He chewed on his lip. The old clock on the wall ticked noisily, like it was impatiently tapping its foot at us.

He opened his mouth to speak, but at that same moment I blurted out, “Do you think he’s going to be all right?”

Xavier grimaced. “I—I don’t know. Curses are extremely difficult to—”

“I. Did not. Curse him.” I stepped forwards, gripping the back of the nearest chair to keep my temper and my magic in check. “I’ve studied magic for five years, and I know as well as you do that a curse must be spoken with intention. I didn’t say anything like that, and on my life, I would never intend anything wicked upon my father.”

“I believe you,” he said. “You didn’t intend to hurt him. But your magic is still afflicting him.”

My stomach dropped “Still? But the flowers—you said there weren’t any left!”

“They poisoned his blood. He will continue to be lightheaded and nauseated and he will possibly experience other symptoms of azalea poisoning. And the flowers may yet return.”

Poison. It brought my mother to mind. It made me hate my power all the more, because it was so like hers. “Can’t you administer an antidote?” I asked, my voice broken and raw.

“If it were merely poison, I could treat him. However, this is magic—your magic specifically. It is only by your words that you’ll be able to fully heal him.”

I crumpled into the nearest chair. “He can only be healed by my power?”

“Yes. I believe if you cast a blessing over your father, with the full strength of your magic, you’d free him from whatever hold it has on him.”

A blessing—a spell only powerful, controlled magicians could perform. The kind that could save someone’s life; the kind that made healers collapse in exhaustion. A spell for the desperate.

“I—I’m not capable of something like that,” I said. “My magic doesn’t listen to me, and more than that, come tomorrow, it won’t be at its fullest strength anymore.” I slumped back in my chair, pulling my curls from my eyes. “And it’s done what we all feared it would do! What if the Council just takes it away?”

“I’m going to ask that they give you more time,” said Xavier. “It’s in our creed to do no harm. If they took your magic, they’d be signing away your father’s life.”

A sob broke from my lips. I clapped both hands over my mouth, my shoulders quaking with the effort. My magic wobbled a teacup on the kitchen countertop.

Xavier rounded the table, sliding a white handkerchief onto the table before me. I gratefully accepted the little cloth, embroidered with an M, and dried my eyes.

He sat across from me, silent and calm as I caught my breath. His straight posture, his neat, black uniform, his serious expression—he was truly the perfect image of a wizard. It was strange, almost dreamlike, to see this person from my childhood now placed in the role of an adult. It suited him.

“Your father can be helped,” he said, soft and soothing. “If the Council gives you time, you can teach your magic to yield to you. Then, you can cast a blessing or any other spell you’d like.”

Flames of magic seared the back of my throat. He didn’t understand. “You heard the Council; I’m hopeless, I—”

I paused.

I remembered peering into the Morwyns’ kitchen with Xavier at my side. Watching his mother and father touch their hands to a patient’s heart, and the room filling with golden light. An old, powerful ritual. The Morwyn family was well-known and celebrated in the magical community. For generations, they’d performed complicated magic and healed thousands of people.

“Your parents perform blessings,” I murmured.

Recognition and worry flickered in his eyes. “Yes, they do.”

“My other teachers didn’t.”

“It’s very difficult magic.”

I leaned across the table towards him, my heart beating faster as my plan made more and more sense to me. “Perhaps they could take me on! They could teach me how to cast a blessing!”

“They—they’re out of the country, Miss Lucas—”

“Then you!”

Xavier blinked rapidly. “Me?”

“They taught you about blessings, didn’t they?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Teach me,” I said, slapping my gloved hand against the table. “You aren’t like my other teachers. You know me. You aren’t afraid of my power.”

He opened and shut his mouth like a fish on land. “I have a prior engagement,” he said.

I glowered at the flimsy excuse. “A prior engagement?! My father is dying!”

His ears turned red. “I have a very important potion due to the Council on Midsummer—”

“Is it more important than my father’s life?”

In the stunned silence, my voice echoed through the kitchen like we were in a concert hall. I drew back, my arms tight around myself. The shock of my words, my anger, my magic, rang through me.

“You’re the only hope I have,” I said. “You don’t have to help me as a favor. I’ll pay you. I’ll give you anything. I’ll work for free, all day long. I’ll clean your house, darn your socks; whatever you like.” I pressed my hand to my face, blotting out the world. Xavier and I had once wished on clovers for our magic to come. And when our powers arrived, mine and then his, we ran about and whooped and hollered and declared we would work together as partners. Morwyn and Lucas. We’d had beautiful, wild dreams of using our powers to save lives.

