The Omega's Reflex novel · Chapter 5 of 6

Chapter 5: What the Herb Was

I didn't sleep that night.

Sable was safe in a room upstairs.

That was the only thing I'd managed all day.

At some point after the fire went low I got up and walked down the corridor to the Alpha's chambers.

Raven wasn't there. He was in the council room with Bram.

I stood in the middle of that room and looked at the brazier.

The servants had emptied it that morning.

But the lid was still on the mantel, and nobody had scrubbed it.

I turned it over in the firelight.

There was a ring of purple ash crusted inside the rim.

I scraped it into a cloth with my thumbnail.

It smelled sweet even cold.

I wrapped it up and went to find Ilsa.

She was awake.

She was always awake.

She opened the door in her nightgown and looked at the cloth in my hand.

"Come in."

I put it on her table and she lit a second lamp and unfolded it.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she got a pair of thin iron tongs and picked out one unburned flake.

She held it to the lamp.

She turned it over.

She put it down.

"Where did you get this?"

"The brazier in the Alpha's chambers. Wedding night."

"Did you burn it?"

"No. It was already smoking when we came in."

Ilsa sat down.

She was quiet for a while.

"It's called redmouth," she said.

"Grows in the low country, not here. It doesn't survive our winters."

"What does it do?"

"Two things."

"Burn it in a closed room and it pulls the body toward whoever else is in there."

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