Echo of a Poisoned Bloom

Chapter 1

Grace

The air tastes like poison. Bitter almonds and cloying honey, a sweetness that burns straight down my throat. My lungs seize. I gasp, a ragged, desperate sound, my hands clawing at my neck as the world dissolves into a triumphant smirk on my husband’s face and the crocodile tears of my sister. My last thought is a name, a whisper of a fragrance I almost perfected. Aethelgard’s Bloom.

My eyes snap open.

I’m not on the cold marble floor of Theo’s study. I’m in my bed. My childhood bed, with its ridiculously soft silk sheets and the scent of lavender and rain from the gardens outside. I heave in a breath, a real one, clean and full. It doesn’t burn. My hands fly to my throat. The skin is smooth, unbroken. There’s no swelling, no fire.

A dream? No. The memory is too vivid, seared onto the back of my eyelids like a brand. Theo’s hand on my shoulder, his voice a soothing poison in my ear. “Just relax, my love. It will all be over soon.” And Isobel, my darling adopted sister, dabbing at her dry eyes with a lace handkerchief. “She was always so fragile,” she’d murmured to the doctor, the same doctor Theo had paid to sign the death certificate. Natural causes. A tragic, sudden heart failure.

My heart hammers against my ribs now, a frantic drumbeat of impossible life. I throw back the covers and stumble to the gilded mirror across the room. My reflection stares back, wide-eyed and pale. It’s me, but not me. My face is softer, the lines of exhaustion and betrayal not yet etched around my eyes. I look… younger. I look twenty.

The door to my bedroom creaks open. “There you are, sleepyhead. I was about to send a search party.”

Isobel glides in, a vision in pale pink chiffon. Her blonde hair is perfectly coiled, her smile a weapon of calculated sweetness. She’s carrying a small, velvet box. The sight of her makes the phantom poison burn in my throat again.

“Happy birthday, Grace,” she says, her voice like chimes. “I can’t believe you’re twenty. It feels like just yesterday we were children, playing in the gardens.”

Twenty. My twentieth birthday. Three years. It’s been three years since my twentieth birthday. Which means… it’s three years until my murder.

I’m back.

The realization hits me not like a wave, but like a shard of ice driving into my chest. I have a second chance.

“Are you alright?” Isobel’s brow furrows with that fake concern she mastered so well. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Something like that,” I say. My voice is hoarse, but steady. Colder than I remember it being.

She dismisses it with a light laugh. “Well, don’t be a ghost tonight. Theo has the most wonderful evening planned. Everyone is already arriving.” She places the velvet box on my vanity. “He asked me to give you this. A pre-celebration gift.”

I know what’s inside. A delicate diamond necklace. A placeholder for the main event. The real diamonds he’ll offer later tonight, on one knee, in front of our families and all of society. The ring I so eagerly accepted the first time around.

“How thoughtful,” I say, my tone flat.

Isobel’s smile tightens almost imperceptibly. She doesn’t like this new coldness. The old Grace would have gushed. She would have hugged her dear sister and chattered excitedly about Theo. The old Grace was a fool.

“Just hurry and get dressed,” she says, a flicker of irritation in her voice. “You don’t want to be late to your own party. It wouldn’t look right.”

She leaves, and I turn to my wardrobe. My hand hovers over the pale blue dress I wore the first time. The dress of a naive girl, soft and unassuming. I push it aside. My fingers find a deep crimson silk gown, one my mother deemed too bold for a twentieth birthday. It’s perfect.

An hour later, I descend the grand staircase. The ballroom of our estate is glittering. Crystal chandeliers cast a warm glow over hundreds of guests in tuxedos and gowns. A string quartet plays softly in the corner. My parents, Robert and Eleanor Teller, are holding court near the entrance, their faces beaming with pride. They see me and their smiles widen.

Then I see him. Theo Durant. He stands near the fountain, laughing with a group of investors, looking every bit the charismatic heir to the Durant Industries fortune. He’s handsome, I can’t deny that. Dark hair, sharp jaw, eyes the color of a stormy sea. In my first life, I thought that storm was passion. Now I know it’s just a void.

