The wolfkin was rather excitable. She also possessed a healthy dose of Nasha’s manic energy. The deluge of information she was giving me about the flowers she’d brought was so overwhelming, it took me until flower number three to gather my thoughts and interrupt.

  “That is a lovely flower.” I beamed, hoping she wouldn’t notice the expression was strained. “However, I was hoping to ask for your name before we continue?”

  “OOH!” She flushed scarlet, fixing her eyes on the rose in her hands. “L-Lucinda. I know! It’s a ridiculous name. My parents —”

  “Gave you a lovely name,” I cut in once more. I was mirroring my comment on the flower, but I couldn’t help it. My brain felt a little fuzzy after The Deluge. “I truly must thank you for reaching out, Lucinda. This will be immensely helpful when I start working on perfume.”

  Which I’m apparently going to have to do soon, considering how much interest there is in it.

  Even as I grumbled within the safe confines of my mind, I also carefully gauged the wolfkin’s reaction. I had spoken her name on purpose rather than using any other appellation, and the moment I did, her flush intensified.

  I had to fight the urge to groan in confusion. The wolfkin definitely had a crush on me, which… how? And why?

  I should have probably acted to discourage that immediately. Perhaps by being particularly rude? Not so long ago, I might have done that without any hesitation. However, I knew how I felt about Alys. Even before we started a relationship, coldness from her would have been painful.

  I didn’t want to hurt this wolfkin that way.

  I felt a bit of amusement stir within me at the realization. Alys had definitely shifted the way I looked at the world.

  Thankfully, I didn’t think I’d need to do anything at all about Lucinda’s little crush. While she’d seemed disappointed at the news of my marriage, there was no hostility in her manner. If anything, she might have been preparing to congratulate us before I changed the subject.

  Summoning another smile, I said, “Please, thank Nasha on my behalf. I’m going to have to find a way to thank her myself for this.” And for inadvertently bringing to my attention all sorts of things, not least among them the reason no else has visited yet. “I assume I can keep the flowers in this basket?”

  “Yes!” she squeaked, then coughed and tried again. “I mean, yes. Of course.”

  “Excellent! In that case…” I grinned, actually feeling excited about this part. “All that’s left is for us to find something you’d like in trade.”

  “Trade?” she echoed, like I hadn’t already explained to her that coin wasn’t necessary in my shop.

  “Of course! Look at all the flowers you’ve brought me. Naturally, if you like, I’ll set aside some samples of the first perfumes I make from them. However, that hardly covers the value of having useful ingredients delivered to me like this.”

  I was exaggerating a little, but that was all right. I planned to give her more of my products than the flowers were technically worth, even with the already generous bartering system I had decided to put in place. She was my very first customer, after all. Using her to promote my new shop was only smart.

  Hopefully, her report would get other people to visit me, and those people would offer more valuable items. I didn’t have time to scour the woods for everything and anything. Future customers might even bring me plants and herbs I’d missed.

  Lucinda became even more flustered at my reply and tried to decline a few times, but I was adamant, and she did eventually give in. Crush or not, no one living on the frontier would be foolish enough to decline potentially life-saving alchemical products.

  I gave her a brief tour of my shop and went over everything on offer. The wolfkin ended up walking away with four jars of honey ginger candies and a couple poultices, intending to share them all with her family. Her tail was rustling up a storm when she left, so I could only conclude she was happy with how the day had gone. She’d also promised multiple times to spread the word and let Nasha know I wanted to see her.

  I still needed to have a chat with the elders, for multiple reasons, but that was for another day. Right that second, I wanted nothing more than to rush down to my lab and get to work. Maybe I could even come up with a perfume sample for Alys before the day ended?

  I paused for a moment, realizing there was one thing I’d forgotten to ask Lucinda. Apparently, there were already rumors about Alys and me being married, rather than just in a relationship. Had those rumors begun simply because we were living together, or was there more to it?

  I shrugged. That was something else I could take care of later.

  —

  I glowered at the lone drop of blood in the delicate glass bottle like it had just insulted Alys. Which, in a way, it had.

  While considering perfume development, I’d also set the blood sample to finish cooking in the beetle’s flames. It had been rendered down to a single drop of blood that practically shone due to its potency. But there had also been some kind of shift.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Until that final moment, the drop of blood had still felt like Alys to my senses. It was undoubtedly her blood, and her mana. Now, it was… different. Altered in some way I couldn’t understand.

  And that made me more upset than I cared to admit.

  If I couldn’t understand the difference and what had happened to the blood, then I obviously could not use it! I wasn’t about to risk Alys’ health and well-being like that. This also meant my tentative ideas about using the beetle’s flames directly on Alys in some kind of ritual setup were scrapped for now.

  Setting the sealed bottle to the side, I turned my attention from the frustrating experiment to a much more successful one.

  Making perfume, as it turned out, wasn’t a skill that was too difficult to pick up. Not after my experience with my father all those years ago.

  I was a bit loath to admit it, but those memories had been extremely helpful. They had drifted back to me with increasing strength as I worked, letting me skip a lot of experimentation and steps that might have delayed me for a day or two. In fact, the presence of those memories was the only reason for my success.

