The Potion Diaries (35 page)

She takes a deep breath. ‘Okay, I’m ready.’

‘Okay.’ I take the tweezers from her hand. I don’t give her a count, or build up the anticipation any more than I have to. I dive in, trying to cause as little pain as possible, but I can’t see any horn near the surface.

‘Are you sure . . . ?’

‘It’ll be there. Keep looking. Unicorns can’t gore things without losing part of their horn. Though normally Finders try to goad them into goring tree trunks – not themselves.’

‘That would probably make sense.’

Finally, after some nasty digging, I see it – a sliver of silver. I catch the end of it with the tweezers and pull. I drop it into the coin purse of my wallet, which Kirsty is holding open. Then I remove a second one, which I spot glinting in the wound.

‘Don’t let anyone find them,’ she says.

Kirsty’s wound looks terrible. I bunch up a wad of tissue and press it hard onto her shoulder. ‘Can I please get you to a doctor now?’

She nods, weakly. ‘Yes. And then you have to go. Go back and make that love potion, Sam. I’ll tell Dan about Emilia’s plan. He’ll be able to get the word out. But she’s going to be moving fast. You have to hurry.’

‘Just as soon as you’re in safe hands,’ I say. I hold her hand until the medics take over. Before they wheel Arjun away too – he’s in a chair now – I give him a hug.

‘I’m sorry about the unicorn tail,’ he says.

‘Don’t be,’ I say. ‘Kirsty found another way.’ I feel like the slivers of horn are burning a hole in my wallet.

His eyes widen. ‘No wonder she didn’t want anyone to look at that wound. Go on, go,’ he says. ‘Kick some potions butt.’

I kiss him on the cheek, then Molly and I head through security and over to the transport bays. ‘You first,’ I say to her. She nods, and steps up to the screen. She pushes her arms through, and because she is Talented – and because she is going back home, a place she knows well, where she has a strong footprint – she doesn’t have to have someone pull her through on the other side. It will be a quick, easy journey for her. For that, I’m glad.

Once we’re home, I’m quiet. Molly tells Mum and Dad what happened, but when it comes to the part about what she did – the magic she performed – she skips over it. She says she passed out, only to wake up to me rescuing her. She looks over at me, her eyes shining brightly. She thinks I did it. She doesn’t realise that it was her all along. I correct her, and she smiles shyly like she doesn’t believe it.

‘But we got the unicorn tail, didn’t we, Sam?’ she says, her eyes shining.

‘Not exactly.’ I hesitate to tell them about Emilia, but I don’t know why I’m holding back, especially as they’ve seen it all on the news. It comes out in a flood, and my parents’ expressions flicker from horror to anger to relief that we came out of it alive.

Then I get to the part where I performed some minor surgery on Kirsty, and Dad looks like he’s about to be sick. I take out my purse and empty the two slivers of horn on the table.

As I’m staring at it, I can sense how it will work with the other ingredients, the process of it swimming before my eyes. Suddenly my hands itch to mix, to crush the fibres up into powder and begin the process of putting the potion together. Still something is missing. ‘I have to speak to the Royals.’

I head over to the Summons as my family huddle together to watch. I place my hand on the screen. It takes a few moments, but soon Renel’s unwelcoming face appears and my throat closes up. ‘I had another run-in with Emilia Thoth,’ I manage to say.

He stops me before I can continue. ‘It doesn’t matter, the Princess will be saved. Emilia is no longer a problem.’

‘What?’ My jaw drops.

‘ZA have produced the cure.’

I’m too stunned to speak. My dad takes over. ‘They found the recipe for the love potion, and all the ingredients?’

Renel stares down his nose, as if he can barely deign to answer the question. ‘Zol has had a team of scientists and advanced mixers developing a synth version of the cure at the ZA headquarters since the Hunt began. The Royal family have agreed that a solution from this very
Talented
family is the best option for the Princess, and that synthetic ingredients have proven to be just as powerful as natural.’

‘But what about the mirror cure? Won’t the Horn only accept a natural potion?’

‘The Horn will be satisfied once the Princess is out of mortal danger. Of course, ZA won’t
win
the Hunt exactly, but the Princess will be cured – what is the difference? The Wilds passes provided for the Hunt will now be rescinded and the Royal family requests that all further Hunt-related activities cease immediately.’

‘No!’ I cry out. It can’t be over, not when we’re so close. Not after all we’ve gone through.

‘The Royal family asks that you destroy any remnants of a love potion in the making, as it is still an illegal mix. They thank the Kemi family for their participation in the Hunt. Good night.’

The Summons cuts out. I press on the glass again, and again, but he doesn’t return.

My mum puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘We’re sorry, Sam.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Samantha

I
LIE BACK ON MY BED, CURLED UP UNDER the duvet. The Hunt had been my distraction, but now I’m out, I can’t shut my eyes. Because whenever I shut my eyes, all I can see is Zain Aster and Princess Evelyn. The dark Prince, the beautiful Princess.

Then there’s me. The nerdy, ordinary girl – meant to hide away in the lab with vials of wizard’s beard and weird plants for company, not meant for the grand love story. There’s no place for me in this formula. I’m a spare ingredient, not meant for the final brew.

My heart aches.

My mind searches for a mix, but there isn’t one. There’s no potion to cure the way I feel – unless it’s the deepest sleep draught I can imagine, one that will whisk me away until my memories of Zain are distant and faded, like photographs left in the sun. But such a potion doesn’t exist.