He spots me. His conversation falters, his eyes tracing my descent. He expects the shy girl in pale blue. He gets a woman in blood-red silk, her gaze as sharp as glass. I watch the surprise flicker across his face, quickly replaced by a possessive heat. He thinks this transformation is for him. Another game to pique his interest.

He detaches from his group and meets me at the bottom of the stairs. “Grace,” he murmurs, his voice a low caress. He takes my hand, his thumb stroking my knuckles. The touch feels like a spider crawling on my skin. “You look… breathtaking. I’ve never seen you wear red before.”

“I decided it was time for a change,” I reply, pulling my hand gently from his grasp. I don’t offer an excuse. I don’t smile sweetly. I simply let my hand fall to my side.

He frowns for a split second before his practiced charm slides back into place. “A beautiful change. Come, your parents are waiting. And I believe a toast is in order.”

He tries to place a hand on the small of my back to guide me, but I step away, moving towards my parents on my own. I can feel his eyes on me, a mixture of confusion and annoyance. Good. Let him be confused.

My father kisses my cheek. “There’s my birthday girl! Twenty years old. It’s a big night, Grace. A very big night.” He winks, a clear reference to Theo’s impending proposal. He thinks it’s the greatest match in a generation, the union of Teller Aromas and Durant Industries. He has no idea he’s trying to marry his daughter to her future murderer.

My mother fusses with a stray strand of my hair. “Darling, that dress is a bit much, isn’t it? Still, you look lovely. Isobel helped you, I assume?”

“No,” I say calmly. “I chose it myself.”

Before she can comment further, the gentle clinking of a glass being tapped for attention fills the room. Theo is standing on the low dais where the quartet was playing. The musicians have paused. A hush falls over the crowd. Here we go. The opening act of my destruction, Take One.

“Friends, family,” Theo begins, his voice resonating with false sincerity. “Thank you all for coming to celebrate this momentous occasion. The twentieth birthday of the incredible Grace Teller.” He smiles directly at me, a smile meant to make me melt. It makes me want to scream.

“I have known Grace for years,” he continues. “I have watched her grow from a sweet, shy girl into the stunning woman you see before you. She is kind, she is gentle, and she has a pure heart that is a rare treasure in this world.” He’s painting a portrait of a lamb for the slaughter. My stomach twists.

He walks towards me, never breaking eye contact. The crowd parts for him like he’s a king. “Grace has always been the quiet artist, the dreamer. She sees the world in a way the rest of us do not. But dreamers need protectors. They need someone to ground them, to help them navigate the complexities of life.” His condescension is a physical force, pressing down on me. I stood here once before and soaked it up, believing it was love.

He stops directly in front of me. The air is thick with anticipation. Isobel is standing just behind him, a perfect picture of supportive sisterhood, her eyes gleaming with triumph. She’s been pushing for this for years. Pushing me into his arms, all while seducing him behind my back.

Theo’s voice drops to an intimate whisper, though it’s amplified by the room’s acoustics. “I want to be that person for you, Grace.”

He sinks to one knee. Gasps ripple through the ballroom. He produces a black velvet box, the same one I was buried with. He opens it. A magnificent diamond, cut like a star, winks in the light.

“Grace Teller,” he says, his voice thick with emotion that he doesn’t feel. “Will you do me the incredible honor of becoming my wife?”

The silence is absolute. Every eye is on me. They expect tears. They expect a breathless ‘yes’. I give them neither.

I let the silence stretch, watching the confidence in Theo’s eyes waver, replaced by a flicker of uncertainty. I look past him, at Isobel. Her smile is frozen on her face. I look at my parents, their expressions a mixture of pride and impatience.

Then I look back down at the man kneeling at my feet. The man who will mix poison into my tea and watch me die without a shred of remorse.

I draw a slow, steadying breath.

