Page 15 of Whisker me Away
"Why?"
Freya's lips parted as if she was going to answer, but then voices called their names from across the festival grounds. The moment shattered like glass, reality crashing back as people rushed toward them with questions and concern.
But as Kieran watched Freya compose herself and prepare to face the crowd, he caught her eyes one more time. The heat was still there.
Maybe his tiger was right about something being stronger than logic.
9
FREYA
Freya's phone buzzed against her nightstand at eleven forty-three, jolting her from restless sleep plagued by dreams of writhing corn stalks and golden eyes flashing. Edgar Tansley's voice came across panicked.
"Freya, thank the Mother you answered. You need to come to the greenhouse. Now. It's Rufus."
She was pulling on clothes before he finished speaking, her heart hammering against her ribs. "What happened?"
"He touched one of the moonflowers. The corruption got into him somehow. He's unconscious and there are these black lines crawling up his arms like poison. I don't know what to do."
"I'll be right there." Freya grabbed her grandmother's healing kit and raced out into the night, not bothering to lock her cottage door behind her.
The Hollow Mercantile's greenhouse sat behind the main building like a crystal cathedral, its glass walls reflecting the moonlight in fractured patterns. Edgar met her at the entrance, his usually neat appearance disheveled with worry and terror.
"He's in the back section," Edgar said, leading her through rows of carefully tended magical plants. "With the night-blooming specimens."
They found Rufus collapsed beside a display of luminescent flowers, his skin pale as moonlight except for the black veins that traced up his arms like poisonous tattoos. The moonflowers around him were beautiful and wrong, their petals shimmering with an oily darkness that made Freya's magic recoil.
"How long has he been like this?" she asked, dropping to her knees beside the unconscious man.
"About twenty minutes. He was checking on the moonflowers like he does every night, and then I heard him scream." Edgar's voice cracked. "The flowers looked normal when we closed up shop, but now look at them."
Freya looked. The moonflowers had been one of the Tansley brothers' pride and joy, rare specimens that bloomed only under direct moonlight and were said to enhance psychic abilities. Now they pulsed with corruption, their ethereal beauty twisted into something that made her skin crawl.
"I need to call Kieran," she said, pulling out her phone with hands that shook only slightly.
"Already here."
Kieran's voice from the greenhouse entrance made her look up with relief that she instantly tried to bite back. He approached with that predatory grace she was becoming accustomed to as he took in the scene with sharp intelligence.
"Edgar called me right after he called you," he explained, crouching beside her. "How bad is it?"
"Bad." Freya placed her hands just above Rufus's chest, letting her magic probe the corruption spreading through his system. "It's not just on his skin. The poison is in his bloodstream, heading for his heart."
"Can you stop it?"
"I can try." She closed her eyes and reached deeper into her healing magic than she'd ever gone before. The corruption fought her at every turn, alien and hungry and utterly malevolent. It wanted to consume, to spread, to turn Rufus into another vector for its growth.
But underneath the corruption, Freya could sense something else. A pattern. An intelligence. This wasn't random magical poisoning. This was targeted, deliberate, and it felt horribly familiar.
"It's the same signature as the heritage roses," she whispered, not opening her eyes. "The same thing that killed my family's garden."
"Focus on healing first," Kieran said, his voice steady and calm. "We'll worry about the why later."
Freya poured more power into her magic, using every technique her grandmother had taught her about drawing poison from living systems. The black veins on Rufus's arms began to recede slowly, reluctantly, like they were being pulled back against their will.
But the effort was costing her. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she fought against corruption that seemed to have a mind of its own. Her magic, normally as natural as breathing, felt sluggish and strained.
"Freya." Kieran's hand touched her shoulder. "Your nose is bleeding."