Now my magic had nearly killed my father.

I wanted nothing more to do with it.

“I’d even give you my magic if I could,” I whispered.

“Don’t say things you don’t mean.” His voice was cold and sharp as ice. When I lifted my head, his eyes were the same.

“I mean every word,” I said. “You’ve seen my power. It’s good for nothing.” It hurt me to say it, my magic burning my throat to punish me for the insult. “I’d trade it away in a heartbeat.”

The severity had vanished from his face. When he met my eyes again, I felt like we were children again. Equal.

“If it were possible,” he murmured, “if you could give your power to another person—would you?”

A chill danced up my back. Magic was a gift that appeared to so few. To trade away such a gift was foolish, was heartbreaking. . . . But for Papa, I could bear such things. “If you taught me to bless my father, then yes, I would.”

He touched his fingertips to his mouth. His thumb, I noticed, had a black band inked around it.

“You made a vow to someone,” I noted.

It was a practice used between magicians when striking certain bargains. Some of my teachers bore black rings on their fingers; promises to coworkers, to the Council. Master and Madam Morwyn had them in place of wedding bands. When we were younger, Xavier and I used to make pretend vows. We’d clasp hands like we had seen magicians do, and promise to be friends forever, or to always share our secrets with each other. We’d mark our fingers with little bands of ink.

But we weren’t children anymore.

“What was it for?” I asked.

He hid his hands beneath the tabletop. “It was for the Council. And it’s a vow I propose to you. If you truly meant it, if you truly wanted to, you could give your power to me.”

I shivered. To make a true vow, as two grown magicians—it felt strange. Our childhood game, made more serious than I could have ever fathomed.

I didn’t understand why he would want my volatile power. But if this was the payment he’d take in exchange for his help, I would not question his reasons.

“You’ll teach me to bless Papa,” I said, “and then once he’s well, I’ll pay you—with my magic?”

“Precisely.”

I could imagine Papa pleading with me not to give up my gift, my future. But a future without my father was bleak and empty. And a future with my magic would be fraught with trouble. Besides, after what my magic had done, the Council would surely forgo offering me the “mercy” of the binding spell and take my power away from me altogether.

“I agree to it,” I said. I reached a hand towards him.

“You’ll need to take your glove off, Miss Lucas. For the vow.”

I drew my hand to my chest. My throat tightened. “When my skin touched Papa’s, it burned him. What if it does the same to you?”

He shook his head. “I’m sure you mean me no harm.”

“I didn’t mean to harm Papa, either,” I muttered.

He grimaced. “Then we will say the vow quickly.”

I squeezed the stiff gloves into fists.

“Don’t fret,” he said. “I’ve got some extra salve in my potion case, if you were to really hurt me. And if you do, I won’t blame you for it.”

Finger by finger, I pulled off my right gardening glove. I slipped my hand into his hold as gently as possible, like it would soften the blow, but the moment our skin touched, he gasped.

I leapt back. “I told you!”

He shook his hand like it’d been held over a stove. “It’s so curious,” he murmured. “Your magic doesn’t obey your own heart.”

“Curious?” I spat. “It’s maddening.”

Xavier reached for my hand again, our eyes aligning. There was the faintest stripe of pink along his palm where I’d touched him. “I’ll help you. We’ll get your magic sorted out. And after your father’s been healed, your power will burden you no longer.”

My magic curled up inside me. It hated being called a burden.

That’s what you are, I told it. Over the years, it had only become more fitful. Spells had been difficult the first few months of having my power; then they’d grown wild, unruly, and too strong. Now my magic was dangerous, pure and simple. Perhaps when wielded by someone else, it would be more manageable.

Still, jealousy and disappointment ate at me like parasites. Xavier was only a month older than I was. And though we’d gotten the same magical education, he’d graduated a whole year early. Been inducted to the Council almost instantly. Succeeded in every way I failed.

I could only hope he would succeed in helping me bless Papa.

Taking a gulp of air, I clasped Xavier’s hand, looking him in the eyes, and he didn’t flinch back this time. My heart soared into my throat as magic zipped through my veins, pooling in my palm. Light exploded all around us, golden motes floating around our hands and drifting by our cheeks like fairies.

And the light danced in his eyes. They were beautiful and warm, not flint-black but really a deep brown, and fringed with long lashes. Yet there were dark shadows beneath his eyes.

Xavier’s hand trembled, but his gaze didn’t waver as he spoke. “I vow to you, Clara Lucas, that I will teach you all I can, until the day you are able to free your father from the magic binding him.”

