Chapter Twenty-Five
At first, I had enormous fun, despite my anxiety about the trial.
I practically danced around Desmond’s laboratory, a song ringing through my head while I mixed, and lit, and timed, and measured, and adjusted, and recorded.
I flitted from table to table, one eye on the hourglasses, the other on the height of flames and the softly bubbling contents of half a dozen suspended beakers and rounded vials.
Yes, my classmates had been preparing for the Black Trial for a month and a half already, while I’d essentially had only one week, because it had taken me more than the first month of class just to relearn what I’d spent two years learning in the first place. What none of them had forgotten.
But while I’d had to fight for that base-level knowledge—not just for the alchemy skills themselves, but for understanding of what skills I should even be trying to reacquire—knowledge fit into place quickly for me, and self-evaluations had assured me that retention was no issue.
I felt relatively good about my prospects, going into my own trial preparation, despite the tense anticipation from the entire Mastery cohort.
Until my first antidote failed. Utterly and terrifyingly. It had absolutely no effect on the drops of poison I applied it to.
I rallied, mentally, and had already adjusted the formula and started slowly heating fresh ingredients before I tested the second antidote on its poison.
It, too, failed, and my confidence bruised as surely as my tailbone had the time I’d fallen from the fourth rung of the loft ladder as a child, on an errand for my mother.
My smile disappeared. The song faded from my thoughts.
I dug in and tried harder, pulling textbooks from Desmond’s office for reference. Double-checking my measurements, and heat levels, and timing. Making careful, detailed note of each failure.
Wishing upon every star in the sky that I’d made up with Wilder and snuck him into his brother’s lab long enough to help him with my memory elixir.
Ignoring the concerned looks I could feel coming from Desmond, even as I refused to look up and acknowledge them.
But then the third antidote failed, and I could only clutch the edge of the worktable, breathing in and out slowly as I held in a scream of frustration, shocked by the sharp pain like a thousand knives stabbing the inside of my throat.
“Amber?” Desmond’s voice was a cold wash of reality against the white-hot roar of my own frustration. Of my humiliation. I’d learned so much, so fast. Despite my exhaustion, I’d loved the process and had felt, up to that very moment, that every second devoted to studying was time well spent.
“I’m fine.” I spun away from him, swiping tears from my eyes before they could fall, and hurried into the supply closet, where I snatched my satchel from its hook.
I dug into the inner side pocket and felt an instant modicum of calm as my fingers brushed the smooth, cool, rounded glass of a slim vial.
Desmond appeared in the doorway just as I tipped the uncorked vial up to my lips.
A snarl rumbled up from his throat as he snatched the vial, spilling several precious drops on the floor.
I swallowed the half that had made it into my mouth as I whirled on him, anger blazing from my eyes, burning in my very veins.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, reaching for the vial.
He stepped back and turned the vial to read the distinctive label, coming perilously close to spilling more of the contents.
“What is this?” He frowned at the writing, and I realized he did not understand Wilder’s product code.
Which meant this elixir was not the one I’d seen him take that night in his office.
“If you don’t know what it is, why would you feel justified snatching it from my hands?” I demanded.
“Because I recognize Wilder’s diagonal label, and none of his elixirs have been properly tested or approved for production and distribution.”
“And yet, you avail yourself of them. Hypocrite,” I could not resist adding. “I saw you drink from one of Wilder’s vials.”
“I—” His mouth snapped shut. A maelstrom of conflicting thoughts swirled behind his eyes, and I watched him struggle, clearly grasping for a response that would defend his honor and prove me wrong, yet also be truthful.
“You do not understand what you saw,” he finally said, speaking through teeth clenched not in anger, but in…
something more complicated. Something that looked very much like a struggle for control.
“And frankly, that is none of your concern.”
“As that vial is none of yours.” I grasped for it again, and again he lifted it out of reach.
When I rose onto my toes, I found myself pressed against him, one hand curled in the fabric of his shirt while the other pulled at his arm like a small child losing a game of keep-away with an older sibling.
And I was losing. Desmond was too strong and too tall to be moved.
But…he did not feel like my sibling. Not with his firm, broad, warm chest pressed against mine, his shoulder grazing my cheek as I stood on my toes.