“No,” I say.

My voice isn’t loud, but it cuts through the silence like a surgeon’s scalpel. It is clear, calm, and utterly final.

Theo’s face drains of color. He stares at me as if I’ve just spoken in a foreign language. “What?” he whispers, the sound swallowed by the cavernous room.

“I said no,” I repeat, a little louder this time. “Thank you for the offer, Theo. It was quite a performance. But I will not marry you.”

The entire ballroom erupts in a cacophony of shocked murmurs. My father takes a step forward, his face turning a dangerous shade of red. “Grace, what is the meaning of this? This isn’t a joke.”

“I am not joking, Father,” I say, turning to face him. I ignore the humiliated rage now twisting Theo’s features as he slowly gets to his feet. I ignore Isobel, whose mask of sweetness has shattered, revealing the venomous envy beneath.

I have the floor. And I am not done.

“I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking lately,” I announce, my voice gaining strength and ringing through the room. “About my future. About the family business.”

My father looks utterly bewildered. “The business? What are you talking about?”

“Teller Aromas is my legacy as much as it is yours,” I state, my gaze sweeping over the stunned faces of our guests, our rivals, our allies. “I’ve spent my life being the ‘quiet artist’. That ends tonight. Effective tomorrow morning, I will be taking my rightful place at the company. I’ll be in your office at nine a.m. to discuss my new role. I trust my shares as the majority heir are still in order?”

A new wave of shock silences the room. My mother looks like she might faint. Theo is staring at me with pure, unadulterated fury. He didn’t just lose a docile fiancée; he lost his inside track to controlling my family’s company. Isobel looks like she’s been slapped. Her entire plan, their entire plan, has just been detonated.

Without another word, I turn. I don’t run. I don’t offer any further explanation. I walk calmly through the stunned crowd, heading for the solitude of the gardens. Let them whisper. Let them stare. This is only the beginning.

As the cool night air hits my face, one thought burns brighter than all the chandeliers in the ballroom. They stole my life’s work. They took the formula for Aethelgard’s Bloom, the revolutionary perfume I’d nearly perfected, and built an empire on my grave.

They thought they buried Grace Teller, the fragile little artist. They have no idea they just woke up a queen. And this time, I’m building my own empire. Not on their graves. On their ashes.

Chapter 2

Grace

The morning light is sharp and unforgiving, slicing through the tall windows of the breakfast room. The air smells of coffee, croissants, and unspoken rage. My father, Robert Teller, sits at the head of the table, his jaw a tight knot of fury. My mother, Eleanor, is beside him, her face a mask of pinched disappointment. A porcelain teacup trembles in her hand.

Isobel sits opposite me, the picture of gentle concern. She’s already dressed in a soft cream-colored dress, looking every bit the dutiful daughter. I, on the other hand, am still in my crimson gown from last night. I didn’t sleep. I planned.

“Do you have any idea what you have done?” My father’s voice is low, a controlled rumble that promises a storm.

I calmly take a sip of water. “I rejected a marriage proposal. I believe it’s still my right to do so.”

“Your right?” he scoffs, slamming his hand on the mahogany table. The silverware jumps. “You humiliated Theo Durant. You humiliated this family. The alliance with Durant Industries is the cornerstone of our five-year plan.”

“Perhaps we need a new plan,” I say, meeting his gaze without flinching. This is new. I’ve never been able to hold his stare for more than a few seconds.

My mother sets her cup down with a clatter. “Grace, this isn’t a game. Theo’s mother called me at dawn. Dawn! She was apoplectic. She thinks you’ve gone mad.”

“She’s just worried,” Isobel murmurs, reaching a hand across the table as if to comfort me. I don’t move. “Grace, darling, you’ve been under so much pressure. Perhaps you weren’t thinking clearly. If you just call Theo, explain…”

“My thinking has never been clearer,” I interrupt, my voice cutting through her syrupy tone. I turn my eyes on her. “And I would appreciate it if you stopped speaking for me.”

