The Elnaths and the Costarias request the pleasure of your presence,
along with your family,
at the engagement party of Ecklon Elnath and Coralline Costaria,
at noon on the fifteenth of July in the garden of the Elnath Mansion;
and, pursuant, their wedding two weeks after,
at noon on the twenty-ninth of July at Kelp Cove;
please confirm your attendance as soon as possible,
by scroll to either the Elnath or Costaria home in Urchin Grove.
When Rosette looked up, her gaze fell to the rose petal tellin shell at Coralline’s collarbone. Her eyes narrowed, and her face became vicious—she looked like she wanted to snatch off the symbol of Coralline’s engagement. Coralline wrapped her fist around the shell, as though she were shielding Ecklon himself from Rosette’s gaze.
In the days since the engagement, Coralline had touched the rose petal tellin so frequently that she’d started to worry the shell’s delicate ridges would wear. She still didn’t understand why she’d had such a cold fin during Ecklon’s proposal, but, fortunately, it had evaporated just after supper. Now, she felt so excited about marrying him that she was counting the days to her engagement party (three days) and wedding (seventeen days).
“There’s still time to the wedding,” Rosette muttered. “Time in which hearts can change. Say, Epaulette hasn’t ever invited you for supper to the Mansion, has she?”
“No,” Coralline replied quietly. Although Coralline’s mother, Abalone, had invited Ecklon for supper often, Ecklon’s mother, Epaulette, had never invited Coralline, nor had she once accepted Abalone’s invitation to dine at the Costaria home.
“Your shadows aren’t good enough to grace the floors of the Mansion,” Rosette said snidely. “My mother is Epaulette’s best friend, and we have supper with the Elnaths in their Mansion once a week. Our standing is similar to theirs; like the Elnath lineage, the Delesse lineage is one of wealth and prestige. It’s my destiny, not yours, to marry Ecklon.”
Epaulette had wanted Coralline and Ecklon’s engagement party and wedding to occur many months later; Abalone had fought to set the dates for both as soon as possible. At the time, Coralline had resented the early dates, but now she understood her mother’s rationale. “Epaulette wants the engagement party and wedding to take place in the distant future,” Abalone had said, “because she’s hoping Ecklon will change his mind between now and then and marry Rosette instead of you. We need to reduce the period of time in which Rosette can play her games. . . . How do I know she’ll play games? Because I know her type—I was her type.”
“You’ve loved Ecklon six months,” Rosette said, bending her long neck such that she and Coralline were nose to nose. “I’ve loved him since I was six years old. I’ll steal him away from you before your wedding, mark my words! And I promise I’ll ruin you!” Turning on her tail, she bolted in through the door of The Conventional Cure.
Coralline found that her tailfin was quivering, and her hands were clenched so tightly at her sides that her fingers were stiff. She swam into The Irregular Remedy through the window, collecting her tray from the windowsill. Coming to hover behind her counter, she clasped the tellin at her throat anxiously, wondering whether Rosette would succeed in stealing Ecklon away from her. But Rosette couldn’t, could she? Ecklon loved Coralline, didn’t he?
“Help! HELP!”
A tubby merman entered through the door of The Irregular Remedy, his hands over his heart. Thick, charcoal-gray hair curled around his ears, even as the summit of his head remained as bare as a baby’s cheeks. Coralline recognized him as Rhodomela’s patient Agarum, but she recognized him only just, for a patchwork of veins now ran across his cheeks, and the majority of his scales had bleached from cobalt to a stark white.
He wrenched off his checkered waistcoat and dropped it to the floor. Coralline helped him onto the stretcher next to the door and surveyed his body of folds. There was no blood anywhere on him, fortunately. She could set bones straight, she could prepare remedies for aching heads and tails, she could knead faltering glands into sudden functioning, but she was terrified of blood. It acted as a sort of tranquilizer for her; as soon as it entered her nostrils, she felt dizzy. Coralline hoped Rhodomela had not noticed her fear of blood, for it could prove fatal for her budding apothecary career.
Agarum was having a heart attack, Coralline concluded from her quick examination of him. Her own heart thudding as though to compensate for his, she asked Rhodomela, “How can we save him?”
She’d expected Rhodomela’s hands to be curling around one of her urns, but her knobby fingers were instead drumming a soundless beat on her counter. “As your probation comes to an end tomorrow,” she pronounced, “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to test you. It has arrived today in the form of Agarum. Whether or not you save him will determine whether you’ll have a future at The Irregular Remedy.”
Agarum raised his head slightly and mumbled an incoherent protest.
Coralline stared at Rhodomela. Saving lives was not a game, nor was Coralline’s career. Also, how could Rhodomela rely on just one case, and such a difficult case, in deciding Coralline’s future?
Rhodomela’s eyes twinkled, and her onyx tailfin flicked restlessly—she was enjoying Coralline’s distress. “You’re in a race against time, Coralline,” she said. “To help you, I offer you use of my full array of medications.”
Rhodomela slid out from behind her counter to create space for Coralline to enter. It was the first time she’d ever invited Coralline behind her counter. Although a healer’s medicines appeared to be her most public possession, visible to anyone who entered a clinic, they were actually her most private, accessible to none but her, barricaded from the world by the fence that was her counter. And so, as Coralline slid behind Rhodomela’s counter, she felt as uncomfortable as though she were entering Rhodomela’s bedroom.
Rhodomela’s shelves were so heavily stacked with urns that they’d turned crooked under their burdens. Coralline perused the labels of some of the urns: Temple Tingler, Troubled Tail Tonic, Spine Straightener, Rib Rigidity Release, Appendix Unclencher, Ear Cleaner. From her textbooks, she knew that critical cases often required combining two or three pre-existing medications, sometimes quite unexpected ones. Which urns should she choose?
She pulled out one marked Artery Opener—given that it was intended for the heart, it should be sensible as one of the medications in her blend, she thought.
Agarum’s arm dropped off his chest and swung off the stretcher. Practically all residues of cobalt had drained out of his tail by now, Coralline saw, leaving all but a handful of scales a bleached white. He lay just a finger’s width from death.