Grace
Edmund’s words hang in the air long after he’s gone.
Allies who are willing to watch you burn it down.
He’s right. My father wants to put me back in my cage. My mother wants to smooth things over. Isobel wants to watch me fail. Edmund… I’m not sure what Edmund wants yet. But his observation was a scalpel, cutting right to the heart of the matter.
There is only one person who has ever looked at Theo Durant with a flicker of doubt. Only one person whose love for me is sharper than her desire for social standing.
My grandmother.
I don’t bother going back to the main house. I walk the length of our estate to the old stone wall separating our property from hers. There’s a gate, long overgrown with ivy. It’s always unlocked.
Anya Teller’s home is not a manicured mansion. It is a sprawling stone house swallowed by a garden that has gone beautifully, terrifyingly wild. Not with weeds, but with purpose. Rare night-blooming jasmine climbs the walls, wolfsbane grows in vicious purple clumps near the foundation, and the air is thick with the scent of a thousand competing botanicals. It is a perfumer’s armory.
I find her in the greenhouse, a humid cathedral of glass and steel. She’s standing over a bench of orchids, their speckled petals a dozen shades of poison and blush. She doesn’t turn as I approach, her back ramrod straight in a simple black dress. Her silver hair is pinned in a severe knot.
“The last time you used that gate, you were twelve and hiding from your mother after you broke a vase,” she says, her voice like gravel and honey. She snips a pale, alien-looking orchid from its stem with a pair of silver shears.
“I’m not hiding this time,” I say.
“No.” She finally turns, her eyes, the same shade of gray as mine, are just as sharp as I remember. They rake over me, from my disheveled hair to the defiant crimson of my dress. “You’re hunting.”
She gestures with the shears to a wrought iron chair. “Sit. Tell me whose world you decided to set on fire at your own birthday party.”
I sit. The metal is cool against my skin. “Theo Durant’s world, for a start.”
Anya lets out a short, dry laugh. “Good. I never liked him. He has your father’s ambition but none of his backbone. His smile never reaches his eyes.”
Her instant agreement steadies me. I take a breath. “It’s more than that, Grandmother. It’s him. It’s Isobel.”
“The cuckoo,” she murmurs, placing the orchid carefully into a specimen box. “I’ve always said it. A pretty little bird who pushes the real chicks out of the nest.”
“She wants what I have. And Theo will help her get it.” I choose my words carefully. I can’t say ‘he will kill me for my inheritance’. Not yet. Maybe never. “He doesn’t love me. He wants control of Teller Aromas. I was just the easiest path. The docile, artistic daughter.”
“And you are no longer docile,” she finishes for me, her eyes narrowing. “What changed, Grace? Yesterday you were picking out china patterns. Today you declare war in the ballroom.”
“I woke up,” I say, the simple truth of it making my voice raw. “I saw everything clearly for the first time. The way he looks at her when he thinks no one is watching. The way she flatters him, undermines me with a sweet word and a sympathetic smile.”
My hands are shaking. I clench them in the folds of my dress.
“I believe you,” Anya says, and the words are a balm on a wound I didn’t know was open. “Your father sees a merger. Your mother sees a wedding. I see a shark and a snake. I told them not to take Isobel in. You don’t bring a stray cat into a house of canaries.”
“Father won’t listen to me. He’s ordered me to apologize. To accept the proposal.”
“Of course he has,” she sniffs. “Robert always preferred a profitable lie to an inconvenient truth.” She closes the lid on the specimen box. “So. What do you need from me? Money? A lawyer? A strong dose of foxglove in Theo’s morning coffee?”
A smile tugs at my lips, the first genuine one in this new life. “Independence.”
Her eyebrows raise. “Explain.”
“I told Father I’m taking a role at the company. But I can’t work there. Isobel has free rein of the labs. She’d contaminate my work, steal my formulas. She already has.” I stop myself, the last part slipping out.
Anya’s eyes sharpen. “She has stolen from you?”
“She calls it ‘inspiration’. She takes my notes, my discarded trials, and claims them as her own intuitive genius.” The bitterness is acid in my throat.
“I see.” Anya walks over to a heavy wooden desk in the corner of the greenhouse. She unlocks a drawer and pulls out a single, ornate brass key on a leather cord. “Then you won’t be working at Teller Aromas.”
She holds the key out to me. It’s heavy. Solid. Real.
“What is this?”
“The key to the old conservatory lab,” she says. “Behind this greenhouse. I had it fully updated five years ago. Gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, fractional distillation columns. Everything you need and more. No one has set foot in it but me.”
