Chapter 5
“I hope you’ve come to apologize,” I said, one hand on the doorjamb to block Desmond’s path. Barging into my room once was one time too many.
His eyes narrowed at me, and the lantern from the landing half a floor down caught his irises, which flared red-brown in the light. “Assuredly not. I don’t expect you to be happy about what I said to the Bluehelm, but I certainly expect you to respect my opinion.”
I glared up at him. “Desmond, why on earth would I respect an opinion intended to see me exiled from the institute I’ve dreamed of attending since I was a child?”
He looked as frustrated as I felt. And more than a little offended.
“Because it was a logical recommendation, based on an honest assessment of your capabilities.” His irritation intensified, until I somehow felt both angry with him and ashamed of myself in equal measure.
“We may seldom agree, but we’ve always been able to respectfully disagree,” he said, and the deep, stern quality of his voice—an oddly personal sort of censure—triggered an unexpected flush just beneath my skin.
“We’ve always been able to appreciate each other as rational individuals. For the most part.”
My brows rose as I stared up at him. “What, may I ask, would the lesser part look like?”
He scowled over my shoulder, scanning the room behind me. “You have been known, on occasion, to indulge a less-than- rational impulse.”
Oh. Wilder.
“I’m alone.” I pushed the door all the way open to support my claim.
Not because it was any of his business, but because I was already quite weary of feeling caught between the Gregory brothers.
I’d played peacemaker and tiebreaker for half of my childhood, and I had no intention of reprising that role as an adult.
“In that case, may I come in?”
“Are you prepared to apologize?”
His scowl darkened. “The Amber Fallbrook I knew as of yesterday would never have asked me to.”
“I’m not that Amber!” Frustration spilled up from my soul like a geyser.
“I don’t even know who she was! I don’t know who you are.
Not this version of you, anyway.” I glanced over his formal, asymmetrical cape, across the broad expanse of his shoulders, but then my gaze snagged on his obviously trim and powerful torso, and heat gathered in my face.
My focus snapped back up to his eyes.
He looked…not quite puzzled by my reaction, but certainly fascinated. As if I were a solution suspended over a flame on his laboratory station, and he was perfectly content to study my transformation.
To watch me…simmer.
“I cannot say what my most recent experience of you was, before this morning,” I continued, desperate to drag my thoughts back on track.
“Not precisely, anyway. But it would certainly be from before you left for the Alchemary, four years ago. I know you as a spindly twenty-year-old boy, still growing into his height and more than ready to stretch his wings and soar free from his little brother and the tiresome girl from across the way. Those memories feel aged, but I have no more current knowledge of…who you’ve become. And yet somehow, you’re now…”
A man. Fully grown, with a man’s broad, powerful proportions, and an unfamiliar glint of entitlement shining in his eyes. But I couldn’t say any of that aloud.
“You’re now basically a professor, at the best alchemy university in the world, and—”
“I’m an alchemist,” he interrupted. “A second-year staff researcher, in the Apotheosis division.”
“I know. Wilder told me you’re trying to perfect the human form.”
He actually smiled, just a little. “Not the physical form, specifically. And not from an aesthetic perspective. That would be purely subjective. I’m working toward a functional efficiency of physique and intellect that—” He held up a hand and shook his head, swallowing the rest of his explanation.
“My work is not relevant to this situation.”
It was more interesting than I’d expected, however. He wasn’t trying to make people pretty. He was trying to make people better.
“My point is that I don’t know you anymore,” I insisted, forcing myself back on topic yet again. “And if you think you know me, then your hypothesis is deeply flawed. I don’t know the girl I was yesterday, and you don’t know the one I am today.”
Desmond’s eyes widened, and for a second, he seemed truly startled. As if some gear in his brain had slipped into a new and unexpected formation. As if I had changed shape, right there in front of him.
“No, I suppose I don’t,” he said, his voice a bit softer than before. “But what I do know is that if I’m discovered loitering outside your room, no amount of rational explanation will be able to silence the grinding of the Alchemary rumor mill.”
I crossed my arms over the front of my cloak. “Well then. If I can’t convince you I have the ability and the work ethic to thrive at the Alchemary, I suppose you’d better go.”
Desmond exhaled slowly. “You should not be here, but that has nothing to do with ability or with work ethic.” His voice was oddly gruff, gaze trained on me with an intensity that made me wonder if he could see straight through my eyes into memories I had no access to.
“In fact, I greatly respect everything you’ve accomplished. That’s why—”
“What have I accomplished?”
“Pardon?” His shoulders tensed, hands hidden at his spine.
“Wilder told me about the Philosopher’s Stone,” I admitted, and Desmond looked so startled that I wanted to stuff the words back into my mouth.
Of course he hadn’t known what I was researching. Why would I have told a respected professional alchemist that I was wasting my time and the school’s resources chasing after a myth instead of pursuing more practical and achievable goals?
Wait.…
A bonfire exploded behind my cheeks. “Wilder was joking, wasn’t he? Playing a prank on the poor girl with amnesia, convincing me that I’d been researching something so utterly ridiculous…”
I glanced back at my desk. At the papers stacked there.
“And here I’ve been, trying to understand all this, assuming it pertains to a professional interest in the Philosopher’s Stone, of all things!” I spun to face the window, hoping the ocean breeze would cool my face. “He’ll consider amnesia a mercy by the time I’m done with him.”
