The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(71)
As they turned up the street that led to the shop, Dinah said quietly, “I’ll return to the house in a bit and get a strand of hair from each of them.”
When it became obvious that she would say no more, Blue sighed. Dismounting from the carriage, she unlocked the shop, flipped the sign from Closed to Open, and hurried back to her storeroom, leaving Dinah out front.
She wasn’t just going to make charms for Halette and Jacinthe. She was going to make them for every girl vying for the betrothal. And, she decided in a sudden burst of inspiration, she would make one each for Nessa and Kellan. That would take some of the weight off his shoulders and some of the worry out of Blue’s heart.
First, she’d need a sample of hair from each of them. Quickly, she jotted a note to Kellan, explaining what she was doing and asking him to help collect the strands and send them to her at the shop. Then she went into the alley and found Lucian waiting outside.
With Lucian running to the castle with the note for Kellan, a copper coin in his pocket for his troubles, Blue turned her attention to the basic ingredients she’d need for the charms. She pulled herbs from one shelf, dried leaves from another, and several strands of pure rose lead wire from the coil she kept by Mama’s old cauldron. Then she took the largest of the pink sapphires Maurice had brought her, fitted it into her rock splitter, applied pressure, and broke it into small shards.
“I’m leaving to get what you need from the farmhouse,” Dinah said from the doorway. Blue nodded, her attention on the potion she was devising.
Feeling sentimental, she pulled down Mama’s old cauldron. Setting aside her own copper pots, she lit the burner and placed the cauldron on top.
Yaeringlei oil went in first, then thresh moss, carpa leaf, yew, bolla root, and a dash of myrrh. Bringing the mixture to a boil, she added silver flakes to bond the ingredients, and then let it simmer.
While it cooked, Blue sat at the worktable, pulled the old pieces of parchment from her pocket, and grabbed a quill. She needed a potion that could look like something Mama would have used. Something with at least one rare ingredient.
Quickly she dashed off a recipe that was close to the one she’d just used, though she added more myrrh, required both gold and silver, and took out the carpa leaf. It would make for a decent protection potion, though without the pink sapphire to concentrate it, it wouldn’t last very long.
Now she needed a rare ingredient. Something hard to find. Something that would interest Dinah enough to hopefully convince her she had what she wanted and could leave Blue alone.
Should she use a stone? A rare mineral? Or something even more exotic?
A hazy memory surfaced. She was with Mama in the castle garden while Papa and the king played thistles and thieves at a table set up on the lawn, and Kellan tried to catch snakes on the creek bed that wound along the edge of the grounds. The queen was resting in the shade with baby Nessa in her arms, and the royal guards were posted nearby.
Mama had lowered her voice, as if telling Blue a secret, and had asked if she wanted to see the most special plant in the entire garden. Of course Blue had said yes, and the two of them wandered deep into the heart of the castle’s garden, where flowering bushes and budding trees lined paths of crushed seashells. When they came to a single rynoir tree, its flowing branches resembling a long, wispy gown dressed in extravagant pink blooms, Mama ducked under the branches, and Blue followed.
Beneath the skirt of branches, close to the trunk, a small, thorny bush with heart-shaped blue leaves and dark red berries grew. Mama explained that it was a volshkyn bush from the far north, gifted to the previous queen from the then-queen of Morcant. It was said to be good for healing ointments, protection potions, and potions to help the lost find their way home, but was only used in rare instances because the plant took years to replace the leaves that were harvested from it.
Blue added it to the ingredient list, and then jumped as she heard the shop bells chime. Quickly putting the quill away, she left the recipe out to dry and hurried into the front of the shop. Dinah shut the door behind her and turned to Blue.
“I have it.” She held out two small squares of muslin, one with a strand of hair from Halette and one with a strand from Jacinthe.
“And I have something for you,” Blue said, her heart hammering as she led Dinah back into the storeroom.
This had to work. Blue needed her life back. Needed time to herself to grieve, to heal, and to figure out how to move forward.
“What is this?” Dinah’s eyes focused immediately on the sheet of old parchment sitting on the worktable, creased and yellowed. The ink had dried, Blue noted with relief.
“It’s a potion recipe.”
Dinah shoved the muslin squares into Blue’s hands and hurried to the table. Picking up the spell, she examined it for a long moment, and a smile sharp enough to cut glass spread across her face.
“Where did you find this?” she asked, raising her eyes to pin Blue where she stood.
Quickly Blue cast around for inspiration and then turned to stir the potion that was brewing on the stove. “I pulled Mama’s old cauldron down to use for the protection charms. Nostalgia, I guess.”
“And it was inside,” Dinah breathed. “I didn’t think of looking there.”
“Are vintage alchemy potions really worth enough money to help you?” Blue asked carefully, afraid to hope that she’d finally found the key to getting the Chauveaus out of her life.