Isobel recoils, her blue eyes widening in feigned hurt. It’s a masterful performance. One I fell for every single time.

“That’s enough,” my father barks. “This insanity ends now. You will go to your room, you will get dressed, and then you will call Theo. You will beg for his forgiveness and accept his proposal. We will smooth this over. We will say you were overwhelmed by the occasion.”

“No.” The word is simple. Final. It hangs in the air between us.

His face darkens to a dangerous shade of plum. “I am not asking you, Grace.”

“And I am not a child you can command, Father.” I stand up, my chair scraping softly against the polished floor. “As for the family business, you seem to have forgotten something.”

“And what is that?” he asks, his voice dripping with condescension.

“My mother’s shares. They passed to me on my eighteenth birthday. It makes me the majority heir. While you may be CEO, I hold a significant portion of this company’s future in my hands. So my role in the business is not up for discussion. It’s a fact.”

My mother gasps. She looks at my father, who seems momentarily stunned into silence. He never imagined I’d have the spine or the knowledge to wield that power.

I press my advantage. I walk around the table until I’m standing beside him, looking down. “You’re so certain Theo is the right choice. A brilliant businessman. The key to our future.”

“He is ten times the strategist you will ever be,” he growls, recovering his footing.

“Is he?” I lean in, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Then ask him. Ask him about his secret plan to pour millions of Durant capital into OmniCorp’s new deep-sea shipping venture. He’s been courting their CEO for months. He thinks it’s the next big thing.”

My father’s eyes narrow. He knows OmniCorp. He knows the rumors. “That’s a bold move. Risky.”

“He’ll tell you it’s a sure thing,” I continue, the memory of Theo boasting about it just before he killed me flashing in my mind. “He’ll say he has inside information. Indulge him. Agree it’s a brilliant idea. And then, in six months, watch as that ‘sure thing’ sinks to the bottom of the ocean and takes half the Durant fortune with it.”

I pull back. The seed is planted. I can see the gears turning behind his eyes. How could I possibly know that? The business acumen I’m displaying is so far beyond the dreamy artist he raised.

“You’re bluffing,” he says, but his voice lacks conviction.

“Am I?” I straighten up and look at all of them. My furious father, my horrified mother, my venomous sister. “I’ll be in the office at nine a.m. Monday to discuss my new role. I expect a desk to be ready.”

Without another word, I turn and walk out of the room, leaving a crater of shocked silence in my wake.

The gardens are my only sanctuary. They always have been. The damp soil, the sharp scent of clipped boxwood, the heavy perfume of roses just coming into bloom. This is where I learned about the world. Not from books or tutors, but from the language of petals and roots.

I wander down a familiar gravel path, trailing my fingers over the thorns of a rose bush. Every scent has a purpose. Jasmine for calm. Rosemary for memory. Belladonna for… other things.

My mind is a whirlwind. Planting doubt in my father was the first step. But it’s not enough. He’s a traditionalist. He won’t cede control easily. I need independence. I need a lab. The main Teller Aromas labs are under his thumb, and Isobel, with her supposed ‘natural talent’, has free rein there. She’d sabotage any work I tried to do.

I stop by the old stone bench under the weeping willow, the same place I finalized the base notes for Aethelgard’s Bloom in my other life. The memory is so clear it’s painful. I had it. The perfect balance of rare orchid, smoked oud, and something else, a secret ingredient I’d synthesized myself. A scent that changed with the wearer’s skin chemistry, becoming uniquely their own. It was revolutionary. It was my soul in a bottle.

And they stole it.

“Hiding from the fallout?”

The voice is deep, unfamiliar yet ringing with a distant echo of memory. I spin around.

He’s leaning against the trunk of an ancient oak tree as if he’s been waiting. He’s tall, dressed in a perfectly tailored gray suit that looks out of place and yet completely natural in the wild elegance of the garden. His hair is the color of dark molasses, and his eyes… his eyes are the color of wet slate. Of steel.

