Sam
But this isn’t a mistake.
Everything about him has changed, yet it is undeniably him.
Even as a child, Ari was someone who drew others to his presence—but now there is an air of impossible grace about him, an irresistible pull that she cannot define.
Those eyes are as dark and exquisite as ever, although they no longer look like they belong on a boy.
His face is more refined, more contemplative, someone who has grown into all his features in the most elegant way.
He is dressed simply, in the way that old money dresses simply—all clean lines and exquisite tailoring, a long, deep green coat draped over a slate-gray sweater and trousers, several silver rings encircling his fingers.
And then, of course, his fox pin.
A Lumines crewman.
She closes her eyes and tries to calm down.
Of course it isn’t impossible. Hadn’t Ari given her clues during their final conversation?
Hadn’t he said he would be leaving, but kept the details a secret?
Hadn’t he vanished from her life without a trace, despite his promise?
Hadn’t a mysterious black car come to pick him up from school every afternoon?
His letters flutter through her memory now like a flipbook, every word imprinted on her mind.
Their quiet laughs at the back of the classroom, their moment crouched in the nook at the library, watching the rain.
Their reluctance to share the details of their lives in their letters, the way they always talked around the things that mattered.
Had everything been there in his words all along, in their endless philosophical musings and seemingly trivial debates?
One becomes the other becomes the one.
Had he already begun his training when he’d written that in one of his first letters to her? Even then, she’d wondered idly if she should ask him about alchemy. Her instinct had been right, after all.
A cluster of guests in front of Sam abruptly shifts out of her way. And for a brief, fateful moment, Sam is in Ari’s line of sight.
Out of everyone in this room, it is his eyes alone that lock effortlessly onto hers, noticing her regardless of the effects of sand.
He recognizes her in an instant. Sam can tell by the way his eyes widen, how the edges of his smile stiffen.
To his credit, he doesn’t misstep in his conversation at all. There is no halt or hesitation. He stares for a moment—then blinks and looks away from her, laughs appropriately at what Rudra says, replies.
No, Ari isn’t just a Lumines crewman. He’s speaking to Rudra almost as an equal. He’s highly ranked within the syndicate, perhaps Rudra’s understudy.
Something dawns on her.
Is he Shakespeare?
Lumines’s young negotiator. The charismatic alchemist being gossiped about throughout the city. It would make so much sense, the way he’s speaking with Rudra, the way people react to him, the kind of pull he has always had. The possibility sends a fresh wave of nausea through her.
What’s going through his mind? Who does he think Sam is? Why does he think she’s here?
Then they’ve passed her and are making their way toward Will at the end of the hall. As if in a trance, Sam looks on as Rudra and Will exchange nods.
Shit. What does Lumines have up their sleeves tonight? Will told her not to come to the meeting, but should she let Will know right away that she recognizes Ari, has known him for years, is afraid of what he can do? How would she even tell him in time?
She maneuvers as close as she dares before hiding in the shadow of a nearby doorway, where she can hear their conversation.
“I don’t appreciate being kept waiting, Mr. Mahajan,” Will is saying to Rudra. Sam notes his choice to use Rudra’s name instead of his attribution, Prometheus. It is a subtle way to belittle Rudra, to let him know that Will is not pleased at being dragged to this impromptu meeting.
“Takes time for little boys to learn patience, Mr. Taylor,” Rudra replies, neglecting to use Will’s attribution too. “This is my associate, Shakespeare.”
Sam feels sick to her stomach. It is him, after all.
Will sizes Ari up with a cool glance. “You’ve built yourself quite the reputation.”
Ari’s voice is clear and polite. “I’m just here to make sure we all get what we want.”
“Then let’s not waste each other’s time,” Will answers. It’s all he gives Ari before turning his attention back to Rudra. A dismissal, and a warning to Ari not to overstep his place. “The sooner we clear up these misunderstandings, the faster we can get back to our business.”
Then they are filing into the room, and the hall turns empty again.
