The Potion Diaries Page 19

  Another modern element helps me to figure out exactly where we are. It’s a billboard. The words on it are in a language I recognise, even if I can’t translate it. Gergonian. ‘Are we in your capital city?’ I ask, as it dawns on me.

  ‘The main castle,’ he confirms, without turning around.

  Alarm bells sound in my head. We’re deep in the heart of Gergon. No Novaen citizen has been here in years, even though I know of a few brave adventurers who wanted to try. There had been maybe one public visit that I’d heard about, but it had been conducted under the strictest regulations, with the visitors being accompanied by government officials and only shown the very best parts of the city.

  ‘You know the virus has affected all the Talented in Gergon,’ Stefan says, as we continue to walk down labyrinthine hallways.

  ‘The drain, you mean.’

  He visibly flinches as if I’ve slapped him. ‘When I heard what you said through the Queen Mother . . . it’s obvious to me now.’

  I nod but clench my fingers into a fist, my anger spiking at the mention of Queen Tabitha.

  ‘She . . . she’s going to be okay,’ continues Stefan. ‘The spells were meant to paralyse temporarily, but her magic and her body were too weakened by the drain. I don’t want anyone to be hurt. You have to believe me on that.’

  No, Sam, I tell myself firmly, as I feel my heart begin to soften by his honeyed tongue. He has to do more than just say the right things to make me believe he’s different. I need to change the subject.

  ‘Where are the ordinary people in Gergon?’

  ‘They are sleeping too. It was my final act before I married the Princess.’

  We come to a stop outside a pair of heavy-set iron doors. We’ve passed a series of rooms and doors on the way here, but my first thought is that these doors look modern. Reinforced steel. Big stainless-steel bolts. A fancy modern keypad on the front. I can even feel the hum of magical security. There’s something dangerous hiding behind that door, that’s for sure.

  Stefan places his palm on the high-tech-looking security pad, and it flashes blue before flashing twice in green. Then a light comes out and scans us both from head to toe. It seems to find whatever it was looking for acceptable, as the bolts begin to clink and turn.

  The doors open.

  And what’s on the other side is not what I would expect. It’s a child’s playroom, dominated by an elaborate doll’s house along one wall, almost as tall as me; its chateau-style frontage wouldn’t have looked out of place in Pays. The walls are covered in heavy, velvet damask wallpaper and everything is draped in layers of white lace and chiffon. There’s even a rocking horse in the corner – or actually, on close inspection, it’s a rocking kelpie, the rocker itself a wave from which the kelpie is emerging. It’s stunning.

  In one corner, there’s sign of a struggle – or some kind of disturbance that hasn’t been tidied away yet. There’s a broken doll in a frilly nightie, her face marred by a huge crack, one glass eye rolled back in her head. Books are open on the floor, their pages ripped. And on the wallpaper there are scratches like fingernail marks – and burns, as if it’s been scorched by something fiery. I frown, wondering why no one has cleared up the mess.

  It’s a time warp. A child’s room from centuries ago.

  Stefan’s face looks drawn and pale as he stares around the room. ‘No one knows about this room except the Royal family and a few servants. Mute servants, I might add.’

  ‘Who . . . whose is it?’

  ‘This is my sister’s.’ He waves his hand, and using a burst of magic, shuts the door behind us and opens another to one side.

  In the next room, I spy a four-poster bed, draped in chiffon. And a young woman lying under the yellowed sheets, the gentle rise and fall of her chest the only sign that she’s fast asleep – not dead. Her curly brown hair lies strewn across the pillow, her hands clasped serenely over her heart.

  ‘Your sister?’ I say, my frown deepening. I know I’ve never been top of my World History class, but I certainly don’t remember there being any mention of a female descendant to the Gergon line.

  ‘My twin sister,’ he clarifies. ‘My dear Raluca.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘She was born ordinary,’ he says, his voice barely a whisper. He walks up to the doll’s house and runs his finger along the dusty roof. He gazes over at his sister with a mixture of love and something else. Something I can’t quite define.

