Sam
Everything. About the meeting at the Odyssey and Will’s test of her, the afternoon lessons at the Observatory, how much money is really in her bank account.
That she hadn’t really gone to college, that Grand Central had faked the documents and diploma she needed to back up that lie.
That none of it matters anyway, because wasn’t that all about being successful, and hadn’t she achieved that?
Why are you working so much? her mother asks her.
She has been instructed to never tell her mother that she works directly for Grand Central. Instead, she gets false pay stubs from a shell company, which she shows her mother. And yet the questions continue, as if her mother never quite believes her.
What is your salary?
Good.
Where are you going?
I’ll be back soon.
Are you happy there?
Don’t I look happy?
The other thing that’s changed: her appearance.
Five years is a long time. Sam looks fundamentally different from when she’d first joined Grand Central.
Her wide eyes from childhood have turned sharp and calculating.
Her smile, once quick and shy, must be earned now.
Her hair, straight and cut bluntly to the small of her back, is now a transmuted shade of steel gray.
Her ears are pierced with rows of silver; a glittering stud decorates one side of her nose.
Her clothes are expensive and well-tailored, keeping with the syndicates’ creed of perfection, and her makeup is sparing but flawless.
She is the subtle kind of beautiful that’s easy to miss if one isn’t paying attention.
And when on sand, that understated beauty turns luminous—a glow to her skin, a softness to her freckles, a shine in her hair.
There are no more undone corners of her, no mistakes or imperfections.
The invisibility that plagued her youth is a weapon now, and she wields it well.
She is the symmetry in a pattern, the one that moves undetected through a crowd, gliding with grace past ignorant eyes and careless guards.
Only Diamond seems to notice, and once, on a rare occasion when Sam crossed the woman’s path at the estate, she glanced at Sam and said, You look well.
It wasn’t much of an acknowledgment, but it was enough, and Sam felt light on her feet all the way back to her apartment.
But her mother doesn’t say a word about this gradual shift, doesn’t tell Sam one way or the other whether she likes it.
She has started to refuse some of Sam’s gifts for her—fine cashmere and designer purses, extravagant trips to tropical paradises.
When Sam asks why, her mother will say, What a waste of money, where did you get this, how much was it, what are you doing, where have you been.
Sam will answer, I’ve been working, I’ve been busy, and isn’t this what you wanted for me?
Their conversations always trickle awkwardly away into nothing, and Sam will leave frustrated, an ache of dissatisfaction in her stomach, feeling smaller and lesser than, her mother’s acceptance perpetually out of reach.
Tonight, Will has chosen her as his right hand.
“Note everyone present, Lumines or otherwise,” he tells her as they head down the estate’s hill to their waiting car. “They’ve been muted about who they’re sending tonight. I suspect we may see a few new faces.”
They both wear suits tonight, his a deep sapphire, hers black striped with thin threads of white. Her tie is clipped with a bar, and her black shirt’s collar is pinned with silver crests of winged lions linked by chains. A fresh dose of sand courses through her, and the entire world seems sharper.
As always, she feels a small rush of pride as attendants open their doors and then step aside for them, looking on as she and Will slide simultaneously into the car.
This part of her training is still new, where Will brings her on his missions.
Her status has elevated at his side. And all across the estate, everyone reacts accordingly, hushing when she speaks, obeying her orders without question.
“What’s the fuss?” she asks. “Lumines has no grounds to accuse us of interference.”
“We don’t concern ourselves with accusations from those beneath us,” Will replies coolly. “But their movements lately have me wondering if they’re planning something bigger. Diamond wants extra eyes at the meeting tonight.”
“Is this about Doherty?” Sam asks as they drive out through the gates.
“Doherty’s alliance with Lumines is less important than how it happened,” Will replies.
“Who was their negotiator this time?”
“Shakespeare.”
Sam has never crossed paths with this Lumines alchemist, although she has heard his attribution more and more often over the years. “He must be very good at what he does, to convince Doherty to break our contract.”