Sam swears under her breath again and turns away, stopping at the end of the hall to stare out at the crowd. There is nothing for her to do but wait and observe. She hesitates, pacing the hall for a while before she finally forces herself to leave and make a round.
As she goes, she memorizes faces and conversations in the lobby, looking for other signs of Lumines in the hotel. Her skin prickles with premonition. After a while, she glances at her phone.
It’s been fifteen minutes since the meeting started.
The sensation that something is wrong pervades her. She’s not sure why. Then she realizes it’s because, even after all these years, she still knows Ari, can still recognize the subtle shifts in his voice, had heard an inflection in his tone that gave her the feeling something was going unsaid.
She stops in the lobby again, lingering on the periphery of the party, ignored and invisible to everyone. Minutes drag on. The clusters of guests swell and diminish.
Something isn’t right.
At last, after another fifteen minutes, she whirls around and heads back down the hall. Her heart pounds in a tense, tight rhythm.
This time, as she nears the meeting room, she hears the sound of a door opening and closing.
She pauses, hears footsteps growing distant. Someone has left the meeting. A beat later, she continues down the hall until she passes several corridors leading back out into the lobby. No one here. Her eyes narrow. She turns around and backtracks, until she rounds the bend—
—and walks right into Ari.
Sam reacts before she can think. Her hand shoots out and presses flat against the wall. Ari does the same. In the blink of an eye, they transmute gleaming knives from the wall and point them at each other’s throats.
For a moment, they just glare at each other.
Ari speaks first. “I thought I mistook someone else for you,” he says.
It’s still so strange, looking into those eyes again. “So did I,” Sam answers.
A heavy pause settles between them. Ari takes in her face, as if trying to reconcile the difference in her appearance now to the girl he’d once known. Then he looks at the winged lions on her collars.
“How long have you been with Grand Central?” he asks.
Sam stares defiantly at his raised knife, daring him to use it, but neither of them moves, so they hang instead in this tenuous balance, a sculpture of violence.
“And you with Lumines?” she replies. “You must have been training with them when we were still in school.”
When he doesn’t answer, she nods, understanding. He must have been with them for years, even before she knew him.
Suddenly, a memory dawns in Ari’s eyes. “The terrible accident,” he says, nodding at her. “The one you once mentioned a long time ago, in your letter. That had to do with this, didn’t it?”
The restaurant explosion. Her mother’s injuries. She had vowed during her initiation into Grand Central that she would seek out justice against Lumines for it.
And now Lumines means Ari.
She realizes with a start that Ari might be on sand.
Does he use it? He must; nearly all alchemists do.
Has it strengthened his charisma in unnatural ways?
Even now, the slightest turn of his body toward her made her feel like he was listening to her, giving her the kind of attention that she has craved since he disappeared from her life. She needs to be careful.
“I thought you left the city,” she says instead, avoiding his question.
“I’m not here often. I travel a lot.”
She adds a sarcastic lilt to her words. “You said you’d keep in touch.”
He remains unfazed. “It’s a good thing I didn’t.”
Everything about him is still Ari, but he is colder now, the light in his eyes more distant and calculating, his stance more aloof. It makes her shiver, the way he assesses her as a threat.
And isn’t she doing the same? Doesn’t she look colder to him too, her eyes more vicious than before?
“What are you doing here, Ari?” she says. “Why at this meeting?”
“Just enjoying the party,” he says.
“Why’d you step out? What’s going on?”
“Came out specifically to see you.” He narrows his eyes at her. “What about you? Tagging along with Constantine?”
It’s surreal, this clash of her past and present. Sam tries to reconcile the sound of Will’s attribution coming out of Ari’s mouth. How her childhood friend understands the hierarchy of Grand Central and works for their enemy.
She tilts her head. “Just enjoying the party,” she says, repeating his words back at him.
He seems to consider her words; his eyes go to the knife she’s holding. Then, to her surprise, he lowers his own weapon, tucking the blade into the side of his belt.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he says.