  My brain struggles to process what I’ve heard. Royal blood is never ordinary. The streams of magic running through their veins are just too strong, too powerful, too present not to be passed down. There are Royal families all over the world and as far as I know, it has never happened.

  A voice inside my head asks a key question: But would any Royal family tell the public if it happened?

  He gestures for me to come closer. I don’t want to, but my feet obey his command without my brain’s say-so. I could pretend it’s his magic making me do it, but I know what it really is. It’s curiosity.

  ‘She was a surprise to my mother. To all of us. I was born first, but she followed not long after. My shadow. Her deficiency was immediate. We used the old way.’

  I shudder. In Nova, we check whether babies are Talented using a sophisticated, totally non-invasive technology that tests their reaction to magical energy. If they absorb it, they’re Talented. If they block it, ordinary. It’s done at the same time as the first weighing, so there are no surprises.

  But the old way . . . To test whether a baby was Talented, parents used to submerge infants in a deep bowl of water. If it protected itself, it was Talented. If it didn’t . . .

  A lot of ordinary babies died that way. Or if they didn’t, when they emerged from the water, their minds were damaged by the experience. It contributed to the stereotype that ordinaries were somehow ‘lesser’ than Talenteds. I thought the practice had been outlawed all over the world, but apparently not in Gergon. ‘My parents wanted to get rid of her,’ continues Stefan. ‘But even when I was a baby, I protected her. They tried to separate her from me and I screamed until I was blue in the face – I almost died myself. If they wanted me, they had to keep her.’

  ‘And they did?’

  ‘In secret. I was presented to the public, and Raluca was not. They hoped maybe her powers were latent. That they might somehow develop over time. But of course, that’s not the case.’

  ‘How . . . how did they keep her hidden this whole time?’

  ‘It wasn’t easy. They tried to send her away – to the mountains, to the forest. They didn’t succeed. I wouldn’t let them. Whenever I thought they might try to take her away from me, I would throw legendary tantrums – just like when I was a baby. They built this wing of the castle for her and hid it from everyone with their magic.’

  Something about that rings a bell. About a young Prince in Gergon who wreaked havoc. A wild Prince. It was always written off as just the antics of another young brat – and when I first met him, Stefan was imbued with this arrogance that made me instantly dislike him. Mingled with a hint of intrigue, I remind myself, and I find myself staring at his strong jaw and furrowed brow. Then I check myself and swiftly push that idea from my mind. I look to see if the Prince has noticed anything different about my demeanour, but he’s still talking. It’s as if I’m not there – he’s so wrapped up in his own world.

  ‘Then someone came to us who changed everything. An alchemist – but someone who dared push the limits that no true alchemist would bend – let alone break. Someone who was willing to twist her soul for a potion. And someone who was Talented, so my parents were willing to trust her.’

  ‘Emilia,’ I say, my voice low.

  His eyes snap up to meet mine, as if suddenly remembering that I’m here. Then he nods. ‘Yes. Now you know why she came to Gergon.’

  My theory had been so close to the mark – and yet so far. Emilia really had intended to turn an ordinary person Talented. A Royal ordinary person, but still.


  Stefan continues his story. ‘For a while, my sister lived at the Visir School with Emilia. It was the only time I allowed her to be separated from me. She seemed to like it there. It was more in the countryside, she could see the rolling green fields from her window. And she could play in the caves. For once, she didn’t care about having magic power. She just enjoyed being free.’

  I shudder; I still couldn’t think of anything worse than being locked up in a castle with only Emilia Thoth for company.

  ‘In the Visir library there were old books from all over the world – one of which contained a legend about an alchemist in Zhonguo who might have done the impossible in the name of love. Emilia always said that alchemists look to the past. If something has been done once, it could be done again. Emilia made no progress for a long time – until the news broke of the discovery of the buried monastery near Long-shi, an archaeological dig that was turning up ancient alchemy secrets. We gave her our full permission to do whatever it took to get her hands on those secrets.’

