Chapter 36
On the morning of the White Trial, I woke up alone, as on the morning of the Black Trial. Only this time I was in my own bed, as if it were a normal day.
It was not.
Keryth had not called another meeting in her self-appointed roll of cohort chancellor.
Yoslyn and I had not discussed the trial, in an unspoken yet mutually-agreed-upon decision to ignore the fact that either or both of us might soon die.
Instead, in the moments we’d stolen from academia, we’d postulated the purpose of the bracelet and the frame, tossing out absurd theories over late-night snacks. Yet coming to no real conclusions.
Wilder and I had discussed the White Trial at length.
He was openly willing to help me, despite being my direct competition, and though I felt certain I had less to offer, I was just as willing to help him.
As far as I was concerned, until the trial actually began, we were in it together, as we’d been in nearly everything together since we were small children.
We did not revisit our kiss. We did not even acknowledge it.
Wilder seemed convinced that the White Trial would involve fire, because purification in alchemy was almost always through flame.
I could not disagree with his logic, but neither could I help pointing out that rebirth was rarely ever through fire, and the White Trial was just as likely to take rebirth as its theme.
Because we had no specific task to focus on, we’d spent the last week before the trial refreshing ourselves on every theory we’d ever studied—some of which I could not remember studying in the first place—and every formula we’d ever been taught or come up with.
Wilder was generous with his invented formulas, as I was with Past Amber’s notes.
Yet on the morning of the trial, I woke up covered in sweat, in the middle of a panic that had evidently begun in my sleep. In my very dreams.
I bolted from bed and rushed to throw open the shutters, then stood staring out the window, hyperventilating, letting the frigid ocean breeze dry my damp skin. Counting on the rhythmic crash of waves against the cliffside to calm my racing heart.
Death felt only hours away. And as loathe as I would have been to admit it, humiliation seemed just as likely, and far more horrible.
Everyone would eventually die. I did not want my legacy, like my mother’s, to be the humiliation of failure.
I rinsed myself at the washbasin and got dressed, and as I stared at myself in a smoky handheld glass that had been my mother’s, an odd sense of foreboding washed over me—a quieter, more somber version of the fear that had woken me.
For a moment, the resemblance to my mother was so strong in the glass that I did not recognize my own face. When had I grown to look so much like her? Had I forgotten that, as well as two years of memories?
With a sigh, I set down the glass and opened the wooden box where I’d found her ring. Where I had stored both the bracelet and the ornate metal frame. If I didn’t survive the White Trial, someone would find them among my things. Yoslyn, perhaps, if she fared better.
Otherwise, Wilder. Or Desmond, if he packed up my belongings for my father.
Soft steps echoed on the landing, and a knock sounded on my door. I snapped the box closed and set it on the corner of my desk.
“Come in,” I said as I stood.
Wilder pushed the door open, and an instant later, I found myself swallowed by his embrace.
“Are you afraid you won’t get a chance to hug me after the trial?
” I asked as I laid my head on his shoulder, amazed to find that he still smelled exactly like he had as a child.
Like herbal tea, and the sweet, earthy smell of a childhood spent outdoors, and most of all, like a whirling tempest that will not settle for any force in the world.
In fact, I could feel his very soul raging, barely contained by his flesh and blood, as I returned his embrace.
“On the contrary,” he said into my hair, and I had the distinct impression that he was breathing me in as well.
“I’m just a selfish boor who refuses to wait that long.
” