Free The Potioneer (Shadeborn Book 3) by K.C. Finn Page A

he’d given the order for them all to gather in the kitchen. To Lily’s intense displeasure, Baptiste was also missing from the group. When she could stand the silent, inquiring stares of the Imaginique’s performers no longer, Lily changed her spritely pace, and bolted right out of the room. She strode down the corridor, intent on climbing the stairs to seek Novel out, but the briefest glance down the hallway froze her in her tracks.
    The illusionist was standing in the foyer, just visible through a two-inch gap in the door that marked the corridor as Private: Staff Only . And he was crying. Novel’s shoulders shook with the kind of intense sadness that Lily had never even pictured him feeling, and his pale face – now devoid of stage makeup – was shimmering with salt water. One hand covered his brow and eyes, the other clutching at his stomach with tight-fisted tension, crushing the soft black fabric of his fine waistcoat between strained fingers. His lips, the lips that Lily had kissed not long ago, were turned in a raw grimace, half panic, half sorrow, as he began to speak in the dimly-lit space.
    “I just…” Novel stumbled over his words. “Is it enough? I don’t feel like I’m doing enough for her.”
    Lily padded closer to the gap in the doorway, watching as a hand rose to rest on Novel’s shoulder. Its long nails and the wrist-bracelet filled with tiny, grey bones made her freeze once again, as if a stone had dropped into her stomach. Baptiste’s grip on Novel was strangely gentle, and the illusionist let go of his face to throw his head back, sucking up the tears his wracked sobbing had produced.
    “It’s all you can do for now,” Baptiste replied, his voice as low and serene as ever it had been. “Get in there. She’s waiting on you.”
    And Lily wished that Novel hadn’t found his resolve so quickly, because she really didn’t want to be standing there when he suddenly pushed the staff-only door wide open. But the dim golden light from the foyer’s chandelier bathed her in its glow, and Novel’s tear-stained skin was cast into shadow as their mutually-shocked expressions met. Lily stood, open-mouthed and quite incapable of changing that look, breathing so hard that she could see her chest rising in the very limits of her vision. Novel stepped closer, taking hold of her hands in that wordless moment, and Lily saw the bright flame of their matched souls as it sparked into life.
    It gave her hope, and the strength to smile. And that was all Novel seemed to need to dry the very last of his tears.
    *
    “I trust you all recall Lily’s account of the events of last August,” Novel said, his stern features fully replaced as he addressed the kitchen full of performers. “When Maxime Schoonjans used the enchanted mirror in my dressing room to pass a message to us all?”
    Lily nodded along with the others, now seated beside Jazzy and holding fast to her friend’s hand. Novel’s intense sorrow still hung in the back of Lily’s mind, but the strength he had found by the time they re-entered the kitchen was inspiring enough to keep her rapt with hope.
    “Lily smashed the mirror,” Lawrence interjected, his expression one of fascination. “That’s how we heard it.”
    “Indeed she did,” Novel answered, biting his lip for one small, tense moment. “Many of you know how I feel about superstitions, but not all of you know the reason why. Where most beings can get by if they step beneath a ladder or knock over a shaker of salt, the shadeborn are rather more susceptible to such instances of-”
    “Bad luck?” Dharma interjected. “That’s why you won’t let me have peacock feathers in-”
    “I do not believe in luck,” Novel spoke over her, his tone louder, but quaking a little more than before. “Luck has nothing to do with breaking a mirror.”
    “Seven years,” Lily murmured, and she met Novel’s eyes with a tremor of worry returning to her own. She could remember Salem saying