Long chapter…

Chapter 13 – The Potions Team

“Your Majesty,” Suhee bows. “Were you serious about adding Cha Hakyeon to the potions team?”

The king doesn’t look up from the map he’s glaring at, the war mustn’t be going well. “I was.”

“I mean no disrespect, but if Hakyeon is producing so many spells shouldn’t he be kept on with the spells team?”

King Jihun gives her an indulgent, but also annoyed look. “If he’s this good at spells then how good is he at potions? The potions comes first, above anything else. Add Hakyeon to the potions team.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Make him a leader too, that way he can work unhindered.”

“That might take a few days to arrange,” Suhee informs the king with a bow.

“Just create another spot on the team. Send the most useless one to the war.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

King Jihun looks back up from his map and raises an eyebrow. “Were there any other issues?”

“…Hakyeon may have added a tongue-swelling potion to the food at last night’s party. The palace cooks are getting a lot of complaints.”

To Suhee’s annoyance the king laughs, he always did whenever she told him something Hakyeon had done. Despite the numerous things Hakyeon had managed to do, he never got reprimanded and Suhee was afraid to see how far he’d try push them. The king practically had the young sorcerer on a pedestal and she wasn’t willing to see which side the king would pick if she tried to scold the boy.

“Fire them all and hire new ones to appease them. I’m sure you can create an antidote in no time.”

Suhee bows. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

The magic advisor bows her way from the room and lets the scowl appear. That brat was making more work for her again. She catches the arm of a young guard and he squeaks in alarm, thinking he was in trouble for leaving his post. He was just going to the toilet, it was five in the morning he doubts the Anyethi was even awake, not that he could do anything anyway.

“Yes?” he asks innocently.

“Get me Jaehwan.”

The guard bows, half in relief and half out of respect. “Right away.”

She watches the guard run off and clicks her tongue, while she waits for Jaehwan she can get rid of one of the sorcerers on the potions team.

“Jaehwan!”

The guard whips around at the sound of his name and comes face to face with Sungsoo. The other guard stops before him and pants for a few seconds before grinning up at him.

“I’ve been looking for you for ages!”

“Why?” Jaehwan asks.

Sungsoo was supposed to be stationed near the Anyethi’s door again, what was he doing here? Jaehwan doesn’t get to ask that because Sungsoo has already begun talking.

“I just saw Suhee, she says she wants to talk to you.”

Jaehwan has a pretty good idea as to what this was about. He sighs in resignation.

“I’ll go now then.”

“You’re off tonight, right? Want to come with us into the city?”

“I’ll see how it goes.”

He did want to go, he just had a lot of other things on.

Sungsoo rolls his eyes. “You used to hang out with us all the time!”

Jaehwan laughs. “Sorry. Maybe next time.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sungsoo grins, elbowing his friend. “I have to get back to my post quickly. Good luck with Suhee.”

“Right,” Jaehwan mutters as the fellow guard sprints back the way he’d come.

He didn’t really want to go see Suhee but he didn’t have a choice.

“I told you to keep him away from the guest areas!” Suhee yells.

Jaehwan bows in apology again.

“I spoke to you about this just yesterday morning, Jaehwan. Why am I constantly having to sort out issues involving Cha Hakyeon?!”

It did feel like Jaehwan was constantly being told off by Suhee because of Hakyeon; he didn’t have too much of an issue with it to be honest. He hadn’t talked to Hakyeon about it, but he thought the sorcerer was testing how far he could push them before getting in actual trouble. After being praised by the king last night Hakyeon seems to have stepped up the game.

“How did he even get into the kitchens? Weren’t you with him the whole time?”

“You told me to assist him with anything he was making if he asked.”

Suhee doesn’t seem impressed by Jaehwan’s answer. He’s scolded for a further ten minutes before he’s allowed to leave, warned about the future consequences of Hakyeon causing trouble.

He exits the office with a sigh, softly closing the door so not to provoke further scolding from Suhee. With another sigh he sets off down the hallway, paying no attention to the shorter man that falls into step with him.

The prince reaches up and smacks Jaehwan on the back of the head. “What did you do this time?” he demands jokingly before nudging the guard. “You weren’t sneaking snacks again, were you?”