My breath catches in my throat. A lab. My own lab.
“And for supplies?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.
She pulls a slim black card from the same drawer and places it on top of the key in my palm. “An account. With enough seed funding to launch a small nation. It is not tied to your father or Teller Aromas in any way. It is tied to me.”
I stare at the key and the card. They are more than objects. They are a declaration of faith. A weapon.
“Why?” I ask, my voice thick.
“Because you have Teller blood in your veins, child. Real Teller blood. We are not decorative fools who marry for convenience,” she says, her gaze fierce. “We are creators. We build empires from flowers and smoke. It’s about time you remembered that. Now go. Stop talking and start working. Don’t disappoint me.”
I stand, the weight of the key a comforting anchor. “I won’t.”
As I turn to leave, a voice from the greenhouse entrance stops me. A voice like poisoned honey.
“There you are! Grace, darling, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Isobel stands there, framed by blooming bougainvillea. She’s changed into a pale yellow sundress, a picture of innocence and concern. Her eyes flicker from my face to my grandmother, then to the key in my hand.
“Grandmother Anya,” she says, her tone dripping with false reverence. “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”
“You are,” Anya says flatly, turning her back to prune a fern.
Isobel ignores the dismissal, her focus entirely on me. She rushes to my side, grabbing my free hand. Her skin is cool and clammy. “Oh, Grace. Father is an absolute tyrant this morning. Mother is sedated. You must be so frightened. I told them you just needed some air.”
“I’m not frightened, Isobel,” I say, pulling my hand away. “And I don’t need you to speak for me.”
Her smile falters for a fraction of a second. “Of course not. I was just so worried. When you ran off… it was so erratic. So unlike you.”
There it is. The narrative. The foundation she’s laying. Grace is unstable.
Her eyes fix on the key. “What’s that?”
“A key,” I say, closing my fingers around it.
“To what? Are you moving out? Is that it?” Her voice is a frantic whisper, laced with manufactured panic. “Oh, you mustn’t. That would only make things worse. You need to be with family right now.”
“It’s the key to my new laboratory,” I state clearly, watching for her reaction.
Her face goes blank. True, utter shock. It’s magnificent. “Your… laboratory?”
“Grandmother Anya has graciously provided me with a space to work on my own projects. Independently.”
Isobel’s eyes dart from me to Anya’s back. The shock curdles into something else. Envy. Pure, molten envy. She recovers quickly, arranging her features back into a mask of sisterly support.
“Oh. Oh, how wonderful,” she says, her voice a little too high. “But… are you sure that’s a good idea? Right now? You’re under so much stress. Perfumery requires a clear head.”
She gestures vaguely around the greenhouse. “All these chemicals and formulas… it’s terribly complex. My process is much more organic. I just… feel the scents, you know? It’s a gift, I suppose. Not something you can learn from a book.”
Her condescension is a physical thing, a film of slime I want to scrub from my skin. She’s trying to plant a seed of doubt. To remind me that she is the ‘natural talent’ and I am just the studious technician.
I look her dead in the eye. “My talent is in chemistry, Isobel. In precision. In understanding the molecular bonds that you can only ‘feel’. I would think you’d appreciate that, after all the years you spent getting ‘inspiration’ from my notebooks.”
Her mask cracks. Her blue eyes flash with genuine venom. For a single, glorious second, the cuckoo shows its beak.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she hisses, her voice low and sharp.
“Don’t you?”
She regains control, a shaky smile plastered back on her face. “You’re not well, Grace. You’re saying awful, hurtful things. I’m just trying to help.”
“Thank you for your concern,” I say, my voice dripping with ice. “It has been noted. And dismissed.”
I turn my back on her before she can respond, giving my grandmother a nod of gratitude. “Thank you, Grandmother.”
“Don’t thank me,” Anya calls to my retreating back. “Create something worthy of my investment.”
I walk out of the greenhouse, past a stunned and seething Isobel, without a backward glance. I follow the winding stone path behind the greenhouse to a conservatory I haven’t entered in fifteen years. The brass key feels warm in my hand.
It slides into the lock with a satisfying click. The door swings open onto a room filled with gleaming chrome, amber glass, and the clean, sharp scent of ozone and potential. My sanctuary. My fortress.
My armory.
Isobel thinks my talent comes from books. Theo thinks it can be stolen and bottled. They are both about to find out how wrong they are. I’m not here to create a perfume. I’m here to distill my revenge.
