After retrieving Tip, we headed to the apothecary and stepped inside. Tip walked up to the counter when a voice spoke up.

"Can I help you find something?" a kindly man who I assumed to be the herbalist asked.

"Uh, yes, I need more of this," Tip told him, handing over the medicine bottle.

Jack and I stepped up beside her and I leaned my elbows on the glass counter.

"Well, do you know what it is?" the man asked.

"I've got bad blood," she replied and I snickered.

Jack elbowed me and I fell silent, a playful smile still etched on my face.

"Bad blood?" the herbalist repeated.

"That's what my guardian said. She made it," Tip told him.

He nodded.

"So, where is this guardian of yours?" he asked.

Tip looked to Jack for help. Because she was way too fragile to do anything for herself, I thought to myself sarcastically.

"Died of old age. Almost a hundred years old. Oh, she would've loved to see the day," Jack supplied.

I smirked. What a good liar he was.

"But without her, my friend has no more medicine," he continued.

"Oh, some of these country remedies are hard to figure," the herbalist said, shaking the bottle, "Well, I'll give it a try."

I smiled up at Jack and he grinned back. Soon the man was back, bottle in hand. He was much quieter than before and gestured for Tip to follow him. I looked over at Jack to see him biting his nails absentmindedly and grinned at how adorable he was.

"You have to come this way," he told her.

He frowned when he saw Jack and I following close behind and put a hand up to stop us. I exchanged an annoyed glance with Jack but we obeyed the man, hanging back but still within earshot.

"I can't make your medicine, love," he told Tip solemnly, "Which is to say I won't. No one will. Not anywhere. And you should never ask again,"

"Why?" Tip pressed him.

"Because you could hang for it!" he said, a bit too loudly.

Jack and I looked over at him in confusion. What in the world was he talking about?!

"It's a black elixir. It's magic. It disturbs your true nature," he went on.

"My true nature?" she repeated after him quizzically.

"What you are right now, what's under those clothes - that's not a side effect of the medicine wearing off," he said, holding up the bottle to her, "That's what happens when the medicine itself wears off,"

There was a beat of silence before Tip finally spoke.

"But...I'm a boy. I've always been a boy..." she insisted.

"Yes, someone may have wanted that and they gave you this to make it so. But it's not how you were born. This-" he stopped for a second, gesturing to her, "-is how you were born."

Tip looked at the man in shock while Jack and I glanced over at her with wide eyes. This whole time she'd never even been a boy! Tip left the shop then wordlessly and we gave her her space. It wasn't the time to confront her about it.