This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(46)

“Right,” I said.

“Opposite the full moon is the new moon. But the phase that occurs the night before the new moon is called the dark moon. The moon is essentially invisible in the night sky, and it’s typically when we put out offerings for Hecate. Persephone never misses the chance to offer up something to Hecate—eggs, garlic, tea cakes, black flowers.”

“Crow’s feet?” I asked. “That’s what I saw on the altar in the back room.”

Circe nodded. “Back in the day there were ritual slaughters of hundreds of black animals on the dark moon. I don’t know that Hecate required those things, but the people who followed her thought she did. We don’t do that anymore. Those crow’s feet were harvested from birds that died in the Poison Garden.”

“Persephone asked me to give her some time alone out there tonight,” I said. “You think that’s what she’s doing? Preparing some kind of offering?”

“Sounds about right,” Circe said. “She didn’t say anything to me about it. I don’t like her pushing you out of a space that seems to have given you some comfort in the past few days.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “Maybe I’ve been spending too much time out there.”

“Not possible,” Circe said. “I used to do the same thing. It really is a special place. Selene used to give me a hard time about staying out there so long and coming home all dusty and disheveled with bracelets of flowers. So you know what I started doing?”

“What?”

“I brought the outside, in.” She went to the window and opened it. A breeze wafted through the room. “Do you have a favorite flower, Briseis? Something nonlethal because we’re not tryna put Mo in the hospital.”

I smiled. “Peonies are—were my mom’s favorite.” An ache gripped my chest. I hated talking about Mom in the past tense, like we weren’t going to get her back. That possibility kept pushing its way to the front of my head, and I beat it back every time.

Circe touched my shoulder, then disappeared down the hall, returning a few seconds later with the onyx peony I’d grown for Mom. It was still supple, its vibrant red center still bright even though the water had evaporated from the glass it was in.

“You grew this for her?” Circe asked.

I nodded.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but when you grow something for someone out of love, there is a very good possibility that it will never die.” She eyed the flower. “I don’t have a solid answer for why that is. It’s some other aspect of this power that doesn’t have any kind of rational explanation. I just know that when you put your whole heart into growing something for someone you care for, it changes the nature of the plant itself.” She smiled. “I grew a dozen Middlemist camellia from a petrified seed for Dr. Grant twenty years ago. She still has them and they look like they were collected yesterday.”

“Middlemist red?” I asked, stunned.

“The very same,” Circe said.

“That’s the rarest flower on the planet. There’s only, like, two actually still alive.”

“And a dozen more in Khadijah’s living room, but, hey, who’s counting?” She gently plucked a petal from the peony and held it in her hand. She took a few deep breaths and as she concentrated, little arms of ivy stretched through the open window. Two onyx peonies sprouted from the petal in her palm, and as she gently set their exposed roots onto a tendril of the ivy, a half-dozen black blooms with red centers sprouted along its length. “You can create a hybrid of almost any kind. I liked combining roses with ivy so that they could snake into the house and I wouldn’t have to keep them in pots or planters.”

The newly hybridized ivy climbed the wall and wound itself around the curtain rods and attached itself to the crown molding. It made the room feel more alive, but the rare peonies reminded me of Mom, and the pain of her absence made my chest hurt.



Nyx and Marie brought Mo back, and I helped them put away groceries and make dinner. Marie, Mo, and I ate at the small table in the kitchen while Nyx, Persephone, and Circe returned to the front room.

Mo went upstairs early. It worried me that sleep seemed to be her only refuge. She slept more than she did anything else, and I was pretty sure her clothes were fitting her a little looser than they had before.

After Marie and Nyx left for the night, I joined Mo in my room, where she was already knocked out. I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, threw my hair in a bonnet, and changed into a pair of leggings and an oversized T-shirt. I cut out the lights and got ready to curl up next to Mo when something, a tug in the pit of my stomach, drew me to the window. The sun had long since set and the sky was a blanket of ebony dotted with twinkling stars. The moon was invisible, making the stars so much brighter. It made sense that offerings to Hecate were traditionally put out on a night like this. She was born from the night itself in a time when maybe all that existed were stars and sky. I pushed my glasses up and let my gaze wander to the tree line.

Mo had begun to snore as I tiptoed out of the room and stood in the hallway. I heard some rustling from the extra bedroom directly across from mine. The door was shut, but a faint light danced out from under it. I made my way downstairs and again, stood quietly, listening. Circe had gone up around the same time as me and Mo, but Persephone had disappeared.