Jaehwan groans. He’d stolen food from the kitchen once. And he’d been very hungry. And it was years ago.

“Minho,” he complains at being teased for this again. “It’s Hakyeon, again. Why are you making me watch him?”

The prince laughs. “Because he’s powerful. Besides, I thought you liked him.”

“I do,” the younger man whines. “But he keeps getting me in trouble! Suhee is threatening to fire me!”

Minho rolls his eyes. “I’ll just rehire you as my personal guard if she does.”

Jaehwan groans and the prince links their arms. “Let’s go. I just received a file from over the border.”

The guard’s eyebrows lift, he can’t believe how quickly the prince was working to establish good relations with the other countries behind his father’s back. Hopefully he’ll be able to keep this up without being caught, there were only so many reasons the prince had to leave the palace.

“I don’t understand what any of this means,” Jaehwan states, looking through the documents before him.

Prince Minho chuckles. “It’s a good thing I do then. It’s the outline for a peace treaty the country will enter when the kingdom falls.”

“Oh. With who?”

“All the countries surrounding us. They’ve also offered support until we can establish a proper government and get our own economy working.”

Jaehwan doesn’t really understand the workings of it all. He doesn’t get how getting rid of the royal family could throw the country out of whack, it just didn’t make sense to him.

“It’s almost eight, you should probably go and get Hakyeon to the lab.”

The guard agrees, hanging around the sorcerer would be way more interesting than hanging around the prince and his documents.

“Hakyeon!” Jaehwan calls through the door. “You’re going to be late.”

Hakyeon wrenches the door open with a yawn and sets off down the hallway. “I don’t get why we need to work between specific times. I’m way more productive at night.”

“I don’t get why I have to walk you to work,” Jaehwan counters.

“You look tired.”

“I was on duty after the party last night. Why did you the tongue-swelling potion to the food? You never told me.”

After being praised by the king and then watching the king leave, Hakyeon had convinced Jaehwan to sneak him into the kitchen. The result had been a hundred guests with swollen tongues who were all thoroughly unimpressed with the palace cooks, thinking it had been something they had done.

“I wanted to test the base of the potion and see if it would react with–” Hakyeon stops himself with a frown. “Did you get in trouble again because of me?”

Hakyeon laughs at the look Jaehwan gives him. “Sorry, sorry.”

The door to the lab is closed so anyone walking past can’t see inside – and so stray spells don’t escape – and as always Jaehwan takes up his post outside. He yawns, leaning back against the wall and preparing his mind for the boredom to come.

He’s barely there for an hour when he blinks and Suhee is in front of him.

“Would you pay attention?!” she snaps at him. “Zoning out like that! You’re a guard!”

“Sorry,” Jaehwan bows.

“Honestly,” she mutters. “I walked down the hallway as loudly as I could and you still didn’t look up.”

He bows again and can’t help thinking that his day had already involved a lot of bowing.

“The king has need of you,” Suhee tells him. “Off you go. Don’t bother with Hakyeon for the rest of the day.”

Great, Jaehwan grumbles to himself as he sets off towards the king. More bowing.

“Hakyeon.”

Hakyeon looks up from his work, annoyed at being interrupted. The annoyance doesn’t disappear when he realizes it’s Suhee, he just does a better job at hiding it.

“Hakyeon,” she calls again. “You’re being moved to the potions team.”

A startled murmuring makes its way around the room among the sorcerers. The potions team worked on inventing new potions and had direct access to rare ingredients. It was considered a privilege to be able to join the team but Hakyeon is suspicious more than anything.

“May I ask why I’ve been added to the team?”

“A spot opened up just recently and the king, who is impressed with your work so far, thought you would do well.”

He finds it unlikely that a spot would just ‘open up’ but Hakyeon gets the feeling that he isn’t allowed to protest. He puts aside the ingredients he’d been using for a new spell and stretches.

“Let’s go then.”

The first thing he notes is that Jaehwan isn’t in the hallway. Before he can ask Suhee had started to explain that he was with the king for the rest of the day.

“Don’t cause any trouble,” she warns.

He stops himself from saying that he never causes any trouble, she doesn’t appear to be in a good mood and he didn’t want to get Jaehwan scolded again today.

