Chapter 18 #2
None were Mastery-year students, and they all had the decency to look away when I met their gazes. But something had clearly changed since the night before.
With a sigh, I left the vial in my pocket and forced my attention back to the stack of parchment on the table.
Minutes later, familiar footsteps drew my gaze.
“What is going on this morning?” Wilder demanded as he sank into the chair next to mine. His tray held two bowls of porridge and two fresh pastries, and he set one of each in front of me.
“Thank you!” I shoved my notes into my satchel as if I were thrilled for an excuse to stop studying, and not at all as if I were hiding anything from him. “They weren’t serving food yet when I arrived.” I dropped a kiss on his smooth, freshly shaved cheek, then dug into my porridge.
His brows rose, but he didn’t ask why I’d woken so early. He knew well that apprehension and study often robbed me of sleep.
“I heard your name at least four times on my way from the Dormitory,” he said as he tore an edge from his scone. “And everyone in the Refectory is staring at you.”
“Have you been to the lab yet today?” I asked, watching steam rise from my bowl.
“No. And I’m sorry I stood you up last night. I had an incident on the way to my delivery, and—”
“I know.”
Concern creased his brow. “What am I missing?”
“Lean slightly to your left, and I’ll tell you.”
His frown deepened, but he leaned to the side.
With him mostly blocking me from sight, I withdrew the vial from my pocket and administered several drops of the elixir into what remained of my tea, which gave my cup a familiar, comforting scent.
At least one of his ingredients had a mildly pleasant floral taste, and I suspected he’d harvested it from the forest himself.
“What happened to your hand?” Wilder demanded, his gaze caught on my bandage.
I did not answer.
He held his position until the vial was safely secreted away again. “Very well, now—”
“One moment.” I lifted the cup and drank deeply, slowly, from the cooling liquid until I’d drained it. Then I returned the cup to its saucer and smiled wearily at him. “Thank you. It’s been a rather trying morning.”
He gave me an odd look. “The less sleep you get, the more you look and sound like your old self.”
“I cannot tell whether that’s an insult or a compliment.” Whether he preferred this version of me or the previous one.
“It’s merely a simple observation.”
Yet it felt anything but simple.
“What’s happened, Amber?” His typical grin was conspicuously absent as he plucked the last bite of scone from my plate. “Why is your name on every tongue?”
I sighed. “There are two possible causes for that phenomenon, and I haven’t yet gathered enough evidence to draw an accurate conclusion.”
“Go on.…”
“Last night, though you did not meet me in the student lab, Pryce Wishart did.”
“Pryce.” Wilder scowled. “He—”
“Collided with you on the bridge and smashed your deliveries.” I nodded, holding his gaze with a meaningful one of my own. “I am aware.”
“That was bad enough, but before I could retrieve my satchel from the ground, a carriage came storming across the bridge and flattened it, shattering everything that hadn’t broken. I was inches from being thrown over the edge myself.”
A carriage had come to Alchemary Island in the middle of the night? “Whose carriage? What was the hurry?”
He shrugged. “I only caught a glimpse of the seal as I gathered my things, but it appeared to belong to the Crown. The guards didn’t even stop it for an inspection.”
The Crown?
But Wilder was still stuck on another point, his cheeks bright with fury.
“And none of that would have happened if not for Pryce. That drunken clod. I had to walk all the way back to the Dormitory and raid my—” His frown deepened as understanding blossomed.
“How did you—” Full comprehension seemed to slam into him with the force of a charging bull. “He did it on purpose.”
I nodded, and a complicated series of emotions cycled across his expression, darkening his eyes. Making his lips twitch and his teeth clench. It was like watching spring harden into a cold, harsh winter, without passing through summer or fall.
The only conclusion I could draw with utter certainty was that he had a better understanding than I did of why Pryce might do such a thing.
And yet Wilder asked me, “What did he want? What did he say?”
I glanced into my cup, wishing there was some way to procure a second pot of tea without leaving my seat.
“He offered to ‘help’ me relearn the basic principles of alchemy without revealing my deficiency to the rest of our classmates. But he heavily implied that there would be a price. That I already owe him, somehow, and should be grateful for the offer.”
Wilder’s brows furrowed until I saw far too much of his brother in the expression. “And may I assume that you declined his ‘offer’ in some fantastically violent manner?”
“I certainly tried. However, my blow landed not upon Pryce’s face—a fact I regret more with each passing moment—but upon the leaded glass window in the door.
Which shattered, and has left me watching the Refectory entrance this morning in anticipation of my own expulsion.
Which will surely come in the form of a scowling Alchemary official. ”
Wilder blinked. “You broke the window? The one-hundred- fifty-year-old stained glass?”
“Which was original to the construction of the building? Yes. And now I cannot deduce whether everyone is staring at me because they know I’m about to be expelled for the destruction of irreplaceable Alchemary property or because Pryce has told everyone that I am now a substandard student, incapable of earning a place here.
” I shrugged as I scraped up the last bite of porridge from the edges of my bowl.
“I suppose the specifics don’t really matter. ”
“Every bit of that matters.” Wilder turned in his chair to pointedly return the stares of a handful of underclassman.
“Why does the Refectory always feel largely abandoned first thing in the morning?” I asked as I collected my empty dishes on his tray.
