A Ruin of Roses (Deliciously Dark Fairytales 1)

Surprisingly, he smiled. “We aren’t going to get along, Finley.”

My name in his voice flowed over my body. I shivered, now incredibly annoyed again.

“I think that was a given as soon as you took me prisoner,” I replied.

“It was a given long before that.” He worked his way back toward me. “You say you need to harvest at night?”

“Yes. Midnight seems to work best.”

“Have you tried three o’clock? That’s when the demons are strongest. If you say the elixir works better when harvested at night because of their magic, then three o’clock would be the optimal time.”

I pulled my lips down in thought. “Good tip. I don’t really know much about demons.”

“Then you didn’t…tangle with them in your village?” he growled, as though the very thought of me intimately touching a demon enraged him.

I frowned, no clue why he’d care. Maybe just an all-around hatred of them, which I completely understood.

“No,” I said, wandering the field and looking at the various plants. I wanted to choose the ones I’d harvest from. “Speaking of, does this place have an herb garden? I want to make the draught that nulls the incubi’s magic.”

“What did you say?” That got his attention.

I huffed out a laugh. “Hadriel was excited to hear that as well. That and the coffee replacement. All this time on your hands, and none of you thought to experiment? I developed that demon draught almost immediately after turning sixteen. Those bastards came on strong. I didn’t want to accidentally get caught out too late and run into one. What a thing to lose your virginity to.”

I made a sound like yuck.

“Not all of us have the gift of healing.”

His tone was somber with traces of sorrow and a hint of pride. I glanced up to gauge his expression, but he had turned away, wandering the field.

“Right, well, if you have an herb garden, I can make enough of that for everyone, if you want. Whoever wants it. If there’s enough supplies, obviously.”

“You are very giving in your antidotes.” Again that somberness. That sorrow.

“Maybe I’m just trying to poison everyone.” After a few moments of quiet, I let curiosity get the better of me. “Do you tend this field on your own? And the one in the Forbidden Wood?”

“Mostly. There is one gardener left on the grounds. He helps where he can.”

“Who taught you to work the plants? Not books, I imagine.”

“My mother,” he said softly.

He’d done a nearly perfect job with these plants. They were all happy and healthy. They’d make a very strong nulling elixir, except that we didn’t have any rainwater collected. I’d have to figure out a different way.

First things first—harvesting.

“I haven’t noticed any correlation between the demons’ strength and the various moon cycles, have you?” I asked as I stopped near a struggling plant. I crouched down, studying it, resting my forearms on my knees.

“No. The moon doesn’t affect them.”

I pulled my lips to the side, thinking, before looking up at the sun and then all around, marking this spot in my mind so I could avoid it.

“It affects shifters, though.” He stepped down in my line of sight, having clearly followed me through the field.

“I know that.”

“Does it affect you?”

“How could it? My animal is—or was, I guess—suppressed like everyone else’s. It’s only now, since you, that I can feel it. Her, I think. It feels like a female presence.”

“You didn’t feel your animal at all before me? Not even a whisper?”

“No.”

“And yet you can resist my commands.”

I didn’t mention that it was not a fun time resisting him.

“No one could ever resist me,” he said.

I pushed up to standing. “Maybe you’re not as strong as you once were. Maybe that’s why you can’t break the curse, whatever it is.”

“It isn’t up to me to break the curse. I am powerless within it.”

“We’re never powerless,” I muttered, a sentiment I’d always repeated to myself when I did, indeed, feel utterly powerless. Usually hopeless, too. I pointed downward. “This plant is being crowded. I assume you know what that means?”

His eyebrows stitched together. It took him a moment to look where I was pointing. He didn’t comment, and judging from our previous interactions, I took that to mean he didn’t know what to say.

I really wanted to punch him, just in general, but instead I took a deep breath and readied the lecture. This was something he needed to know if he was going to work the everlass. Something his mother should have told him. The plant’s location suggested it had been planted this way on purpose.

“This plant is basically getting bullied, to put it simply. That creates a sort of…acidic quality that’s bad for healing. It can be poisonous, actually. Someone in my village used leaves from a crowded plant for the elixir we spoke of, and it killed her husband within a few hours. She claimed to have chosen the leaves—multiple—by accident, which means it was definitely on purpose. Given she refused to marry again and spent a lot of time after that with demons in the pub…well. She’s suspect.