Recognition dawns on me. It’s been years. Five, at least.

“Edmund Sterling,” I breathe.

He gives a slight, almost imperceptible smile. “So you do remember me. I was beginning to wonder.” He pushes off the tree and takes a few steps toward me. He moves with a quiet confidence that borders on predatory. This is not the lanky, serious boy who used to read history books while I sketched flowers.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, my guard instantly up.

“My family’s estate borders yours, remember?” he says, his gaze sweeping over the gardens. “I heard the shouting from the breakfast terrace. Figured I might find the source of the commotion out here.”

“Snooping, you mean.”

“Observing,” he corrects, his eyes landing back on me. They are unsettlingly direct. “I was at your party last night. Kept to the back. It was quite the show.”

I cross my arms. “Everyone seems to think so.”

“My father had some choice words for yours this morning,” Edmund continues, his tone conversational. “He thinks you’ve destabilized the Durant-Teller alliance. Makes the market nervous.”

I lift my chin. “And what do you think, Edmund?”

He stops a few feet away from me. The air between us crackles with a strange energy. “I think it was the most interesting thing to happen in this city in a decade.”

His answer surprises me into silence. There’s no judgment in his voice. No condescension. Only a cool, analytical intrigue.

“You’ve changed, Grace,” he says, his eyes searching my face. “What happened to the girl who used to hide behind her sketchbooks?”

“She grew up,” I say simply.

“It’s more than that.” He takes another step closer. I can smell the faint, clean scent of his cologne. Bergamot and cedar. It’s expensive. “Your eyes are different. They used to be like watercolors. Soft, easy to blur.”

I hold my breath.

“Now,” he says, his voice dropping slightly, “they’re like chips of flint. You could strike a fire with them.”

He sees it. He sees the change. Not as madness or a tantrum, but as a transformation. For the first time since I woke up in this life, I feel seen. It’s a terrifying and exhilarating feeling.

“People change,” I manage to say, my voice steadier than I feel.

“Not like this,” he counters softly. “This isn’t change. It’s a metamorphosis. And it makes people like your father, and mine, very uncomfortable. They like their butterflies pinned to a board.”

He understands the prison they had me in better than I did myself. A bitter laugh escapes me. “And what about you? Do I make you uncomfortable?”

Edmund’s expression is unreadable, but a flicker of something I can’t name crosses his features. It’s not discomfort. It’s something sharper. More intense.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” he says. “I’m intrigued.”

He holds my gaze for a long moment before glancing back toward his family’s estate. “I have a meeting. My flight from Geneva landed less than twelve hours ago and my father already has me on a leash.”

He turns to leave, then pauses.

“A word of advice, Grace,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “When you declare war, you need allies. Not ones who want to put you back in your cage, but ones who are willing to watch you burn it down.”

He doesn’t wait for a reply. He simply walks away, disappearing through a hedge that marks the property line, leaving me with the scent of bergamot, cedar, and a dangerous new possibility.

Chapter 3

Grace

Edmund’s words hang in the air long after he’s gone.

Allies who are willing to watch you burn it down.

He’s right. My father wants to put me back in my cage. My mother wants to smooth things over. Isobel wants to watch me fail. Edmund… I’m not sure what Edmund wants yet. But his observation was a scalpel, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

There is only one person who has ever looked at Theo Durant with a flicker of doubt. Only one person whose love for me is sharper than her desire for social standing.

My grandmother.

I don’t bother going back to the main house. I walk the length of our estate to the old stone wall separating our property from hers. There’s a gate, long overgrown with ivy. It’s always unlocked.

Anya Teller’s home is not a manicured mansion. It is a sprawling stone house swallowed by a garden that has gone beautifully, terrifyingly wild. Not with weeds, but with purpose. Rare night-blooming jasmine climbs the walls, wolfsbane grows in vicious purple clumps near the foundation, and the air is thick with the scent of a thousand competing botanicals. It is a perfumer’s armory.