His words were soft, secret, but ricocheted somehow off the pale yellow kitchen walls and echoed through my mind. The pulse in his palm fluttered against my hand. The flecks of golden light thrummed in time with his heart.

Words spilled from me as if I’d practiced: “I vow to you, Xavier Morwyn, that upon the day I bless my father and free him of the magic binding him, I will give to you all of my magic. Willingly. Readily.”

He held my hand tighter. “Let neither of us speak of this vow to another soul.”

To have our hands clasped like this reminded me of our childhood. The secrets we’d kept for the other. The things we’d admitted with teary eyes beneath blanket forts. Such promises had felt so serious then.

Magic pulsed along my arms, aching like a pulled muscle. Then a bolt of electricity sang up my arm. I gasped and pulled back my hand. It stung as if I’d stuck it into a fire; and then, as quickly as they appeared, the lights and pain vanished.

My skin was not red and throbbing as I’d expected it to be—it was the same, if not for a thin black band inked around my ring finger.

Xavier flexed his hand, which now bore a matching black band. The skin of his fingers and palm were raw and pink.

“Your hand! Oh, Xavier, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s not your fault.” He turned to his potion case, which opened with a soft click. Procuring the little jar of salve from his bag, he nodded his head at it. The cork flew out on its own. After he applied the cream to his hand, he bound the wound in gauze.

“Does it hurt?” I asked. In part, I wanted to know if Papa was suffering terribly from my hand on his cheek.

“It stings,” he admitted, and left it at that. Before closing his case, he placed a golden calling card and a square bottle into my still-gloved left hand.

“This is a sedative,” he explained. “Your father will continue to be quite frail. A spoonful will put him to sleep. And he won’t feel pain.” He pointed to the card. “If something unforeseen happens, burn that and I’ll come to help.”

I looked at the card, which simply said His Greatness Xavier Morwyn, Wizard. I felt a pang of envy. I was just as smart and talented as he was. I should have been called “Madam Lucas.”

Now I would never be.

I curled my hand around the little potion. “All right.”

“I’ll call on the Council shortly. I’ll explain the situation, get them to postpone the binding spell. And they’ll be able to provide additional aid for the both of you.”

I did not relish the thought of the Council visiting me a second time—but I needed help. I’d accept it in any form.

Xavier turned back to his case, sweeping it off the table.

“How will I afford to pay a Councilmember?” I peeped. “I gave you all the money I have.”

“Not to worry. You’re my apprentice now. They will tend to your father if I ask them to.” He lighted his hand on the doorknob for one moment before looking back at me. “One last thing. I know we only live an hour apart, but perhaps it would be wise to keep your father far from your magic. Do you understand?”

I hesitated. He wanted my magic—he wanted me—away from my father.

“You want me to live with you?” I asked.

“It is customary for an apprentice to move house.”

I couldn’t help but scoff. Customary? For one’s former best friend to act in the place of an older and wiser mentor? For a witch to accidentally curse her own father? For two young people to make a bargain like this?

Xavier turned back to the door. “Will that be a problem, Miss Lucas?”

“No,” I said—though the thought of leaving my father behind in such a state made my heart sink. I squeezed the end of my braid with my ungloved fingers. “I’ll do whatever’s best for him.”

Xavier nodded. “We’ll start tomorrow morning, then.”

As he turned the doorknob, I piped up with one more question.

“Might I see him on the weekends, do you think?” I asked. “Would that be safe?”

His fingers danced against the scalloped metal of the door’s handle. “I’ll need your help on Saturdays.”

“You didn’t need an apprentice at all until five minutes ago.”

He let out a sharp, one-beat laugh—the sincerest part of himself I’d seen since our childhood. “Very well. Saturdays and Sundays, you may see him.”

Xavier inhaled deeply and pressed his forehead against the kitchen door. He whispered to it and then began to sing his song again. It was soothing, hypnotizing—my eyelids started to fall. I blinked, and the door clicked shut. When I opened it again, I found my sitting room, plain as ever.

Papa, wan and thin, sat up from his little makeshift bed. “I heard lots of ranting and then the kitchen started to glow,” he said. “What happened? What sort of magic was that?”

I thought of the black band that now marked my finger and quickly tucked my hand into my pocket. I couldn’t let him see any evidence of this bargain. That, in exchange for his life, I’d traded away the magic he called my treasure.

“Xavier asked me to be his apprentice,” I said, “and I start tomorrow.”

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