Chapter 31 #2
“This was not my victory,” he whispered, leaning down until his forehead rested against mine, his warm breath brushing my cheek.
“It was yours. And you earned it not just today, but over the course of the past two years, with every class you attended, every experiment you performed, and every note you took. Don’t let whatever happened to you six weeks ago strip away everything you’ve damn well earned. ”
His hand slid into my grip, fingers winding around mine in a touch that felt desperately reserved. Intimate, and yet guarded. Restrained.
I clung to his palm. My free hand slid over his tunic, beneath his waistcoat, and clutched at a handful of the fine material, wrinkling it brutally.
“Does that mean you want me here now?” I whispered.
“I want you”—he let the first part of the statement linger, while I could feel the rest of it coming like the swift drop of the guillotine—“anywhere but here.”
Frustration clenched my teeth. So I changed the subject.
“Wilder passed easily.” No need to mention what else Wilder had done—the kiss that had propelled me out of the tavern and into the alley.
Desmond nodded. “Yes. He does that.”
“He had time to make two elixirs. One of them wasn’t even for the trial. How is he so good at Alchemy when he hardly takes notes? When he hardly listens in class, that I can tell?”
Desmond sighed. “Alchemy is about harnessing nature’s inherently unpredictable and destructive forces and repurposing them.
Redirecting them. Wilder is an inherently unpredictable and destructive force.
When you and I say that Alchemy is life, the statement is aspirational. For Wilder, it is absolute fact.”
“He operates on instinct. Pure instinct.” My words were so soft, I wasn’t sure Desmond even heard them.
Until he replied, “And that instinct is rarely ever wrong.”
His words rang through me like a striker through a giant bell, leaving me trembling all over. Thrumming with the implication.
If Wilder had kissed me on instinct, and his instinct was rarely ever wrong, what did that mean for us? For the three of us?
I shook my head, blinking to clear the thoughts from my expression before Desmond saw them. In their place, I let him see something just as personal.
“I don’t understand how I did it,” I admitted, laying the greater truth bare before him. Flaying my very soul open, to show him the wound festering deep inside. “I shouldn’t get credit, if I did it by accident.”
“What do you mean?” he took a step back, but our hands remained joined, and suddenly, robbed of his body heat, I did feel the cold.
“I mean that I followed the formula, and presumably that would have saved me. But how did it also work on Yoslyn? Why was one dose enough for both of us? And why did it work instantly?”
Desmond didn’t look surprised by the question. But he didn’t answer it either.
“They’re discussing that, aren’t they?” My hand tightened around his, silently demanding a response. Demanding the truth. “What did my observer say? He’s your colleague?”
“Yes, and likely assigned to you specifically by the Bluehelm. His name is Osric Irving, and he’s one of the seniormost Apotheosis researchers.
” Desmond sighed, but he held my gaze. “Osric has no idea how your antidote worked like it did. The formula was correct. It was one of the correct approaches, anyway, though he was openly impressed with the ingenuity of it. As was I, for the record. I hadn’t seen your work on metal poisoning until this morning, when I went back to the lab and grabbed your notes. ”
“Desmond, please. Just tell me.” I didn’t feel like I could claim the work I’d done, considering that I couldn’t remember doing it.
“But they all agree,” he continued. “Osric, and the assembled panel of professors and researchers. One vial shouldn’t have been enough for both you and Yoslyn. And it shouldn’t have worked so quickly. And…” He exhaled heavily. “It shouldn’t have reversed the damage.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…at half a dosage, the most your antidote should have done was neutralize the poison. By all rights, you and Yoslyn should both be in the infirmary right now, waiting on the Panacea’s antidote to reverse the effects, like your classmate Adria.
She suffered mild lung damage and will likely be breathing viable air”—a remedy produced by the Panacea staff and sold by the Alchemary as a treatment for various lung illnesses—“for several days. Though they’ve deemed the damage minor enough that she will pass. ”
Suddenly the chill I felt seemed to be coming from beneath my skin rather than from the cold night air.
“So then, how did it happen, Desmond? How did I earn this? Me or past me?”
“I have no idea. And they’ve certainly asked.
They crawled all over my lab this afternoon, looking for some hint of an ingredient you could have snuck in, or some way you could have preprepared the antidote and exchanged what you pretended to make for what you’d brought with you, though Osric swears no such thing happened.
” He sighed. “A couple of my colleagues have even accused me of telling you what the poison would be, but that idea was dismissed, because I’m not on the committee this year.
I didn’t know it would be a metal toxin. ”
“Then why did you underline that antidote?”
He frowned. “I underlined several of the ones you didn’t get a chance to practice, to make sure you could understand your own notes quickly.”
“Truly?” I asked, and he nodded. I hadn’t noticed any others. Likely because I didn’t spend much time on the ones that didn’t fit the symptoms.
“I didn’t give you the answer, Amber. I didn’t even know the answer.”
I exhaled slowly, letting the truth of that settle into my soul. “So…what was the conclusion?” I whispered. “From that panel of professors and researchers?”
His thumb stroked over the back of my right hand, his coppery gaze holding mine with remarkable steadiness. “They have no idea. But they desperately want to understand. They’ll do anything to understand, in fact.”
“That’s why Yoslyn wasn’t expelled.”
He nodded. “They’re studying you both. They’re already set up in the arena, with two teams of researchers, trying to replicate what you did. Following every step Osric wrote down.”
“Any luck?”
“Not so far.”
“Will I be…questioned? Interviewed?” The very idea made anxiety twist in my gut.
“I sincerely doubt it,” Desmond said. “That would mean admitting that they don’t understand how a student got professional- grade results from an intermediate-grade recipe.
They think…” He exhaled heavily. “The Bluehelm thinks you’re back.
The old Amber. Or at least that this is evidence you could be.
She’s convinced the Alchemary can benefit from your research. If you ever manage to finish it.”
“Or even remember it,” I mumbled.
He nodded. “Either way, it appears that I’ve lost this battle. She will not send you home. And if you will not leave on your own accord—”
“I will not.”
“—then it seems we are still lab mates. If that is still what you want.”
I took a deep breath. “The situation is complicated,” I admitted.
“Amber, I do not regret what happened between us. I should. Yet I do not.” His coppery gaze flashed fiercely at me in the dim light, and a heat began to build low, low in my center.
Saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal.
“But I understand if you do.”
“I—”
A commotion swelled from inside the Beaker. Panicked shouting. For the second time in a week, one word carried above the others in a crowd.
Aurum.
Desmond squeezed my fingers, even as he turned toward the open kitchen door. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” Then he released my hand and disappeared into the chaos.
As I exited the alley, I saw several Alchemary staff members carrying a motionless, gold-tinged man out the front door of the Dusty Beaker on a litter made of coarse material stretched over two poles.
A crowd had gathered. Professors and researchers were examining the man by the light of several lanterns, while a cluster of students watched.
I snuck through the dark on the edge of the crowd and headed for the bridge alone.