Now he looks a little like himself again, the boy she recognizes, facing her knife with his hands tucked into his pockets.
She can’t stop the memories resurfacing.
She thinks of him holding out his palm to her, how she pressed her hand into his.
She recalls the way he traced a circle against her hand, then a dot in its center.
What does it mean? she asked him then.
He smiled down at the ground, too shy to look at her. It means perfection. It means, I like you the way you are, Sam.
Now she knows that he traced the alchemical symbol for gold on her palm.
The tide of emotions that had been bottled up inside her all these years wells up, filling every crevice of her heart.
She hates him for making her feel this way, that there is some shred of their friendship that still tethers them, that she somehow can’t throw the last of him away.
For a moment, she stands there, still armed and angry.
He stares steadily at her. “Sam. Please.”
“Please what?” she says, annoyed, her heart breaking.
His eyes are somber. “I’m not going to hurt you tonight.”
The anger seeps out of her, as quickly as it had come, followed by a wave of exhaustion. She lowers her arm too, then presses her blade against the wall and transmutes the weapon back into the plaster.
“You already did,” she says hoarsely, and this time, she sees a flash of pain in his gaze.
Ari opens his mouth to answer, but before he can, the door down the hall behind her swings open with a bang.
Both Sam and Ari’s eyes dart away from each other as Will emerges alone from the meeting room.
At first, he appears unbothered. He has his coat draped over his shoulders and his back turned to them as he walks toward the side door at the end of the hall that leads out of the hotel. His walk is almost pristine enough to look natural.
But something is wrong. Sam notices the way his arm is positioned underneath the coat’s fabric and realizes that one of his hands is pressed hard against his side instead of tucked in his trouser pocket.
She has walked beside him often enough to know that his gait too is slower than his comfortable speed.
He presses his free hand against the wall. A concrete barrier shoots up behind him, sealing the hall off from anyone in pursuit. It happens in a flash, but Sam can tell how uneven his transmutation is, can see the cracks in the stone.
Will is injured, badly. All of his soul’s strength is going into keeping him alive, leaving little for him to use on alchemy.
Sam’s gaze jumps back to Ari, whose expression is still and dark.
This wasn’t a meeting. It was an ambush.
She should attack Ari, but there’s no time—she needs to help Will.
She whirls away from Ari and darts down the length of the lobby until she reaches another, smaller hall.
There, she turns and sprints down to the side door here that leads to the end of the hotel’s front driveway.
Part of her braces for the sound of Ari’s footsteps as he gives chase—but when she glances over her shoulder, she doesn’t see him.
She bursts through the side door and exits the hotel right before a waiting doorman. He barely glances at her before looking away in disinterest, her presence already slipping from his mind.
Sam rushes down the street to the side of the hotel. There, she sees Will making his way down toward her, his figure cutting into and out through the light of the streetlamps.
At this angle, there is no mistaking his injury. Now, under his draped coat, she can see his hand pressed tightly against his side—and underneath it, a dark stain spreading against the fabric of his shirt, glossy in the light.
She speeds up in her walk until she reaches the intersection right as he does.
As he turns the corner to meet her, she turns with him and they fall into step beside each other.
He doesn’t react to her presence at all, doesn’t even look at her, but his body leans unconsciously toward her in acknowledgment.
When she glances down, she notices that the hand clutching his side is covered with blood.
Shit. He’s going to bleed out at this rate.
Everything in her screams to help him, but polemists aren’t trained extensively in the complex art of healing—inflicting injuries is a fast and vicious form of alchemy that doesn’t require as much laborious precision as undoing harm.
She could just as easily kill him by accident as she could close his wound. They need an alchiatrist, and fast.
“Where to?” she says.
“I’m going to need you to drive,” Will answers.
Distant shouts in the night come from the hotel. Sam doesn’t need to turn around to recognize their voices.
Lumines is on the hunt.