I find her in the greenhouse, a humid cathedral of glass and steel. She’s standing over a bench of orchids, their speckled petals a dozen shades of poison and blush. She doesn’t turn as I approach, her back ramrod straight in a simple black dress. Her silver hair is pinned in a severe knot.

“The last time you used that gate, you were twelve and hiding from your mother after you broke a vase,” she says, her voice like gravel and honey. She snips a pale, alien-looking orchid from its stem with a pair of silver shears.

“I’m not hiding this time,” I say.

“No.” She finally turns, her eyes, the same shade of gray as mine, are just as sharp as I remember. They rake over me, from my disheveled hair to the defiant crimson of my dress. “You’re hunting.”

She gestures with the shears to a wrought iron chair. “Sit. Tell me whose world you decided to set on fire at your own birthday party.”

I sit. The metal is cool against my skin. “Theo Durant’s world, for a start.”

Anya lets out a short, dry laugh. “Good. I never liked him. He has your father’s ambition but none of his backbone. His smile never reaches his eyes.”

Her instant agreement steadies me. I take a breath. “It’s more than that, Grandmother. It’s him. It’s Isobel.”

“The cuckoo,” she murmurs, placing the orchid carefully into a specimen box. “I’ve always said it. A pretty little bird who pushes the real chicks out of the nest.”

“She wants what I have. And Theo will help her get it.” I choose my words carefully. I can’t say ‘he will kill me for my inheritance’. Not yet. Maybe never. “He doesn’t love me. He wants control of Teller Aromas. I was just the easiest path. The docile, artistic daughter.”

“And you are no longer docile,” she finishes for me, her eyes narrowing. “What changed, Grace? Yesterday you were picking out china patterns. Today you declare war in the ballroom.”

“I woke up,” I say, the simple truth of it making my voice raw. “I saw everything clearly for the first time. The way he looks at her when he thinks no one is watching. The way she flatters him, undermines me with a sweet word and a sympathetic smile.”

My hands are shaking. I clench them in the folds of my dress.

“I believe you,” Anya says, and the words are a balm on a wound I didn’t know was open. “Your father sees a merger. Your mother sees a wedding. I see a shark and a snake. I told them not to take Isobel in. You don’t bring a stray cat into a house of canaries.”

“Father won’t listen to me. He’s ordered me to apologize. To accept the proposal.”

“Of course he has,” she sniffs. “Robert always preferred a profitable lie to an inconvenient truth.” She closes the lid on the specimen box. “So. What do you need from me? Money? A lawyer? A strong dose of foxglove in Theo’s morning coffee?”

A smile tugs at my lips, the first genuine one in this new life. “Independence.”

Her eyebrows raise. “Explain.”

“I told Father I’m taking a role at the company. But I can’t work there. Isobel has free rein of the labs. She’d contaminate my work, steal my formulas. She already has.” I stop myself, the last part slipping out.

Anya’s eyes sharpen. “She has stolen from you?”

“She calls it ‘inspiration’. She takes my notes, my discarded trials, and claims them as her own intuitive genius.” The bitterness is acid in my throat.

“I see.” Anya walks over to a heavy wooden desk in the corner of the greenhouse. She unlocks a drawer and pulls out a single, ornate brass key on a leather cord. “Then you won’t be working at Teller Aromas.”

She holds the key out to me. It’s heavy. Solid. Real.

“What is this?”

“The key to the old conservatory lab,” she says. “Behind this greenhouse. I had it fully updated five years ago. Gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, fractional distillation columns. Everything you need and more. No one has set foot in it but me.”

My breath catches in my throat. A lab. My own lab.

“And for supplies?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.

She pulls a slim black card from the same drawer and places it on top of the key in my palm. “An account. With enough seed funding to launch a small nation. It is not tied to your father or Teller Aromas in any way. It is tied to me.”

I stare at the key and the card. They are more than objects. They are a declaration of faith. A weapon.

“Why?” I ask, my voice thick.