I feel a sudden rush of lunacy, and I want to laugh and laugh and laugh. Instead, I focus on my breathing. I swallow, but my throat feels tight.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want a love potion. Why would anyone want to go through this pain? Why would they suffer this voluntarily? Because if there’s one thing history has ever taught us about love potions, it’s that they always, always end in tragedy and disaster.

The Princess will be the exception. She didn’t realise that the boy she tried to potion was in love with her all along. She will wake up from her madness – woken by him, if this story is to be written perfectly – and they will realise how lucky they are to have each other. She will realise the error of her ways; she will apologise for being so silly; he will forgive her.

And my moment on the mountain with Zain? A glitch.

She will never know.

I won’t tell.

I know where I’ll be.

My life won’t be like this ever again, out in the Wilds, Finding alongside Kirsty. I’ve had enough adventure to last a lifetime. Maybe I’ll take a night class in business studies, learn how to turn a decent profit – enough to get by – while watching my amazing sister grow into her power. She will go off and do wondrous things, and she’ll always know where to find me.

Maybe in time, I’ll see Zain and Princess Evelyn again, as I join the throngs crowded against metal railings to witness their big events – their engagement, their wedding, their first baby. I’ll be just another face in the crowd. Maybe I’ll wear something with a white fur trim, just to see if I can remind him of the abominable, of the mountain – but his eyes will pass me by, glossing over me to whoever is next. He won’t want to look at me closely. Because I’ll be the only one who knows.

I’ll be the one who knows that to be with the person he loves, he trampled over all the ordinary people he saw beneath him. Including me.

My phone buzzes on my bedside table. It’s Anita, texting me.
Have you seen the casts?

I turn on the television, but mute the sound. I can read the running news ticker at the bottom:
ZA SAVES THE PRINCESS
. I groan. This is really what Anita wants to show me? But then there’s a second headline:
EMILIA THOTH HELD BY POLICE IN ZAMBI.
There’s an image of Emilia in the type of glamoured handcuffs that can hold a Talented, her face and hands covered in dirt, her hair wild around her face. I feel a jolt of happiness reach through my dark mood. At least something good came from our trip down there. Dan’s footage is shown, but we barely get a mention. Our plight is old news already, in light of the ZA cure.

A picture flashes up from an official ZA press release. It’s a glass vial imprinted with the ZA logo. The vial is filled with a dark crimson liquid, thick like blood.

Exactly how you would expect a love potion to look.

I text back to Anita.
At least Emilia was wrong. The Princess is safe. Good luck to them.

Anita replies almost immediately.
You don’t need to be brave, lovely. I’ll come over as soon as I can.

Her words bring the first hint of tears to my eyes, as I feel grateful to have people who love me. But I’m not being brave. I
am
glad the Princess is safe, even though it means Grandad was right: in the end, the Royals did bend the rules to suit themselves. And Zain broke my heart to save her.

The Princess. It’s funny that I haven’t thought about her all that much through this whole process, even though it’s really all about her.

Sitting alone in my room now, I think about what it would be like to be driven to the most desperate of measures. To be so terrified of rejection that you try to prevent it at any cost. I wonder if Princess Evelyn has ever been rejected in her entire life.

It’s not rejection that I’m scared of. Lord knows, I’ve seen enough of it in my time: from school, from the Talenteds. At least, if they’re rejecting you, they’re paying
some
sort of attention to you.

No, my biggest fear is anonymity. Oblivion. Obscurity. The fear that I will do nothing more with my life than rot away in my family store. The fear I will live my whole life and not do anything to make an impact. The fear that I will find the guy who I want to give my heart to, only for him to ignore me. Forget me.

Zain.

I’m disgusting myself, wallowing here, but I can’t help that the image of his face is seared behind my eyelids. I don’t need a love potion; I need an anti-love cure to ease this pain.

It’s as if I’ve taken one of the dark potions. One that causes pain – another highly illegal mix. Pain potions are idiosyncratic. Personal to the mixer. It requires that the mixer be causing someone immense physical pain during the final moments of creation. The more agonising the pain, the stronger the potion. With no pain at all, it won’t work – except maybe to give the recipient a mild stomach ache. Too much pain – if you kill while mixing, for example – then it doesn’t work either. The potion will burn itself out and be dead in the pan.

The mixer would have to be a pretty awful person to agree to make one of these potions, and who would want to buy from that person, in case you become the next victim?

And love potions aren’t even about love, are they? They’re about the illusion of it: the fantasy. They’re about the lust, the passion. I’ve seen real love. My parents have it, for one. There’s nothing one-sided about it. It’s about two people agreeing to face the world together, no matter the challenges. It’s about respect.

It’s personal.

Suddenly, like a fissure caused by an earthquake, a chasm opens deep in my mind.
No brain, please not now.
But it’s not a voice that can be turned off.

A hunch screams that something is wrong.

My mind jumps right back to that moment in the library. The words that stood out to me, in that ancient language. Eluvium was the ivy.
Indicum.
Indigo. That’s the colour I would have looked for. Not crimson. It was too obvious.

I shake it out of my head. They won’t let the Princess drink a faulty love potion. If they can’t use the Horn to verify the potion’s authenticity, they’ll rigorously test it. There is no way that ZA will make a mistake. There’s too much riding on this. Their reputation. Their business. Not to mention the Princess’s life.