  ‘And that’s when she came to Long-shi and stole the page out of Tao Kemi’s diary,’ I say, filling in the blanks from the story I know already. ‘That woman had no respect,’ I can’t help but snap. Somehow to me, after all she’s done, desecrating an ancient book is up there with the worst.

  To his credit, Stefan chuckles. But it’s a dry sound that seems more like a choke. ‘Yes, well. She did what we asked. Emilia brought Raluca back to us, with the potion in hand, so that we could all bear witness.

  ‘Raluca was brought to this secret wing of the castle, kept under lock and key. Her rooms had been left in the exact manner they had been when she was a child. All the toys to occupy a child’s mind, but no real freedom. The whole family was there to watch – my mother and father, my older brother, and me. We even had the story prepared for how we would welcome her back into the Royal fold – as a full member. The long-lost child, stolen from the castle when she was born and raised in a remote region. And it might well have been true. She had different mannerisms to us – wilder, more feral. She had eyes that were more cat than human.’

  ‘That goes for both of you,’ I say.

  ‘Well, we are twins,’ he says with a shrug.

  ‘So what happened when she took the potion?’

  ‘She was sitting almost right where you are standing. In front of this doll’s house. She had the potion in her hand – I remember it, because it was the most fantastic emerald-green colour. She looked us all in the eye and then, without a second’s hesitation, she drank it.

  ‘We all felt the change in energy immediately. I had for her a present that I’d prepared especially for this occasion. A Royal wand. I didn’t know if that would be her preferred object once she was Talented, but it matched mine. We were so alike, she and I. I thought she would be pleased.’ He casts his eyes down – for the first time in this speech taking his eyes off Raluca.

  ‘And would you know it? It worked. She took hold of the wand, pointed it at the closest object – her doll – and made her fly. The doll flew straight into that wall over there and fell, cracking its face. My sister was saved.

  ‘Then Raluca looked at us, and the drain started almost straight away. My mother was first. She had a coughing fit right then and there. But we were so proud of Raluca. We barely noticed anything was wrong; we were so pleased by the result. We thought if we could train her a little, give her a bit of time to master her magic, we could present her to the world. All was going according to plan. Even as the coughing, the weakening, spread from my mother to my father to my brother and any Talented servants in between.

  ‘We didn’t know what was happening. The “virus” spread faster than we could have anticipated. All our magic was weakening. Then my father got trapped in his bedroom. It’s a doorless room, and suddenly he didn’t have the power to exit. We had to blast through the wall to get to him.

  ‘I was the least affected. Now, looking back on it, I think it’s because I am her twin. Regardless, it looked as if I was the only one less affected by the virus. Well, Raluca too. In fact, she got stronger every day – but I didn’t connect it to everyone else’s drain at that time. I thought she was simply getting better at controlling her new magic.

  ‘No, it was Emilia I wanted answers from. She created this potion. I tracked her back to the Visir School and demanded answers.

  ‘I found her, coughing up clouds of powder, and terrified as to what she had unleashed. When she saw that I was more-or-less immune, we struck a deal. I said I would give her my blood to manufacture a small amount of serum that would keep the drain at bay – and keep me from being contagious, so I could continue to interact with the outside world. It wasn’t a cure. But it was something.

  ‘But Emilia told me she believed it was Raluca who was doing this. That the only way to stop her would be . . . to kill her. I refused to believe that. I had already saved my sister once from being killed. All those years of confinement, after everything that we did to her . . . I wasn’t going to give up so easily.

  ‘The enchanted sleep was my idea. I wanted to give it to Raluca to keep her safe. I didn’t want her leaving the castle. If people found out that she was behind the drain, she would be a target.’ His face darkens. ‘I had to keep the fact that it was Raluca’s doing from my parents and brother too. They would have had no hesitations in ending her life, I’m sure.