  Moderate success, I should say. I was hardly thrilled with what I’d made so far. I had encountered perfumes at Court which could enchant even fae, scents so subtle and heady that they could ensnare the mind and rouse all sorts of emotions. The perfumes I had in front of me were a long way from that. Even the plain perfumes sold in regular city shops were better than my current stock.

  Having said that, it was still progress. I wouldn’t be ashamed to use what I’d created.

  Of course, if people knew what some of my current perfumes were made out of, they’d likely refuse to go near them. Lily of the valley and oleander were safe enough, but the word ‘manchineel’ might be a deterrent. Ironically enough, the poisonous tree’s flowers had a wonderful smell that brought to mind apples and plums.

  And, finally, belladonna.

  The plant so tied to my family had flowers that boasted a rather pleasant scent. It was floral and vaguely sweet, with a slight tinge of something medicinal. That last note came from the leaves, which smelled too sharp and bitter to be directly incorporated into a perfume in the same quantities as the flowers.

  Extracting the poison from the plants had been a longer process than I liked, but having access to pleasantly smelling flowers I could grow on a whim was convenient, as proven by the amount of them I’d gone through to make even these low-quality perfumes.

  That was why I’d refused to start with the ‘safe’ flowers Lucinda had brought me. I would tackle those when I was sure I wouldn’t waste them.

  I took another moment to go over all the perfumes, then picked out the best results to bring to Alys. Lily of the Valley and belladonna made the cut. The former because I’d gotten lucky with the final aroma, and the latter because I’d spent most of my day tinkering with it. Perhaps it was vain of me, but I wanted Alys to have a perfume that shared my name, and I wanted her to like it.

  The issue was in the weakness of the belladonna scent. Some of the perfumes had challenged me because the scent was so intense, it nearly made me dizzy. With belladonna, I had the opposite problem. It took genuine effort and some application of the beetle’s flames to get the scent up to a level that I would describe as sufficiently strong, but light enough to be pleasant rather than overpowering.

  I had done it, though. Now I just needed to take a quick shower to get rid of the aromas coating my skin. After my lab cleanup spells, of course. My initial attempt at the oleander perfume had been so painfully strong that the smell was somehow still lingering in my nostrils.

  The spell that collected contaminants from the air in my lab was truly a life-saver. Or, rather, a nose-saver.

  Once the lab was clean, I rushed through my shower, eager to get upstairs and see how Alys liked the perfumes. Frankly, I couldn’t wait to show off a little.

  I was also quite ready to get away from those memories. They had been unavoidable while I was working on the perfumes, and their presence had left a pile of conflicted emotions jumbled up in my chest.

  This just made me doubly glad that I would be seeing Alys soon. Squeezing her against me in a hug always managed to chase away the stubbornly clinging phantoms of my family.

  —

  “Alright, alright!” Alys laughed, shaking her head as I cleared all but one plate from our dining table. “You’ve been fidgeting the entire time we were eating. And while we were cooking before that. I can tell you have something you want to say, so out with it.”

  I froze for but a moment. “Was I that obvious?”

  “Only a little,” she teased, picking a few last bits of food off the single remaining plate.

  I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t hold back a smile. With a flourish, two bottles of perfume appeared on the mostly empty table.

  “Wait, are these…?” Alys trailed off, staring at the two bottles with wide eyes.

  “Perfumes?” My voice definitely had a tiny bit of smugness in it. Just a tad! There was no reason for her to look at me so admonishingly. “Yes. Yes, they are.”

  “That’s amazing!” She picked up the lily of the valley bottle before I could nudge her in the direction of the belladonna. This made me pout a little, but I brightened up when she unplugged the bottle, sniffed, and immediately produced rumbles of happiness. “That’s very pleasant. And you made these in a single day?”

  “What can I say? Your kobold is a talented one, mistress,” I purred, drawing a look from her that she typically reserved for when we were upstairs. “Try the other one. I spent a lot of time getting it just right.”

  Setting lily of the valley aside, she picked up the right perfume this time, humming while she unplugged it. She leaned in, and…

  I blinked in shock as my dragoness reeled back, sneezed, and clamped a hand down on her snout for good measure.

  “Alys?”

  “What did you do with this thing?” she demanded, more than a little unamused.

  “What? What do you mean?” I caught the bottle, which she was holding as far away from herself as she could, and sniffed. “It smells just fine to me. Maybe a little faint?”

  “Faint? Faint?! Why does it smell like you bottled up your scent and then intensified it a few hundred times?!”

  “My scent? What do you…” I trailed off as the full implications of my family’s connection to this plant hit me.

  Of course, I thought, my mind reeling slightly. I must actually smell like a belladonna.

  That’s why the scent seemed faint to me. I was so immersed in the plant’s aroma that I’d stopped noticing it.

  “Ahhhh… I am sorry. I wasn’t even aware of… All right, I get it, you are mad.” I stopped apologizing due to the look she was sending my way. “I’ll make it up to you?”

  “Yes, you will,” she growled. “Don’t misunderstand: I like your scent. But if you try to knock me out like this again, I won’t be as merciful as I’m about to be.”

  I swallowed hard as she removed her hand from her snout to grip the front of my shirt. Tightly.

  The smirk she graced me with sent a shudder down my spine.