Page 110 of Immortal Rose

“I thought you went home hours ago,” Hugh said, rising. At least he would have help moving the body.

“I did,” Reddy said slowly.

Hugh was too on edge not to pick up on the reluctance in his friend’s voice. It sawed at his already fraying nerves, even before he saw the small, pale bundle tucked beneath his arm.

“Is that the morning edition?” he asked, reaching for it at once. Reddy’s unusually serious expression sent alarm bells clanging in his skull.

He shook the paper open, quickly scanning over the columns.

“Really, it’s not—well, it’s bad, but not disastrous,” Reddy began. “If you can get to the palace . . .”

Hugh scarcely heard the rest of his words over the blood roaring in his ears. The black print distorted, twisting on the page.

“Fuck,” Hugh muttered. “Fuck!”

He shoved the broadsheet at Reddy and ran for the back door.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Like this?”

I peered over Felicity’s shoulder to check her work. “Yes, exactly. All in a single layer.”

The gentle morning light spilling through the diamond-paned windows of the still room warmed my back as I returned my attention to the chassis in front of me. I pulled the cluster of delicate jasmine blossoms from their stem, then demonstrated again how firmly to press their face into the thick layer of tallow covering the glass plate.

With its stone walls, garlands of drying herbs, and colorful shelves of pickled vegetables, marmalades, and chutneys, the still room had the feeling of an ancient apothecary.

While Mrs. Silver largely appeared to use the room for preparing tea service and the making of preserves, the fact that we’d found the wood-framed chassis seemed to indicate she also prepared her remedies here, some of which must have involved the same process of cold enfleurage we were using.

I rolled my shoulders back, stretching out a kink in my neck.

It felt good to work; or, at least, it had given me something else to focus on besides where Foxcourt had vanished to this morning. As the hours had passed, unease had begun to set in, along with a prickle of suspicion he was off trying to find the nectar without me. I didn’t have so much pride that I couldn’t admit I was hurt to have been left behind, even as I grudgingly understood why.

I was needed here, blending what I could of Immortal Rose. It might be days yet before we procured the nectar, and having this blended now would only be to our benefit as the King’s diminishing life was reduced to hours, minutes.

I pushed aside the image of the open sores that would be emerging on the King’s sunken chest by now, the memory of another dying man’s stench filling my nose.

“Does the fat truly absorb the scent?” came Tommy’s quiet voice. He had come in an hour before, helping us arrange the supplies Oliver had procured, but had settled onto a stool with a sketchbook. Now and then I glanced over, catching glimpses of our working hands and the flowers in bold strokes of charcoal.

“Yes,” I said, practicing the gestures Felicity was helpfully signing to him. “We’ll have to remove and replace the flowers as they begin to wilt, as many times as we can, but the fat will be saturated with their scent. Then we’ll wash the fat with alcohol and eventually create what’s called an absolute from it.”

Whether there would be time to gather a truly potent scent from the jasmine grandiflorum was a different question entirely.

“Didn’t your friend bring you a bottle of jasmine oil?” Felicity asked. “I thought I remembered seeing it when we were unpacking the case.”

Hmm, how to explain this without sounding absurd? “He did, yes, but whoever distilled it seems to have not properly cleaned their instruments or the bottle. That, or the oil has simply been sitting for a touch too long and has gone off.”

As good as Oliver’s nose was, especially after he and I had trained it, it still wasn’t quite a match to mine. It was so subtle, I could hardly blame him. The faintest sour note had sprouted up like a weed through the rich animalic and sweet facets of the jasmine’s floral depths.

“It’s a bit of a risk,” I told them. “We won’t have as much time as I’d like for the fat to absorb the oil, but jasmine is difficult and elusive in giving up its scent. I’d rather do it myself.”

The Immortal Rose perfume was, unsurprisingly, one of unusual complexity and depth. The Treasury laid out a precise blend of bergamot and orange blossom in the top notes, a heart of jasmine grandiflorum, as well as levant and centifolia roses, and a touch of musk, sacred myrrh, and benzoin at the base to ground the sweeter, airier notes.

And, of course, the divine nectar of the flowering Afallach tree to weave the heady scent through with a golden breath of magic.

“Can you use this same process with all flowers?” Felicity asked, her green eyes bright with curiosity. “My mother had a book from my gran with recipes for different perfumes and pomades, but she never specified how to distill the oils.”

“Cold enfleurage is mostly used for flowers that are too delicate for steam extraction or hot enfleurage, which is similar, save for the use of heated fat,” I said. “Flowers like roses are sturdier and can withstand more.”