Chapter Twenty-Six
“Four out of six. A sixty-six percent success rate.” I blinked at my notes, silently commanding the numbers to change. Willing the letters to rearrange themselves and spell out my victory. My survival.
They did not change.
“That’s a vast improvement,” Desmond noted from his stool across the table, where he held the beaker containing my latest antidote up to the light, examining the particulates.
“Yes. As long as one of these four poisons is the one administered tomorrow, assuming I’m able to make the antidote in time, I should be able to survive.” But there was no guarantee that one of the six I’d focused on would be chosen, much less one of the four I’d managed to cure.
And…it had taken me far too long to make each one.
On the bright side, however, I had no concern that I would forget the formula. I rarely forgot anything once I’d read it or written it—ironic, considering my current affliction—and we were allowed to bring notes.
My concern, aside from the possibility that I’d be presented with a poison I could not identify, was the time it would take to make the antidote with a poison already running through my veins, compromising my ability to concentrate and potentially my physical capabilities.
“I’m going to try those two again.” I gestured at the two beakers at the end of the table.
For all I knew, Desmond had known the exact recipe for each one before we’d even gotten started.
If so, he’d resisted any urge to give me the answers—to potentially save my life—because he knew, as I knew, that the Alchemary had no use for a scientist who could not save herself with the skills she intended to spend her entire life practicing.
This trial was intended to weed out weak alchemists, and however terrifying I might find that fact personally, I had no quibble with that goal.
If I could not pass on my own, I should not enter the trial.
“You need a break,” Desmond insisted as he set the beaker down. “You missed the midday meal, and the Refectory will stop serving the evening meal soon.”
“I’m fine.”
He sighed. “Then I need a break. And a meal. And a walk, or something.” He stood, arms extended behind his back to flex his shoulders.
“Go ahead.” I dismissed him with the wave of one hand as I carried yet more supplies to the cleaning station.
“Amber—”
“I don’t have time to waste eating and exercising. If I don’t figure this out, I could die tomorrow.”
“I know. And repeating that won’t help you come to terms with the fact. But taking a break could help you approach the next round with a fresh perspective. Clearer thoughts.”
“I can’t—” Frustrated, I set the beakers down too hard, and when I turned, I gasped to find Desmond right behind me.
“I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong with those last two.
And I’ve made a second list of possible poisons, in case none of these six are the right one.
The smart thing would be to at least write up notes on some antidotes for them, even if I don’t have time to brew or test them. And—”
His brow furrowed, and a wave of guilt washed over me. “You don’t have to stay. This is not your burden.”
“I’m not going to leave you here alone.”
“I promise I won’t burn your lab down.”
He chuckled softly, and I found myself smiling, despite the fear growing like a tumor inside me. “I meant that I’m not going to abandon you here.”
“You don’t even think I should be doing this.”
“In part, because I don’t want you to die.” His voice deepened in a way that echoed through me, triggering quakes like the rumble of the earth itself before entire towns heaved into collapse. “Leaving you to struggle alone would be counter to that goal.”
“Of keeping me alive?”
Desmond nodded and stepped back, his copper-eyed gaze holding mine. “Exactly.”
“Do you go to this much trouble for all of your childhood friends?”
He blinked, and something visceral passed behind his eyes, swallowing his smile like a beast leaping from the ocean to devour a bird. “No one has ever been as much trouble as you are, Amber.” But then he seemed to brush the thought aside. “Also, I have no other friends.”
“You…?”
He shrugged, as if that statement meant no more to him than announcing that we had run out of clean beakers.
“Alchemy—the Alchemary, at least—does not prize personal relationships. You might have noticed that the staff researchers are all unmarried? The theory is that relationships get in the way of true science. They serve to distract.”
“I see.” In truth, I could see that concept reflected in interactions I’d observed but never truly considered.
And in the fact that while many of the professors were married, none of the staff researchers, as far as I knew, had spouses or children.
They all lived in dormitory-style on-campus apartments.
Students, however, clearly weren’t yet expected to cast off personal relationships in order to better serve alchemy. So, why did I feel so isolated among them?