Desmond made a strange sound deep in his throat, and I turned to see his expression shifting rapidly as his thoughts seemed to kaleidoscope. Finally, he settled on sympathy. Which irked me on a bone-deep level.
“Wilder wasn’t lying.” His mouth quirked up for an instant. “Though I can understand why you’d draw that conclusion. My brother was serious once. But then he recovered.”
I laughed, and Desmond looked surprised. Almost nostalgic. And I wondered if, in that moment, he was seeing the Amber he remembered from childhood.
How different was she from the girl he’d known yesterday? From the girl I was now?
Curiosity made a mockery of my willpower, and I sighed. “You may come inside, if you’ll answer some questions.”
Yet Desmond hesitated in the doorway, as if the price might be more than he was willing to pay. After a moment, though, he stepped over the threshold, almost formally. As if he were stepping into another world.
I retreated to put space between us, and the back of my foot collided with something on the floor. As I felt myself tipping, my arms shot out, flailing for balance. A startled sound leaked from my throat, and…
A hand closed over my wrist, arresting my fall.
In the time it had taken me to lose my balance, Desmond had somehow crossed the room and seized my arm.
I stared up at him, stunned by his speed and his quick thinking, and suddenly I became distinctly aware of the warm iron of his grip.
“Thank you,” I said, righting myself.
He dropped my arm as if my skin had scalded him.
I glanced down to see what I had tripped over and found a leather satchel, which I’d only vaguely noticed in my original perusal of the space. “Um…are you familiar with my work?” I asked, nudging the satchel out of the way with my foot. “With my research project, I mean?”
“You’d have a difficult time finding someone here who is unfamiliar with the Philosopher’s Stone.” He glanced at the bed, then looked away quickly. His attention skirted over my desktop, as if its contents held no interest for him at all, then finally landed again on me.
“That isn’t what I asked. Did my work show any promise? Was it…good?”
He frowned, studying my face, and I had no idea what he saw there. But then he exhaled, and his gaze…hardened. “You’ve earned your place as a student, Amber. But that doesn’t mean you deserve it now.”
Sparks fired through my synapses, arcing through my soul like flaming arrows of indignation. “That is precisely what it means.”
His jaw tightened, but he did not argue.
“We don’t get along, do we?” I leaned against the edge of my desk, irked that he’d grown so tall and so broad. That this Desmond didn’t match the one in my memory. “Maybe we do respect each other as ‘rational individuals,’ but you don’t like me as a person, do you?”
Something dark shifted behind his eyes.
“Do I like you?” I demanded.
He crossed his arms over his broad chest, and his cape fell forward with the motion, hiding the left half of his torso.
But it might as well have covered his face, for all I could read of his expression.
“Other than Wilder, I’m not sure you care about anyone in the world.
” His voice was hard, each syllable the harsh grind of a blade against a whetstone. “Except for yourself.”
His arrow found its mark, and I flinched with the impact. “What happened between us?” I blinked up at him, searching his gaze for the boy I’d once known. “We were friends, back in Innswood. True, you were an arrogant bore, but—”
“I was arrogant?”
“But you weren’t cruel,” I finished.
“I’m not trying to have you removed from the Alchemary out of cruelty,” he snapped.
Startled, I gripped the edge of the desk to steady myself. “You’re still trying to get me expelled?” What did that mean? He was trying to get the Bluehelm to change her mind? Trying to prove I didn’t belong?
“Dismissed. Not expelled,” he corrected. “This isn’t a penalty.”
“But you’re still trying to—”
“I’m doing what’s right.”
“For whom?” I demanded, anger sparking in my veins like a lit fuse. “If I’ve earned my place here, who are you to decide I don’t deserve it?”
He exhaled, nostrils flaring. Teeth clenched. “I know you can’t possibly understand what I’m about to say, if you don’t remember your time here—”
“If?” I stared at him, incredulous. Bruised by his skepticism.
“—but I don’t owe you an explanation.”
I could only blink up at him, stunned silent, while my thoughts raced in circles.
The temerity!
“Is this about Wilder?” I asked. “It’s quite evident that you didn’t like finding him in my bed, and—”
“Enough!” Desmond growled.
“Am I not good enough for your brother, or is he not good enough for me? What, exactly, is your objection to our—”
“That is enough!” he snarled through clenched teeth, hands fisted at his sides. “It isn’t your fault that you don’t know what you’re talking about, but that doesn’t change the truth of the matter.”
“So tell me what we’re talking about.”
For a moment, he looked thoroughly, vengefully tempted to do precisely that. But then his mouth snapped shut. I could practically see him turning the key in the vault, locking away whatever he knew of my pre-amnesia existence, because of some discord I could not remember.
Footsteps and the rustle of clothing drew my gaze to the door as it opened. Wilder stepped inside, holding a cloth-wrapped bundle tucked beneath one arm. From it emanated the scents of fresh bread, strong cheese, and some sort of roasted fowl.
An errant dark blond wave fell across his forehead. His gaze flicked from me to his brother, who towered over me now, dominating the center of my private chamber with nothing more than the space his broad form required and the words still echoing in my head.
“Well, I see Desmond has been spreading his usual good cheer.” Wilder sounded positively merry, despite the obvious tension. “What have I missed?”
“Not a thing.” I stared boldly up at Desmond, who held my gaze with a steely-eyed one of his own. “Your brother was just leaving.”