“Give it to me,” I demanded, and to my dismay, my voice sounded breathy, less like I was demanding what I wanted than like I was…begging for it.
Desmond’s breath hitched. He groaned, but the sound died in his throat before I could even be sure I’d heard it. Though…I’d felt it. I could still feel it, caged up in his chest, echoing against every shallow breath he took.
I uncurled my fingers from his sleeve and lowered my arm as I stepped back, desperate to reclaim poise as I smoothed the front of my dress. As I composed my expression.
Desmond stood like a statue three feet from the closet doorway, his arm in the air, his gaze fixed on me with an intensity I’d never seen in my entire life.
That I could remember, anyway.
If he was breathing, I could not tell.
He stared at me as if I were a spirit returned from the grave to haunt him. As if he could not be certain what I was, or whether I was real.
As if moving might break the spell and banish me from his presence.
Shame flooded me as I regained myself. I cleared my throat. “I apologize for—”
“Don’t…apologize.” His words were sharp, but not cruel. He lowered his arm but did not offer me the vial. “What is this?”
“It…it elevates the mood.”
His brows rose; evidently that was not what he’d expected to hear. “Why would you require such a service?”
“Because I’m frustrated.” I huffed, dropping my gaze. “This afternoon has been an utter failure, and—”
“We all get frustrated, Amber. That’s no reason—”
“No,” I said, my gaze snapping up to his. “Don’t trivialize this as the standard academic strain. I’m in an extraordinary situation, and you know that. I’m not the Amber I used to be, and—”
“Yes, you—”
“Desmond!” My fists curled in frustration. “Stop assuming you know what I’m going to say, and just listen.”
He blinked at me. Then he exhaled. “I apologize. Please go on.”
“Maybe the Amber I used to be got everything right on the first try, or maybe she had plenty of time to work through her mistakes, if she made them. But neither of those is true for this Amber. Tomorrow, I’m going to swallow poison.
And if I can’t identify it in time to make an antidote—which I must already know how to make—I will die.
In an inglorious pageant of failure that will outlive me and likely become Alchemary legend. My humiliating legacy.”
I smoothed my hands down the sides of my skirt, resisting the urge to clutch the material.
“I thought I had a handle on this. I thought I’d at least gotten close to the level of my classmates.
But every antidote I’ve made today has failed, and I haven’t the slightest idea why, or how to fix it.
And all I want in the whole wide world is to rant, and cry, and throw things.
To break every vial and beaker in this room. But alchemy isn’t about how I feel.”
Desmond’s expression went suddenly, startlingly blank. Not as if he had nothing to add, but as if he wanted to hide his thoughts on the matter. Likely because I’d told him to just listen, for once.
“Frustration will not serve my ambition,” I continued.
“Which means I cannot afford to waste time wallowing. I need to rally so I can focus on something other than the greater-than-average chance that by this time tomorrow, my corpse will be in the back of a carriage headed straight for Innswood. And Wilder, for all his unapproved and unorthodox methods, is the most practical alchemist I’ve ever known. ”
One corner of Desmond’s mouth quirked upward. “You’re a student. The only alchemists you’ve known are your professors.”
And my mother. Had he forgotten about her?
“And yet I feel like my statement has merit,” I insisted. “And I know Wilder’s elixir does. So kindly return it.”
“Amber—”
“It works.”
“I know.” He sighed. “I am not saying it doesn’t work. I’m saying that even if it accomplishes the desired effect, every elixir also functions in some unexpected manner.”
“I haven’t noticed—”
“And you may not, or you may not immediately. But that doesn’t mean that the undesired effect isn’t…happening.”
“Okay, well, if it helps me live through tomorrow, I’m perfectly willing to deal with these ‘undesired effects,’ later.”
Desmond glanced at the vial, then his gaze returned to me. “How about I help you live through tomorrow?”
I blinked up at him, trying to ignore the sudden jump in my pulse. “Can you promise that you don’t come with ‘undesired effects’?”
Though, truth be told, I was more worried about him causing desired effects, even if I wasn’t willing to say such a thing aloud.
Desmond laughed, and the coppery glow in his eyes lit a fire deep in my belly. “If I do, we can deal with that tomorrow, too.”