“Because you have Teller blood in your veins, child. Real Teller blood. We are not decorative fools who marry for convenience,” she says, her gaze fierce. “We are creators. We build empires from flowers and smoke. It’s about time you remembered that. Now go. Stop talking and start working. Don’t disappoint me.”

I stand, the weight of the key a comforting anchor. “I won’t.”

As I turn to leave, a voice from the greenhouse entrance stops me. A voice like poisoned honey.

“There you are! Grace, darling, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Isobel stands there, framed by blooming bougainvillea. She’s changed into a pale yellow sundress, a picture of innocence and concern. Her eyes flicker from my face to my grandmother, then to the key in my hand.

“Grandmother Anya,” she says, her tone dripping with false reverence. “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”

“You are,” Anya says flatly, turning her back to prune a fern.

Isobel ignores the dismissal, her focus entirely on me. She rushes to my side, grabbing my free hand. Her skin is cool and clammy. “Oh, Grace. Father is an absolute tyrant this morning. Mother is sedated. You must be so frightened. I told them you just needed some air.”

“I’m not frightened, Isobel,” I say, pulling my hand away. “And I don’t need you to speak for me.”

Her smile falters for a fraction of a second. “Of course not. I was just so worried. When you ran off… it was so erratic. So unlike you.”

There it is. The narrative. The foundation she’s laying. Grace is unstable.

Her eyes fix on the key. “What’s that?”

“A key,” I say, closing my fingers around it.

“To what? Are you moving out? Is that it?” Her voice is a frantic whisper, laced with manufactured panic. “Oh, you mustn’t. That would only make things worse. You need to be with family right now.”

“It’s the key to my new laboratory,” I state clearly, watching for her reaction.

Her face goes blank. True, utter shock. It’s magnificent. “Your… laboratory?”

“Grandmother Anya has graciously provided me with a space to work on my own projects. Independently.”

Isobel’s eyes dart from me to Anya’s back. The shock curdles into something else. Envy. Pure, molten envy. She recovers quickly, arranging her features back into a mask of sisterly support.

“Oh. Oh, how wonderful,” she says, her voice a little too high. “But… are you sure that’s a good idea? Right now? You’re under so much stress. Perfumery requires a clear head.”

She gestures vaguely around the greenhouse. “All these chemicals and formulas… it’s terribly complex. My process is much more organic. I just… feel the scents, you know? It’s a gift, I suppose. Not something you can learn from a book.”

Her condescension is a physical thing, a film of slime I want to scrub from my skin. She’s trying to plant a seed of doubt. To remind me that she is the ‘natural talent’ and I am just the studious technician.

I look her dead in the eye. “My talent is in chemistry, Isobel. In precision. In understanding the molecular bonds that you can only ‘feel’. I would think you’d appreciate that, after all the years you spent getting ‘inspiration’ from my notebooks.”

Her mask cracks. Her blue eyes flash with genuine venom. For a single, glorious second, the cuckoo shows its beak.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she hisses, her voice low and sharp.

“Don’t you?”

She regains control, a shaky smile plastered back on her face. “You’re not well, Grace. You’re saying awful, hurtful things. I’m just trying to help.”

“Thank you for your concern,” I say, my voice dripping with ice. “It has been noted. And dismissed.”

I turn my back on her before she can respond, giving my grandmother a nod of gratitude. “Thank you, Grandmother.”

“Don’t thank me,” Anya calls to my retreating back. “Create something worthy of my investment.”

I walk out of the greenhouse, past a stunned and seething Isobel, without a backward glance. I follow the winding stone path behind the greenhouse to a conservatory I haven’t entered in fifteen years. The brass key feels warm in my hand.

It slides into the lock with a satisfying click. The door swings open onto a room filled with gleaming chrome, amber glass, and the clean, sharp scent of ozone and potential. My sanctuary. My fortress.

My armory.

Isobel thinks my talent comes from books. Theo thinks it can be stolen and bottled. They are both about to find out how wrong they are. I’m not here to create a perfume. I’m here to distill my revenge.