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My phone buzzed in my bag.

I didn’t check it.

My body wanted to. My fingers twitched toward the zipper. Some pathetic part of me wanted his name on the screen, wanted an apology, a command, proof he was thinking about me with that gorgeous, ruined face.

I crossed two blocks with my collar pulled high. Bellflower & Bone sat between a hex shop and a cursed antiques store. I understood work. Work had tasks, work had scissors, buckets, ribbon, invoices, customers, and old women who yelled at plants until they behaved. Work would take my mind off whatever fresh hell my life had become.

Work did not ask me whether I loved the man who had lied to me, and right now, I didn’t want to think about any of that.

Bellflower & Bone smelled like damp earth, flowers, and magic. Buckets of flowers crowded the floor. Roses leaned in their metal tubs with their pretty little carnivorous faces open to the room. A cluster of bone lilies twitched when I passed, their petals turning toward the mark under my collar like nosy little ghosts.

“Mind your business,” I muttered to them.

Mrs. Kori glanced up from the counter when I came in, her cloudy yellow eyes sweeping over my coat, my face, the collar pulled high around my neck. Her horns caught the light from the hanging lamps, dark and curved close to her skull. She looked ancient and annoyed, which was her default state.

“You look terrible.”

“Good morning to you too.”

“It’s barely morning.” She tied twine around a bundle of black death irises, fingers quick despite the swollen knuckles. “Sybil called out with a hexed stomach, Rena broke a vase full of mourning orchids, and a groom sent his mistress’s flowers to his wife by accident. The day has been interesting, and it hasn’t even begun.”

“Tell me about it,” I grumbled.

Her gaze landed on my throat. “Oh?”

I tugged the collar higher. “I don’t want to talk about it.” The mark pulsed beneath the fabric.

She nodded. “You want tea?”

I swallowed. “No.”

“You want to try and lie better?”

“I want a task,” I said, pulling on my purple apron.

That softened something in her face. Not pity. Thank god. I would have walked into traffic. She nodded toward the back. “The Hydra blooms need cutting. I’m hoping to get them to multiply before an event tomorrow. Funeral order at ten. Wedding order out by noon. Do not let the white wolf roses bite. I don’t want them getting bloody before the wedding.”

“No promises, wolf roses are vicious little buds.” I chuckled. “Hopefully the bride didn’t put them in her bouquet.”

Mrs. Kori shot me a look that said she absolutely did. “I warned her, but she just had to have it her way.” She shrugged.

The back room swallowed me in cool air and wet greenery. Buckets lined the walls. Stems crowded the worktable. Ribbon rolls hung by color, though half of them had migrated because no one in this shop respected systems except me.

I cut the first Hydra bloom and set the stem aside, then cut another at an angle. Strip the lower leaves. Into the water. Next. And again. My body remembered what my brain could not hold. Breathe. Scissors, stem, bucket. Breathe. Scissors, stem, bucket. Do not check your phone. Do not touch the mark. Do not think about red eyes and carved abs.

Work saved me for a while.

I trimmed stems until my fingers smelled like sap. I stripped thorns from roses. I carried buckets from the cooler until my arms ached. Mrs. Kori barked instructions from the front, and I followed them because flowers made sense. Cut here. Tie there. Water line below the leaves. Rotate the arrangement so the ugly gap faced the wall. Hide bruised petals where no one paying two hundred dollars for grief would notice.

That, I understood.

I understood making things pretty enough to pass inspection. I had been doing that my whole life.

At eleven, a man in a funeral suit cried over carnations and apologized to me for crying, which felt insane because I had sobbed into Sam’s shoulder six hours ago and still had mascara crusted beneath one eye. He kept saying his sister hated lilies. Hated them, and everyone kept sending lilies.

“What did she like?” I asked.

He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. “Daisies. Cheap, old-world ones.”