Chapter 7
After class, I joined the flow of students headed down the broad main corridor toward the foyer of the Seminary, where Wilder waited near the bottom of the wide, split central staircase.
He stood with a girl around my age and a guy with rigid rust-colored cuffs affixed to his sleeves, in the style of the kingdom of Falkrest, Aethermere’s seafaring neighbor to the north.
Wilder laughed at something the Falkrestor said, tossing his dark blond hair, and my heart caught in my throat as I watched him. He seemed so at ease here, among some of the sharpest young minds in the world, but that didn’t surprise me. I’d always known how gifted he was.
But I got an odd feeling as I watched him, like maybe Desmond wasn’t the only one who’d changed during the years my amnesia had devoured.
I had changed, clearly. And while Wilder still seemed charming and outgoing—as welcome in any group as he’d always been—something felt different about the way he conducted himself now.
Maybe it was because the stakes were higher than in our home village.
Or maybe I simply wasn’t yet accustomed to seeing him here, in this place where I wanted to belong, among strangers who shouldn’t have felt like strangers.
Maybe I wasn’t accustomed to sharing him with the world.
When he turned and saw me, he smiled. He said something to his friends, who glanced my way, then headed up the stairs with the crowd, leaving Wilder and me alone in the foyer.
“How’d it go?” he asked as I came to a stop at his side.
“It was actually kind of amazing.” I mounted the first step, bringing myself to eye level with him, and my breath caught at the intimacy of the new perspective.
At how immediate his gaze felt from mere inches away.
“Professor Robards is very passionate about alchemy,” I said, rushing ahead to disguise my sudden nerves.
“And I suspect his class will be a great refresher for me. I’m really hoping it’ll trigger my memories of concepts I’ve already learned. ”
“That’s about all it did for you the first time,” Wilder said as we began climbing the stairs. “Considering that your mother taught you most of the base-level stuff when you were a kid.”
“Well, a reminder can’t hurt. He’s starting them with the history of signature notation. Next week, I’ll have thirty-six essays to grade on the subject, and after that, they’re expected to start developing their own notation styles.”
“That’ll make their work difficult to read for a while, until they decide exactly how long their flourishes and how tight their swirls should be.”
“Oh? Is there an objective standard?”
“Not really.” He grinned down at me as we reached the mid-level landing. “The length of a flourish varies by individual, and they’re all unique. Though some are more noteworthy than others.”
I blinked up at him as innocently as I could manage. “Would it be too bold of me to inquire about the span of your flourish?”
Wilder’s brows arched. Then he gave a mock frown. “I blame that question on your recent memory loss.” He leaned close to whisper into my ear. “Before today, you were as familiar with the impressive span of my flourish as I am with the devastatingly tight coil of your swirl.”
My face flamed, but I had only myself to blame for the trajectory that led to this double entendre.
Wilder laughed again at my expression, his head thrown back, blue eyes glittering in the light of a wall-mounted torch. “You’re a much saucier conversationalist today than you were yesterday.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take your word for that.”
We passed a couple dozen students in the second-floor hallway, clustered in groups of two and three, outside of various classrooms.
“Wilder!” A girl with a blue ribbon braided through her pale hair fell into step on his other side, ignoring me entirely. “Are you free tonight? I was hoping to discuss something with you.” Her gaze slid my way. “Privately.”
A bolt of jealousy bristled the tiny hairs at the back of my neck, but Wilder didn’t miss a step. “I’ll make time. Find me in the Mastery student lab, after the evening meal,” he practically whispered.
She squeezed his arm, then pivoted and returned to her friends.
“What was—”
Before I could finish my question, or decide how possessive I should be of his time and attention, a boy broke from his friend group as we passed and began walking backward in front of us, evidently unconcerned about colliding with a classmate.
“Amber, you’re looking well,” he said.
“Thank you. I—”
He turned to Wilder, dismissing me entirely. “How was your summer? Were you able to perfect that decoction we discussed in the spring?”
“I had limited resources at home, but I did make some progress,” Wilder said, his voice lowered into that same near whisper. “Give me a week to take advantage of the lab space here and I’ll have something for you.”
