Chapter 4 The Deal

Hazel's POV

"How do you know my name?"

My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was something. Osric didn't answer right away. He just watched me from across the counter, arms loose at his sides, like the question wasn't worth the energy of a real response.

"Beatrix mentions things," he said finally.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting tonight."

I pulled the folded note halfway out of my back pocket, then stopped myself, because handing it over felt like handing him a piece of me I wasn't ready to give away. Instead I set it flat on the counter between us, still folded, and slid it toward him with one finger.

"This is in my handwriting," I said. "I didn't write it."

He looked down at the paper without touching it. For one long second, something moved behind his eyes , recognition, maybe, or the ghost of it , and then his face smoothed back into nothing at all, careful and blank in a way that felt practiced.

"That's not something I can explain," he said.

"Can't, or won't?"

"Does it matter?"

It mattered a lot, actually, but saying so out loud felt like begging, and I wasn't going to beg a stranger with gold-flecked eyes for the truth about my own aunt. I picked the note back up instead and shoved it deep into my pocket where he couldn't reach it even if he tried.

"Fine," I said. "Keep your secrets. I'll keep mine."

He almost smiled at that. Almost. One corner of his mouth twitched, then thought better of it and went still again, like a door someone had started to open and changed their mind about.

The clock above the register ticked past one in the morning. Somewhere behind that ordinary sound was a countdown I didn't fully understand yet , sunrise, poison, a debt I hadn't agreed to and couldn't explain , and every minute that passed made my chest tighter instead of looser.

"You should know something," Osric said, quieter now, none of the earlier flatness in it. "If I walk out of here without that potion, it isn't just an inconvenience for me."

"What is it, then?"

He didn't answer that either. Instead his jaw worked once, like he was chewing on the shape of the truth and deciding it wasn't safe to let out.

"Something happens," he said. "Something I'd rather avoid."

"That's it? Something happens?"

"That's it."

Frustration crawled up my throat, hot and fast. "You can't just say that and expect me to help you. You show up in the middle of the night, you know things about my aunt you won't explain, you know my name when I never gave it to you, and now you're telling me your whole life falls apart if I don't magically figure out how to brew something I've never even seen a recipe for. No. I'm done. Tell me what's actually going on, or find someone else's kitchen to fall apart in."

I meant every word of it. I really did , right up until he didn't argue at all.

He pulled the chair out from the black table instead, sat down, and reached for the nearest jar on the shelf like the conversation was already over and I'd already said yes.

"Lavender oil first," he said, mostly to himself, turning the jar to read a label that wasn't in a language I recognized. "Then we'll need something for binding. Beatrix usually uses," He stopped, glanced sideways at me like he'd caught himself saying too much, and set the jar down instead of finishing the sentence.

"I said no," I told him.

"You did."

"I meant it."

"I believe you."

He didn't move to leave. He didn't argue either. He just kept sitting there, patient as stone, laying out three more ingredients on the table in a neat row, like patience itself was a kind of pressure, and maybe it was, because my feet hadn't carried me toward the door the way they should have.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a memory shoved its way forward without asking , the exam room, six days ago, the proctor's clipboard trembling in his hand as he told me, carefully, gently, that something had gone wrong with my results. He hadn't said failed. He'd said wrong, like I was a math problem that hadn't balanced, and he'd looked at me the exact way people look at something breakable they're afraid to touch.

I hated that look. I'd hated it every single time it landed on me since.

If I walked away from this now, if I let Osric leave with nothing because I was too proud to ask what he wasn't telling me, that look would be right. I'd be exactly what everyone already suspected , someone who couldn't be trusted with anything that mattered, not even for one night.

"Moth-silk," I heard myself say. "Where does Beatrix keep it?"

Osric looked up, and for the first time since he'd walked through that door, something in his expression actually shifted , not quite surprise, but close to it, like he hadn't expected me to fold this fast, and definitely hadn't expected the thing I'd folded on.

"Second shelf," he said slowly. "Behind the jars that glow blue."

I didn't move yet. My hands stayed flat on the counter, holding myself steady while some part of my brain screamed that I'd just agreed to something I'd sworn thirty seconds ago I wouldn't touch.

"This doesn't mean I trust you," I said.

"I didn't ask you to."

"And you're still not telling me what happens if this doesn't get done."

"No," he agreed. "I'm not."

He said it so plainly, so without apology, that it almost made me laugh , the kind of laugh that isn't really about anything funny, just pressure looking for somewhere to go. I swallowed it down and walked toward the shelf he'd pointed to instead, past the glowing jars, my fingers already reaching for something I couldn't name an hour ago.

That was when I noticed the second shelf wasn't where he'd said it was.

It was a full arm's length farther back, tucked behind a curtain of dried herbs I hadn't even seen yet, in a spot no first-time visitor should have been able to guess without looking. Osric hadn't glanced over to check. He hadn't hesitated at all.

He'd just known.

I turned around slowly, moth-silk forgotten in my hand, and found him watching me with an expression that had gone carefully, deliberately empty , the kind of empty a person wears on purpose, right after they realize they've made a mistake they can't take back.