His tone was somber with traces of sorrow and a hint of pride. I glanced up to gauge his expression, but he had turned away, wandering the field.
“Right, well, if you have an herb garden, I can make enough of that for everyone, if you want. Whoever wants it. If there’s enough supplies, obviously.”
“You are very giving in your antidotes.” Again that somberness. That sorrow.
“Maybe I’m just trying to poison everyone.” After a few moments of quiet, I let curiosity get the better of me. “Do you tend this field on your own? And the one in the Forbidden Wood?”
“Mostly. There is one gardener left on the grounds. He helps where he can.”
“Who taught you to work the plants? Not books, I imagine.”
“My mother,” he said softly.
He’d done a nearly perfect job with these plants. They were all happy and healthy. They’d make a very strong nulling elixir, except that we didn’t have any rainwater collected. I’d have to figure out a different way.
First things first—harvesting.
“I haven’t noticed any correlation between the demons’ strength and the various moon cycles, have you?” I asked as I stopped near a struggling plant. I crouched down, studying it, resting my forearms on my knees.
“No. The moon doesn’t affect them.”
I pulled my lips to the side, thinking, before looking up at the sun and then all around, marking this spot in my mind so I could avoid it.
“It affects shifters, though.” He stepped down in my line of sight, having clearly followed me through the field.
“I know that.”
“Does it affect you?”
“How could it? My animal is—or was, I guess—suppressed like everyone else’s. It’s only now, since you, that I can feel it. Her, I think. It feels like a female presence.”
“You didn’t feel your animal at all before me? Not even a whisper?”
“No.”
“And yet you can resist my commands.”
I didn’t mention that it was not a fun time resisting him.
“No one could ever resist me,” he said.
I pushed up to standing. “Maybe you’re not as strong as you once were. Maybe that’s why you can’t break the curse, whatever it is.”
“It isn’t up to me to break the curse. I am powerless within it.”
“We’re never powerless,” I muttered, a sentiment I’d always repeated to myself when I did, indeed, feel utterly powerless. Usually hopeless, too. I pointed downward. “This plant is being crowded. I assume you know what that means?”
His eyebrows stitched together. It took him a moment to look where I was pointing. He didn’t comment, and judging from our previous interactions, I took that to mean he didn’t know what to say.
I really wanted to punch him, just in general, but instead I took a deep breath and readied the lecture. This was something he needed to know if he was going to work the everlass. Something his mother should have told him. The plant’s location suggested it had been planted this way on purpose.
“This plant is basically getting bullied, to put it simply. That creates a sort of…acidic quality that’s bad for healing. It can be poisonous, actually. Someone in my village used leaves from a crowded plant for the elixir we spoke of, and it killed her husband within a few hours. She claimed to have chosen the leaves—multiple—by accident, which means it was definitely on purpose. Given she refused to marry again and spent a lot of time after that with demons in the pub…well. She’s suspect.
“Anyway, the book I read said it was often thought that crowded plants were cultivated that way on purpose, nestled among the others in the field, hidden in plain sight. Only a person who knew what they were looking for would know the crowded plant’s true nature.”
I used my finger to outline the rows. Little dips happened all over, like the horse hadn’t walked in a straight line when the fields were plowed. Only sometimes the rows dipped enough to create a crowded plant. I counted thirteen of them, a superstitious number.
“The layout of this field is masterful.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “You?”
“The former queen.”
That was surprising. I hadn’t thought royalty actually worked. Not in any physical way.
“Well, she knew what she was doing,” I said. “Too bad she wasn’t the one who taught you. To un-crowd the plant, you simply prune those around it and give it more breathing room. It’ll spread its leaves and flourish. It won’t hold a grudge. Overall, your garden won’t suffer in production, either, since all the plants are firing on all cylinders. If you then wish to crowd the plant again so you can off your husband, prune it back a little and let the other plants creep in. Easy.”