“Good man!” the boy declared with a wide smile. Then he clapped Wilder on the shoulder and disappeared down the hall behind us.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Later,” Wilder murmured, coming to a stop in front of an open set of tall doors at the east end of the hall. “This is us.”
From the room beyond, several voices were engaged in vibrant discussions, and to my utter frustration, I did not recognize a single one.
“Deep breath,” Wilder whispered when I could only stare into the room full of strangers. Then he tucked his arm into mine again and subtly tugged me over the threshold into a central aisle between two rows of double-occupancy desks.
“Wilder!” A boy with squarish spectacles perched on the narrow bridge of his nose stood from a chair to my right, then wedged himself into the aisle, directly in our path.
“Where were you two this morning? Keryth said she heard voices from Amber’s room, then she saw you come out of the Conservatory after class.
None of my business, of course, but it sounds like you both had quite a summer.
” But his eyes seemed less delighted with that prospect than his smile would otherwise indicate.
Had I? Had Wilder and I spent the summer in Innswood, with our families? Was that when we’d crossed the line from friendship into…my bed?
Was everyone else as surprised by that as Desmond had clearly been?
“You’re right, Petyr,” Wilder said. “That is none of your business.” But then he winked, and the result was that rather than brushing off the question, he seemed to be hinting that he and I shared some scandalous secret he could not possibly divulge.
My face flamed, and Petyr’s brows rose as Wilder led me past him, headed toward an unoccupied table halfway up on the right side.
“Petyr Lorena,” he whispered. But then he offered no more intelligence on our inquisitive, bespectacled classmate, because as we took our seats, the curly-headed girl in front of Wilder turned to face us, one arm draped over the back of her chair, her stiff blue cuffs standing out against her white sleeve at a distinctive, pointed angle.
“Wilder,” she said, then her green eyes focused on me. “Amber.”
“Yoslyn Savva!” he greeted her, and I got the distinct impression that he’d said her full name for my benefit. “How was your summer?”
“Abysmally dull,” she said. “There’s nothing to do in my hometown, and my family is entirely unimpressed that I’ve made it to the Mastery year.
My mother is making me pretend I’m apprenticing with a cousin in the country, learning to compound aromatics.
” She rolled those green eyes. “You’re all so lucky.
” Her gaze flickered toward me again, then back to Wilder.
“I don’t suppose you have anything I could drop into their tea, do you?
Something to make them more accepting of alchemy as my chosen path?
At least while I’m stuck there with them? ”
Wilder gave her a sympathetic smile. “That seems a bit extreme, but if you still feel that way going into the winter holiday, come see me.” He paused with a glance my way. “If it makes you feel any better, not everyone in Aethermere approves of Alchemy either.”
She turned to me, puzzled. “Wasn’t your mother an alchemist?”
“Amber’s mom was a third-year washout,” a new voice said, and as my temper bloomed hot behind my sternum, I looked past Wilder to see a familiar girl settling into a chair across the aisle, a shiny green ribbon braided through her blond hair.
She was the classmate who’d called out to me that morning from across the quadrangle.
The one I’d fled, on instinct, though I couldn’t even recall her name.
“But her father,” the girl continued, “is a Toolkeeper.”
“Keryth,” Wilder said with a scowl. “May I remind you that you’re responsible for what spews from the geyser on the front of your face? Make better choices.”
She waved off his rebuke as her gaze slid to me, her smile just a tad too wide. “Amber knows I mean no harm. Most of us are going to wash out this year.”
Yoslyn squirmed in her seat, and Wilder looked distinctly uncomfortable, but Keryth was right.
According to my mother, no more than three students from one cohort had ever been invited to join the Alchemary as staff members or instructors, and some years, none were invited at all.
Because some years, no one passed all four trials.
Those who washed out in the third year could take the Alchemary’s accreditation exam and practice off-campus, under the Alchemary seal, as my mother had.
But clearly, none of my classmates wanted to truly contemplate failing one of the trials.
Or being passed over by the institute that had trained us.
Being relegated to the second tier of alchemy: provincial practice.