Hakyeon had sort of figured that he’d be doing the same thing with the potions as he had been with the spells, inventing ones that could help the army, so he wasn’t expecting Suhee to give him a run down on what he was doing as they walked towards the potions lab.

“You’re tasked with creating a specific potion for the king, Hakyeon. So far nobody has had any luck and we’re hoping that you’ll be able to figure it out and the king is becoming impatient by the lack of progress.”

Hakyeon lights up a little at the thought of a challenge but it fades quickly. If the king was so desperate for this potion, and the sorcerers were having trouble creating it, then it must be a pretty powerful potion.

“What kind of potion is it?” he asks evenly. “Why are they having so much trouble?”

“It’s never been made before.”

“Wait,” Hakyeon frowns. “You said ‘create.’”

“Is there a difference?”

Hakyeon knows that Suhee knows that there is a difference, she’s a sorcerer too after all.

“Creating a potion implies that it already exists and that you’re trying to make it with some idea even if the whole method isn’t known. Inventing means you’re starting from scratch with no idea.”

“We do have some idea, obviously.”

Hakyeon doesn’t get to ask what she means by that because they reach the potion lab. Instead of leading him inside, like he thought she would, she stops.

“You’ve been made the leader of the team working on this potion.”

That surprises Hakyeon more than anything else that had happened today. He’d been here for a little over two months and he was already leading a team. Were they setting him up for a fall?

Suhee motions towards the door and then stalks off. Hakyeon tuts in annoyance and enters the lab. It appears that each corner of the room is a numbered section with a different team in each. The moment he enters a woman beckons him over to section three.

“Hakyeon?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Great. I’m Subin, I used to lead the team.”

She doesn’t seem too bitter about no longer being the leader. Subin quickly introduces him to the other sorcerers in their team – she glosses over her answer when he asks why a spot had opened up – and suggests they start straight away.

“What are we trying to do exactly?” he questions, eyeing the messy work stations.

“Suhee didn’t tell you?” Subin wonders with a frown.

“No.”

“Oh, well we’re trying to create a teleportation potion.”

Hakyeon feels his stomach sink and it’s only then that he bothers to actually look around the room. Section one has a large tank with a mermaid and then another tank that one of the team members is climbing out of, shaking his head at a failure. Section two has a woman who at first he thinks is just abnormally tall, until he sees that she’s a centaur, chained tightly to where she stands with a large number of charmed chains. Section four has a number of small cages but only appears to have minor creatures in them. He knows who he’s going to see in his section, section three, before he even turns his eyes towards the cage.

He zones out of the conversation, staring at Leo with his heart pounding so fast it hurts. He can’t do this. He can’t experiment on Leo… or any of these creatures for that matter. When he finally begins to pull himself together what he hears horrifies him.

“…maybe if we could use his heartstrings then–”

“No!” Hakyeon yells, surprising even himself. The whole room had turned to stare at him but the other sections quickly go back to work.

If he let them do it their way they’d kill Leo. If he was here, until he figured out a way to escape with Leo, he could at least keep the Anyethi alive. He couldn’t just leave Leo here with these sorcerers, they’d cut him to bits if they continued to fail at making progress on the potion.

“Why not?” Subin demands. “Heartstrings are one of the most powerful ingredients you can get from a top-level creature!”

“That would kill him,” Hakyeon replies as evenly as he can. “We only have one Anyethi. He’s too valuable. We have to find a way to make this potion using his hair, fingernails or blood. Blood from top-level creatures isn’t really helpful in potions where you’re trying to utilize their natural abilities so we should stick to nails and hair.”

Leo’s eyes widen at the words. In surprise? In fear? Hakyeon doesn’t know but he’s already trying to figure out what he’s going to say to the Anyethi later. He’s is trying to apologise to Leo with only his eyes but the Anyethi has looked away and his team is conversing again.

“How long do you think this potion will take the make?”

As long as I can make it take, Hakyeon thinks to himself. “It’ll be a long while. Not only do we have to get the right base, but ingredients, brewing time, and spells will also take a long time to figure out.”

“We’ve just been randomly guessing,” one of the members mutters.

“And that’s why you’ve made no progress,” Hakyeon tells him.