“So I hear. It’s made them bold enough to encroach on our shipping even before the mayoral election.”
The last time an alchemist took the attribution of Shakespeare was more than a century ago, or so she remembers from her textbooks, a man who’d used his talents to create one of America’s wealthiest railroad dynasties. She wonders idly who this new Shakespeare might be.
Sam’s eyes linger for a moment on Will’s hand resting easily against the steering wheel, his fingers long and white.
Most evenings, they circle each other under the shade of the Observatory’s oaks, pulling materials in and out of their tiles in the ground, transforming them into more and more complex things.
Sam knows the transmutations so well that she can see the equations in her sleep: lead|black sulfur|arsenic|blood|iron|amethyst, and so on.
She dreams of overlapping circles and courtyards lined with hydrangeas and black lilies.
Sometimes she wakes with her hands moving in the air.
They always work well into the evenings, Will taking her wrist and guiding her hand down to the bricks in the ground.
Can you sense the structural difference between silver and gold? he asked, the first time. And Sam sensed it, all the while distracted by the cool touch of his skin on hers, the way his fingers slid along her wrist and made her tingle.
Yes, she replied faintly.
Call on your soul again, he instructed, and keep the structural difference in your mind. How many steps you need. It will hurt, so brace yourself.
She did so, then startled back at the shock of pain. But Will held her forcefully in place, pressing her hand to the ground even as she tried to escape.
We will stay here until you do it properly, he ordered her.
And so they’d stay, sometimes past midnight, until she could perform each new transmutation to his satisfaction. Only then would he release her, and she would stagger back to her apartment to collapse into bed.
Day by torturous day, she’d gritted her teeth and learned why her early, instinctive transmutations had worked, then practice how to do them more consciously.
Sometimes Diamond would come to watch, overseeing a lesson from the edge of the Observatory, although she never uttered a word.
The woman has grown thinner over the years, her silver hair fading into white, but the pierce of her gaze is still enough to send fear through Sam’s heart.
But mostly, she was with Will. She’d wake up thinking of him and go to bed thinking of him. She saw him so often that she dreamed of him.
He still seems to see her as a child, a ward thrust upon him without warning or consent.
And yet sometimes, she thinks he notices the shift in her too.
She catches him casting her the occasional look.
Hears a curious undercurrent in his commands to her.
Whenever this happens, Sam dwells on it for the rest of the day, her heart skipping, and deep in the night, when she’s alone in her bed at the estate, she pictures his searing glance and touches herself, imagining his fingers in her and his voice by her ear, until he brings her trembling over the edge.
Ari used to be the one who filled her mind, thoughts about where he was and what he was doing and who he might be doing it with and whether he was thinking about her.
But after their day at the secret beach, he had disappeared from her life.
For a long time, she wondered if she had said something wrong.
Then she wondered if something terrible had happened to him, and haunted herself with the worst possibilities.
And then, as the months turned into years, she came to the conclusion that perhaps he had simply forgotten about her.
That, just like most other people throughout her life, he had left her behind.
It made the most sense. And it hollowed her heart out more than any other possibility.
So instead, she closed herself around the wound, buried it.
It was for the best. Wasn’t this inevitable?
And with Ari nothing more than a distant memory now, she filled the hurting cavity with Will instead, letting the darkness of him spread inside her.
“Do we need intel on Shakespeare?” she asks now.
Will shakes his head. “I don’t want us giving Lumines the impression that we’re worried about him. No, tonight we’re clearing the air, keeping our relations tidy. Diamond doesn’t want to deal with a mess right before the conference at Oxford.”
The conference. Will is referring to an annual meeting of alchemy syndicates from around the world, a time of strengthening relations between allies and keeping tabs on enemies, of making deals for the next few years.
Sam has never been invited to attend it before, but nevertheless, her soul pulls at the thought, hoping someday to go.
“But you’re still suspicious about this meeting,” Sam continues, “otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me.”