  ‘She trusted me. I came to her . . . I sat with her. She delighted so much in her new power. She made the toys in here come alive. They danced all around this room. Her power was not so great yet that she could leave her room, but it was getting there. I convinced her to show me her favourite thing – that doll over there, in the corner. She brought it to life, had her perform for us. And that’s when I did it. I slid the sleeping draught into her neck.’ Almost as if he conjures it, a sleeping draught appears in his hand, in a syringe with a long, sharp needle.

  ‘It put her to sleep. But it didn’t stop the drain. If anything it must have angered her . . . The drain continued, faster than ever. It spread throughout the Palace, passing through our staff – and then, as they went home, it began to spread throughout the country.’

  ‘You needed to put the people affected to sleep,’ I say, my alchemist brain working to connect the dots.

  ‘Exactly. That way around, it slowed the drain – stopped an affected person from losing their magic completely. It was necessary. To protect our Royal family. To protect our bloodline. To stop the total annihilation of our country’s Talent!

  ‘I stayed awake. With the pill from Emilia stopping me from being contagious, it was possible. I commissioned Emilia to find a solution. She claimed no cure had been written in the place she found the recipe, and I had no choice but to believe her.’

  At least Emilia hadn’t deceived Stefan on that front. Only I was able to find the cure.

  ‘Her first idea was that if I was to have any hope of overcoming the drain, I would have to become more powerful. I needed to marry Evelyn and have her transfer half of her enormous power to me. We got waylaid by the hunt for the aqua vitae, which we thought would work as a cure – and we wouldn’t have even known about if it wasn’t for your television broadcast a few months back.’

  ‘Oh yes, that.’

  ‘But once Emilia betrayed me once and for all and took the aqua vitae for herself . . . I had to go back to the first plan. And this time I succeeded. I convinced Evelyn to marry me.’

  ‘But it didn’t work.’

  ‘No. On our wedding day, I stopped taking the pill that Emilia had created. I touched Evelyn’s hand, and—’

  ‘You let Raluca drain a Novaen Princess, opening the door for her to drain all of Nova. You put everyone in the world in danger.’

  Stefan doesn’t even wince. ‘Marrying Evelyn was my last resort. I shared the remainder of Emilia’s pills with the Princess until I could get a sleeping draught made.’

  ‘And so you could decide who to blame. The ORA? How could you?’


  ‘I couldn’t tell people the truth. They would hunt Raluca down. They would kill her! But all that doesn’t matter now. Because you’re here. You can change her back.’

  I swallow hard, and grab the vial of cure from underneath my cloak. It feels warm in my hands, as if the phoenix flame is responding to Raluca’s proximity.

  I hesitate. ‘We have to wake her up for the cure to work. What if she’s too strong? She has so much power . . .’

  ‘You’re right.’ His tiger eyes lock onto mine and refuse to let go. ‘Samantha, she won’t understand why I’m doing this. All she’s ever wanted is to be Talented like me. Now she is, and I’m taking it away. Will you talk to her? You are ordinary. She might listen to you.’

  ‘I can . . . try.’ I move towards the bedroom, but Stefan stops me again.

  ‘No, you should do it now.’

  ‘But how? She’s asleep.’

  ‘I know that. All I need to do is send you to sleep, too.’ He lashes out like a snake and grabs my upper arm, pulling me close. Before I have a chance to raise an arm to defend myself, to kick or scream, he jams the needle into my neck and sends me into oblivion.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Samantha

  I OPEN MY EYES TO THE SIGHT OF A GIRL IN front of me.

  She cocks her head. Her dark hair is a mess of curls, her eyes round and glassy. She’s thin – so thin her collarbones jut out of her skin and her hollow cheeks look like caves. She’s wearing a long white nightgown that hangs off her frame and doesn’t quite reach her ankles – once, maybe, it fit her, but no one seems to have bothered to give her a longer one. Eighteen years living alone or in exile. She looks as mad as anyone might, in that situation.

  Glowing shapes seem to fade in and out of existence as they orbit around her, ghostly shapes with long trailing gowns. I recognise them at once.