They lower their heads and manage to look embarrassed. Only Subin looks annoyed by the comment but Hakyeon doesn’t really care.

“We’ll begin by figuring out the base. Most likely we can use a…” he trails off, pursing his lips when he sees a bloody stain with something in it. “Actually first this whole area needs to be cleaned.”

Leo had always been reluctant to talk about what he got up to during the day, mostly because he could see how angry Hakyeon got over it – Hakyeon thought he was hiding it well, apparently not – but Hakyeon knew about the experiments and he was going to stop it.

“First off, the Anyethi needs to have nothing in his system and has to be healthy. If not it can affect the potion and throw us off track. Second, I’ll take care of getting the hair and nails. Third, consult me if you have any ideas and I’ll consider them.”

Hakyeon wanted to give a much longer list but didn’t. He didn’t think ‘the Anyethi doesn’t need to be in the lab unless I’m getting hair or nails’ would go down well given the general attitude he could see towards creatures in the room.

Leo slowly looks up as Hakyeon states his list. He looks confused but Hakyeon can’t really do anything right now.

It’s only as the day goes on that Hakyeon realises he doesn’t know at what time Leo is allowed out. How didn’t he know this? There were a number of times Hakyeon had seen Leo around the palace during the day, was it random then? Hakyeon figures he’ll just ask.

“Generally we let him out at night when we’ve finished working or when the king has use of him,” Subin explains. “We’re supposed to take him to his room. Sometimes we don’t need him or he’s still under the effects of a potion, in that case we just let him go for the day. Suhee told us he’s allowed to wander then.”

Hakyeon holds back asking why he needs to be in a cage when he couldn’t do any magic or transform but the answer is staring him right in the face. So he knows his place. He glowers to himself and then calls time for the day.

“We don’t normally finish until after dinner,” Subin tells him.

“We now finish at dinner time and start after breakfast,” Hakyeon replies. “Everybody can leave.”

Nobody does and instead they watch him approach Leo’s cage. He didn’t want to treat Leo badly but with their eyes trained on him he doesn’t have much of a choice. Subin watches his approach with an embarrassed look on her face, like she’s trying to help him save face.

“You need a key to unlock it. It’s charmed so magic can’t do it.”

Hakyeon can’t help meeting her eyes with a challenge in his own as he places his hand over the lock. Not two seconds later it clicks violently and opens. Their mouths fall open as it suddenly becomes clear that Hakyeon is on a different level to them.

“No key needed,” he smiles with no warmth before turning to Leo. “Get out.”

Leo does as he’s told and crawls out before climbing to his feet. He won’t meet Hakyeon’s eye and the sorcerer feels his heart clench.

“I’ll take him back to his room. See you all tomorrow at eight.”

His team watches him guide the Anyethi into the hallway but don’t follow.

The walk to Leo’s room is done in silence and when he gets to the door he expects to be turned away by the guard. He isn’t, and for the first time he freely and openly enters the Anyethi’s room.

He wastes no time, throwing up a silencing spell over the room the second the door is closed. Leo is staring at the floor, unmoving from where he had stepped into the room, still trying to process the day.

Hakyeon isn’t thinking when he cups the Leo’s face in his hands and kisses him. Leo is taken by surprise but he doesn’t pull away from the sorcerer.

All day he hadn’t known what to feel. Had Hakyeon been lying to him for weeks? Was Hakyeon just as horrible as the rest of the sorcerers? He didn’t know.

He’d been confused by what Hakyeon had ordered, only his nails and hair were to be used. At first he’d thought that meant Hakyeon was trying to protect him from being cut into, but then he’d thought about it and realised that, in terms of potion making, it was a smart move. He doesn’t know much about potions but it made sense to use the two things that grow the fastest when you only have one creature.

When Hakyeon kisses him the confusion clears a little and he feels bad for doubting Hakyeon. He feels like crying when the kiss breaks and Hakyeon can feel his shaky breath against his own lips.

“I’m sorry,” Hakyeon murmurs, tangling his fingers in Leo’s hair and drawing him into a hug. “I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

The Anyethi’s breath catches as he wraps his arms around Hakyeon’s waist. “Okay,” he whispers, feeling his cheeks become wet.