I nodded and turned for the door.
I'd taken barely two steps when Hope's voice stopped me.
"Wait."
"Since you're not a Henson anymore, the things that belong to the Henson family should go back to them, shouldn't they?"
I knew exactly what she meant.
I drew the black jade tablet out from inside my coat.
It was the token of the Henson family heir.
In my last life, after I took it from my master's hand, I had kept it on me always.
Not because I clung to the title. Because to me it was his acknowledgment of me, and my promise to the Hensons.
I turned, crossed to Nathaniel, and held the tablet out.
"Here."
He reached out and took it, glanced down, and the curve at the corner of his mouth finally slipped free.
As he moved to put it away, I said, "Wait."
Hope's gaze sharpened, and she leaned half a step forward.
She thought I was about to take it back.
I didn't look at her. My voice stayed level.
"The CardioFlow capsule in development. The core formula uses one ingredient, red sage, and it has to be the Crestbrook-grown variety. From any other region the potency drops by forty percent."
"The extraction process for the ligusticum can't use supercritical CO₂. Only ethanol extraction, or you lose too much of the active compound."
"And the pilot-batch trials for the current run still have three rounds left to go. The raw records are in the file box in the second cabinet in the R&D department."
Nathaniel went blank for a beat. The smile on his face faltered.
"One more thing. CardioFlow is in Phase II clinical trials, with three hundred and twenty patients already enrolled."
"Once you take over, watch the adverse-event reporting closely, especially the liver and kidney markers. The last round had one case of elevated transaminase. The FDA already has it on file."
I looked him in the eye.
"Remember those points if you can. But there's one thing I want to be clear about."
"Not a single ingredient in that formula, not the dosage, not the source region, not the processing method, can be changed."
"The ratio of salvianic acid to ligustrazine is fixed. Touch any one of them and the potency goes wrong, and when it goes wrong, people die."
Hope laughed.
"Don't worry. Nathaniel's grasp of pharmacology is no worse than yours. He'll do it better than you ever did."
I saw the contempt in her eyes and didn't argue.
I turned for the door.
My hand had just touched the handle when Nathaniel's voice came from behind me.
"Wait."
I stopped.
"What now?"
He came toward me slowly, unhurried, his leather shoes clicking against the carpet.
"Since you're no longer a Henson," he said, smiling, "the things you have that belong to the Hensons can't just be that tablet, can they?"
I frowned.
"What are you getting at?"
"What I'm getting at," he said, planting himself in front of me, "is that all these years you've eaten the Hensons' food, used the Hensons' things. The car you drive, the house you live in. All of it belongs to the Hensons."
"Giving it all back to the family. That's not unreasonable, is it?"
The office went quiet.
I turned my head, slowly.
First at Nathaniel. The smile was still on his face.
Then at Antony, leaning back in his chair. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
Last at Hope.
She stood beside the desk, arms folded across her chest, chin lifted just slightly.
Not the faintest move to stop any of it.
I pulled my gaze back and thought for a moment.
Then I spoke, slowly.
"I came to the Hensons at twelve. As of today, that's exactly fifteen years."
"The first five years, my master taught me to identify herbs, to cut them, to process them, to compound them."
"Every morning I was up at five. I memorized the origin, the properties, the channels, the contraindications of every ingredient three times over. I filled seven notebooks."