“Is that why, aside from Wilder, my cohort seems to want little to do with me?” I asked. “Did I simply take alchemy more seriously than the rest?” Had I already chosen my craft over camaraderie?
Desmond gave me a strangely assessing look, as if he were trying to divine the origin of my question in order to know how to answer.
“No. And yes. Respectively. Most students take alchemy seriously, but most also have friendships and other personal relationships.” He turned abruptly back to my primary workstation. “You’re getting in your own way.”
I frowned as I followed him to the table. “What do you mean?”
“You’re second-guessing yourself. Depending too much upon what you know and not enough on your instincts and memory. You’ve done all this before, whether you remember it or not.”
“But I do not remember it, so those experiences are of no use to me.”
“That’s not true.” Desmond’s quiet smile burned in me like the spark from a flint strike. “Do you remember the day you woke up with no memory? You and I left the Dormitory together, to go see Dr. Winhoof.”
“Yes.” I remembered, but I had no idea what point he was making.
“You turned directly and specifically in the direction of the Conservatory that morning, all on your own, though you had no memory of ever being on the Alchemary campus.”
“I—” I frowned, trying to remember that moment. My memory since that morning was virtually unimpeachable, but I had little recall of events that hadn’t made enough impression on me to form a memory.
“The same is true of my lab space.”
“I turned in the right direction?” I guessed with a smile, to cover the flustered feeling chewing on my very nerve endings.
“Essentially,” Desmond said. “From the first moment you stepped into the space, you seemed to know where everything was stored. You haven’t once struggled to find a component or a piece of equipment, though I didn’t point them all out during the tour.”
“That’s likely because this space is impeccably organized. I give you credit in that regard. I could not imagine a more logical and better organized storage system, and—”
“You organized this lab,” Desmond said, this time with a broad, almost gloating smile.
“I…?”
“Yes. When you moved into the space last year, you declared my organizational skills to be utterly subpar, and you set about remedying that. Without asking permission, I might add.”
My cheeks burned like banked coals as embarrassment overwhelmed his point entirely. “I do apologize for overstepping.”
“Don’t. You were right. Your system was much better. And a couple of weeks ago, you stepped back into this lab and walked around as if you remembered organizing it.”
“I didn’t,” I insisted. “I still don’t.”
“And yet, your instinct functions as if you do. Because your instinct is a form of memory, letting you call upon experiences you don’t consciously remember.”
“Stars above,” I murmured. Was he right? Was I subconsciously remembering things I had no active recollection of?
I turned in a slow circle, and with every drawer or cabinet my gaze fell on, I recited its contents. Even the ones I had no memory of ever opening. Then I rushed around the room, opening drawers and cabinets. Verifying my hunches.
They were all correct.
I turned to Desmond, astonishment probably shining on my face like a freshly polished pane of glass.
He granted me a quiet smile. “My point is that that same instinct is likely available to you in other aspects of alchemy.” He hesitated for an almost imperceptible instant. “And of life.”
Because life was alchemy. And alchemy was life.
“All you have to do is trust your instincts.” Desmond stepped closer, his voice lowered to a near whisper, as if he were letting me in on a very special secret. “Which essentially just means trusting what Past Amber already knows.”
My instincts…
What did Past Amber know?
An impulse seized me. I wrapped my hands around fistfuls of his shirt, rose onto my toes, and kissed him directly on the mouth.
For one heartbeat, Desmond stood stiff and unyielding, and my mistake—my horrifically erroneous instinct—loomed over me like the guillotine, hungry for the crunch of my spine.
What in the name of entropy was I doing?
I let go of his shirt and dropped onto my heels, intending to flee the room, and the building, and the Alchemary, and my own humiliation.
But then Desmond’s hands curled around my hips in a bruising grip, pulling me closer, higher, until I was balanced on the very tips of my toes.
He made a primal sound at the back of his throat, like a half-starved dog tearing into a steak suddenly dropped in front of him, and a blistering need unfurled deep within me, hot tendrils curling low and tight.
Gripping me with a desire I recognized on a bone-deep level but could not remember ever having felt before.