I took slow steps across the floor and fiddled with the side of my skirt.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
“A bit.”
He placed the basket on the table, returned to me, and squeezed my hand. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
He dropped a kiss on my lips. Our kisses weren’t frequent, but when they happened, they were no longer tentative. They were as familiar and sweet as sunshine that sneaks through the cracks in shuttered windows. They weren’t supposed to be there, and yet they couldn’t help but be bright anyway.
While he arranged things on the table, I sat on the bed, hands tucked under my skirt. He placed the vials in a row and put the candles behind them. They were made from some substance I didn’t recognize. Not tallow. Not beeswax. More items came out.
Ronan pulled a dagger from the basket. I leaned forward on the bed. “What’s that for?”
“You said you trusted me.”
“I do,” I said less certainly. I didn’t think he would purposely hurt me. Never that. I just worried because the spell was untried. “What if something goes wrong? I won’t find myself turned into a rabbit or something, will I?”
“Of course not. A rabbit hopping around the shack would be too distracting.”
I bit my lip and didn’t ask more questions. He mixed vials, carefully measuring their ingredients. My gaze kept drifting to the open door and the sunlight outside. The sky was a cloudless blue. Gulls occasionally flew by, calling to one another. I couldn’t see the ocean but I heard the rhythm of the waves breaking against the shore, a roar as relentless as fate itself.
He took the dagger, pricked his finger, and squeezed three drops of blood into one of the vials. “I need your blood as well.”
I held out my hand. “You needn’t have brought such a large dagger for such a little amount of blood.”
He paused and his eyes tentatively went to mine.
I gulped. “That is all the dagger is for, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I would trust you more if you didn’t have to keep repeating that question.” The prick stung and the pain didn’t stop, even after Ronan had gone back to the table. My finger burned where the blade touched it.
He set the vial with our blood aside, picked up another, and swept back over to me. “You’ll need to drink this.”
I swallowed, hoping it would blot out the pain in my finger. The potion tasted the way a rock might. I handed the empty vial back to him. “What was that?”
“Something to keep you alive.”
I cocked my head. “Is it too late to revise my answer about whether I trust you?”
He smiled. He knew I wasn’t serious. I trusted him in a way I hadn’t trusted anyone since my parents died. I trusted him to love me. I’d even started to believe he would find a way to take me with him when he left Docendum.
He began to speak an incantation, his words lulling and low. The waves hitting the rocks sounded far away now. A chill crept through me. The pain in my finger bloomed across my hand, spread up my arm, and worked its way toward my heart. I tried to shake my arm but a stiffness traveled with the pain, making it hard to move.
“Ronan,” I started, but didn’t finish. The fingers of my injured hand were growing long and spindly. The skin on my arm cracked and darkened, becoming bark. I gasped at the horror of it. “You’ve turned me into a tree!”
Instead of joining in my panic and more importantly, doing something to fix this mistake, he nodded. “I said I wouldn’t turn you into a rabbit. I never said anything about trees.”
This wasn’t a mistake. He’d done this on purpose without any warning.
My gaze flew to his face. He was intent on his vials, unconcerned with my state. I wanted to protest, to tell him to stop, but I could no longer form words. My eyes alone still worked. He stepped out of my sight of vision. All I could see was the door. Outside, the sunlight dimmed and seemed to drain away. Then I saw nothing.
When I became sensible of my surroundings once more, I was lying on the bed, human again. The shack was lit only by the candles. The outside was completely black.
I sat up, immediately feeling dizzy. “That didn’t go well. You drained the sun.”