𝑨 𝑫𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑴 𝑰𝑺 𝑨 𝑾𝑰𝑺𝑯 𝒀𝑶𝑼𝑹 𝑯𝑬𝑨𝑹𝑻 𝑴𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑺

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑷𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝟐𝟓

The rest of the night seemed to blend together. Delphina returned to her dorm and got so caught up in her equations again that she had ordered dinner to be delivered to her dorm. The only problem was that she wasn't really paying attention when she chose the entree, and it ended up being some pasta dish loaded with spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms.

Basically, everything she hated.

Delphina just chose to ignore it and continued working. Her work had increased from simply finding a strong shielding potion to reverse engineering Varian's intended cure for his friend. From what she could tell from all the scribbles and scratches, it was a protection potion for a person's psyche. But Varian had tinkered with it so much that finding the original recipe was like trying to find Mal's soul.

It mainly consisted of holding the journal up to the light in her dorm and trying to figure out what Varian had originally listed.

For a grown man, his handwriting was god-awful.

When the journals said mental protections took time and focus, they weren't kidding. She was practically deciphering the ingredients letter by letter. So far she had managed to piece together the words 'lemongrass', 'hibiscus', and 'elderberries.'

After trying to decipher Varian's chicken scratch for another 30 minutes, Delphina huffed, dropping the notebook in frustration. Reverse engineering was taking too much time and her brain was starting to throb after the continuous effort of splitting its focus in two different directions. She flopped onto her back with a groan, massaging the sides of her head and squeezing her eyes shut.

From her bed, Audrey chuckled softly as she clicked through television channels aimlessly. "Is your brain finally getting too big for your head?" She teased. Delphina scoffed in slight amusement, dropping her hands and staring up at the canopy of her bed.

"Something like that." She murmured, glancing down to the edge of her bed, where the journal sat, still open and facing up. She was wasting time with this. She needed this potion and she needed it now. If reverse engineering Varian's work wasn't an option, then her last resort was doing it herself. If she could extract enough base magic from the water of the Enchanted Lake, she could brew what would essentially be a very potent tea.

Lemongrass, hibiscus, and elderberry wouldn't be enough, though. Delphina needed this to form an impenetrable shield around her mind. A shield that couldn't be broken by even the darkest of fae magic.

Sitting up again, Delphina flipped open the first journal, to its introduction of alchemy and listing of every herb and plant imaginable. Reaching down, she blindly felt around for her backpack before finally locating it and hauling out all of her notebooks in search of the one with the least writing in it.

Just before she began the process of crafting her new potion, her stomach growled obnoxiously and Delphina winced, remembering the lack of dinner in her system.

"Have you not eaten dinner yet?" Audrey demanded incredulously. Warily, Delphina glanced over at her roommate briefly, but quickly averted her eyes at the stern look Audrey was giving her.

Audrey Beaumont was not the kind of princess to let you skip a meal.

"I ordered the wrong thing, then never got around to getting something else." Delphina mumbled, diverting all her focus to her notebook. "It's fine."

"Delphina..."

The motherly, warning tone in Audrey's voice made Delphina cringe. She sounded too authoritative for a sixteen-year-old.

"I'm fine! I'll just have a big breakfast tomorrow."

A pillow was launched across the room, hitting Delphina directly in the face. Delphina yelped and spluttered, turning to glare at Audrey, only to see her pointing at the door firmly.