“You and I asked the same question during our first week here.” Wilder gave me a wistful smile.
“Our wealthier classmates do not break their fast until the midday meal. They’re taught, it turns out, that eating first thing in the morning is a sign of gluttony, except in the case of children and manual laborers, who will require the energy.
They’re not eager to be associated with either category. ”
I lifted one brow. “That is asinine.”
Wilder threw his head back and laughed. “And you said something very similar two years ago.” He stood and picked up the tray. “As badly as I hate to admit it…” He lowered his voice. “We need to talk to Desmond. He’ll know how to mitigate the damage.”
My mouth opened, but no words would come out, and I could not understand my reluctance to tell Wilder that I’d already spoken to his brother.
“I…um. I saw him last night,” I said finally as I followed him with my teacup and saucer, my satchel bumping against my hip.
Wilder’s next step faltered, almost imperceptibly. “When?” He set the tray on a cart near the kitchen door and turned to take the cup and saucer from me.
“Right after it happened. He cleaned the wound.” I lifted my hand to show him the bandage, beneath which my cuts had scabbed over. “And he…invited me to work in his lab.”
“Well, that seems unnecessary.”
I frowned up at him. “Wilder, I can’t work in the student lab.
Not with Pryce standing just feet away.” I would feel him watching me.
We might wind up at the supply cabinet at the same time, and I wouldn’t be able to trust that that was coincidence.
I couldn’t possibly focus, knowing that every time he whispered to another student, he might be talking about me.
“When I’m finished with Pryce Wishart, he’ll wish he’d never heard your name,” Wilder said, his voice oddly deep. “He will not be a problem for you again.”
In his eyes flashed a danger I’d never seen before, and if I were not mistaken, the hand at his waist seemed to be wrapped around the hilt of his knife.
“Wilder, I swear to every force of entropy in the universe that if you unsheathe that blade—”
“Actions have consequences, Amber.” His brows dipped into a firm, grim line. “Actions against you, in particular.”
“One can only hope,” I replied. “But those consequences will not involve your blade.”
He released the hilt, and a hard sort of joy glinted in his eyes. “Fortunately, I have far more effective and less conspicuous tools at my disposal.”
I elected, for the state of my own anxiety, not to ask for any details, in hopes that whatever action Desmond was pursuing would render Wilder’s solution unnecessary.
“It may be a moot point anyway. There’s every chance in the world that they’ll expel me when I cannot pay for the window.”
“They’re not going to expel you.”
“You don’t know—”
“I know.” Wilder extended one arm toward the exit, inviting me to precede him. “If the Bluehelm wants you here despite your amnesia, she’s not going to hold an accident against you.”
“Well then, maybe you can come with me.” I ignored the weight of several stares as I headed out of the Refectory. “Desmond has the whole laboratory suite to himself, as far as I can tell, and I’m sure he’d be happy to have you—”
“Oh, he certainly would not.” Wilder followed me onto the quadrangle, and though he clearly had more to say on the subject, we’d gone a half dozen more steps, eschewing the stone path to walk in the grass, before he spoke again. “Desmond hosted you in his fancy private laboratory last year.”
“So he says.”
“But he refused to offer me the same invitation. He said that as a staff member of the Alchemary, he could not be seen to support my illicit activities. Though he was kind enough to label it as ‘research,’ even as he looked down his nose at me. Which left me no choice but to sneak into the student lab space in the middle of the night.”
Wilder glanced at me, and I could only shrug, aware, again, of other students looking my way as they walked in groups across the quadrangle, whispering to one another.
“He has a valid point,” I said, doing my best to ignore the gossip.
“Only because the research board rejected my proposal to pursue my project in an official capacity, as my Mastery-year research. This is the kind of thing that could bring in a significant profit for the Panacea Project.” Wilder’s eyes lit up, his voice taking on a new intensity. “What I’m doing helps people.”
I arched one brow at him. “Like Professor Robards?”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s the look the research board gave me. Yes, like Professor Robards, though I certainly didn’t mention any of my clients in my proposal.”
“Do you really think enabling him to cheat on his wife is helping him?”
Wilder frowned. “I have helped him. And it’s not my place to pass judgment on his decisions.
I am not privy to the way his marriage functions.
” He cleared his throat pointedly. “I’ve also helped myself—and you—focus and stay awake.
And I’ve helped myself set aside the anxiety keeping me from becoming a real part of the community here. ”
That he had. Everyone knew and loved Wilder.
“All of that adds up to a worthy contribution to the Panacea Project,” he declared in a fierce whisper. “I am bringing the human mind and body closer to perfection.”
“But they didn’t see it that way.”
He scowled. “They called my elixirs a gimmick. They accused me of ‘playing at alchemy’ in a way that is scandalous and beneath the dignity of this institution. And they strongly encouraged me to realign my vision and to direct my innate talent toward a ‘more respectable’ branch of Panacea.”
“Which would be what?”
Wilder shrugged. “As of this moment, my research is officially ‘undeclared.’ ”
“Well, that is a travesty,” I assured him with a grin. “But not surprising, given how devastatingly brilliant and underappreciated you are.”
Yet I could not help noticing that despite considering Wilder’s research scandalous and beneath the dignity of the Alchemary, Desmond hadn’t tried to get him removed from campus.