The ingredients arrived three days later.

  Not all of them. Not even half.

  But enough to start.

  Milo showed up in the workshop doorway with a crate under one arm, dropped it on my workbench without ceremony, and left before I could ask questions.

  Inside: dried hibiscus, bundled tight and smelling faintly sweet. A jar of something labeled in characters I couldn’t read—shungiku, I hoped. A bottle of cheap red wine that looked like it had been pulled from someone’s basement. And a note in handwriting that wasn’t Milo’s.

  Rest coming. Don’t waste these.

  No signature.

  Didn’t need one.

  I lifted the hibiscus first, crushing a few petals between my fingers. The scent bloomed immediately—floral, slightly tart, the kind of smell that made you think of summer even when the city was gray and cold outside.

  Good quality. Better than I expected.

  The shungiku was harder to evaluate. I opened the jar carefully, half-expecting it to be the wrong thing entirely. The leaves were dark green, serrated edges, packed in salt. I pulled one out, rinsed it under the sink, and tasted it.

  Bitter. Sharp. Clean.

  Yeah. This was right.

  I still needed borage—the most important ingredient, according to Dimitri’s notes—but I could start testing the base. Learn how the hibiscus and shungiku interacted. Build the foundation before adding the keystone.

  I was already pulling out pots, filling the sink, measuring water.

  My hands moved with a confidence I didn’t entirely feel yet.

  But I was learning.

  And learning felt better than anything else in my life right now.

  The first attempt was a disaster.

  I followed Dimitri’s instructions exactly—steeped the hibiscus low and slow, added the shungiku at the end, strained it through cloth.

  The liquid came out the right color. Deep red-black, like old blood.

  But when I held it, trying to pour my intent into it the way I did with Chameleon, something felt wrong.

  The brew didn’t settle.

  It didn’t find its shape.

  It just sat there in the bottle, inert and ordinary, like I’d made expensive tea and nothing more.

  I tried to force it. Concentrated harder. Held the image of truth—clean, undeniable, unavoidable truth—in my head until my temples throbbed.

  Nothing.

  The brew stayed dead.

  I poured it down the sink and started over.

  The second attempt, I adjusted the proportions.

  More hibiscus. Less shungiku. A longer steep time.

  Same result.

  Dead liquid. No pull. No weight.

  I was missing something.

  I went back to the book, reading Dimitri’s notes more carefully this time, looking for the thing I’d skipped over in my eagerness.

  And there it was, buried in a margin note so small I’d almost missed it:

  The base matters. Wine carries intent differently than water. Spirit differently than wine. Choose based on what truth you want.

  I stared at that line.

  Choose based on what truth you want.

  What the hell did that mean?

  I looked at the cheap wine Milo had brought. Red. Probably terrible. The kind of thing you drank when you couldn’t afford better and didn’t care how it tasted going down.

  Was that the truth I was brewing?

  Harsh? Bitter? Forced?

  Or was there another kind?

  I sat there for a long time, turning that thought over in my head.

  Chameleon worked because I understood what I was making. Absence. Indifference. The gentle art of being ignored.

  But truth?

  Truth wasn’t gentle.

  Truth didn’t ask permission.

  And maybe that was the problem.

  Maybe I was trying to make this brew too soft.

  I started again.

  This time, I didn’t steep the hibiscus gently.

  I boiled it hard. Let it darken until the color was almost black. Let the bitterness rise until the workshop smelled like crushed flowers and regret.

  I added the shungiku while the mixture was still hot—not after it cooled, like Dimitri’s notes said. I wanted the sharpness to bite into the base, to scar it.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  And when I held the bottle, I didn’t think about truth as some abstract concept.

  I thought about the interrogation room I’d never been in but could imagine clearly.

  The man tied to the chair.

  The questions that needed answers.

  The moment when resistance broke and words spilled out like blood from a cut.

  That kind of truth.

  Hard. Unavoidable. Sharp enough to hurt.

  The brew settled.

  Not completely. Not perfectly.

  But it settled.

  I felt the weight of it in my hand—subtle, like the difference between holding water and holding something that wanted to be more than water.

  It wasn’t done.

  I still needed borage. Still needed to refine the process. Still needed to test it on something other than my own imagination.

  But it was closer.

  And closer felt like victory.

  I worked late into the night, running variations.

  More hibiscus, less shungiku.

  Less hibiscus, more shungiku.

  Longer boil times. Shorter steep times.

  I filled half a dozen bottles with failed attempts, lining them up on the shelf like a graveyard of almosts.

  Some came close. Most didn’t.

  But each failure taught me something.

  The hibiscus couldn’t be rushed—if you boiled it too hard, it turned acrid and the intent slipped away.

  The shungiku needed to be fresh. The salted stuff worked, but barely. I’d need to grow my own if I wanted consistent results.

  And the wine—the wine mattered more than I’d thought. Cheap wine made cheap truth. Harsh. Unsubtle. The kind of truth that felt like an accusation.

  I needed something better.

  Not expensive. Just… cleaner.

  I made a note to ask Milo about that. See if Oscar’s operation had access to something that wasn’t bottom-shelf rot.

  By the time I stopped, it was past midnight.

  My hands were stained red from the hibiscus. My clothes smelled like crushed flowers and bitter greens. My head ached from holding intent for hours without break.

  But I wasn’t tired.

  I was wired.

  Because I could feel it now—the shape of what I was making. Not finished. Not perfect.

  But real.

  Saint’s Swallow was going to work.

  I just needed time.

  And borage.

  And maybe a few more failures before I got it right.

  The next morning, I went up to the greenhouse.

  The space still looked half-abandoned—empty tables, dusty glass, that rusted watering can sitting in the corner like a monument to neglect.

  But I’d brought seeds.

  Not many. Just a small packet of chamomile I’d picked up from a market stall on the way back from the workshop last night. Something to start with. Something to prove I could make things grow here.

  I filled one of the cracked pots with soil I’d hauled up from a supplier two blocks over—real soil, not the garbage dirt from the city streets. I planted the seeds carefully, spacing them the way the packet instructions said, watering them just enough to settle the soil without drowning them.

  Then I stepped back and looked at what I’d done.

  One pot. A dozen tiny seeds. Nothing impressive.

  But it was a start.

  I wasn’t relying on markets anymore. Wasn’t hoping the florist had what I needed or that Milo could source things fast enough.

  I was building my own supply.

  Slow. Careful. Controlled.

  That’s how you became indispensable.

  Not by being the loudest or the flashiest.

  By being the one who didn’t need anyone else to do your job.

  I watered the seeds one more time, wiped my hands on my pants, and headed back downstairs.

  When I got back to the workshop, there was another crate waiting.

  Smaller this time. A note on top.

  Borage. Fresh. Don’t fuck it up.

  I opened the crate.

  Inside, wrapped in damp cloth, were bundles of borage—leaves and flowers both, deep green with delicate blue-purple blooms that looked almost too pretty to crush into a brew.

  I lifted one bundle carefully, feeling the weight of it.

  This was it.

  The missing piece.

  I had everything now.

  Hibiscus. Shungiku. Borage. Wine.

  And intent sharp enough to cut.

  I set the borage down gently, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work.

  This time, it was going to hold.

  This time, I was going to make truth in a bottle.

  And Oscar was going to see exactly how good I was.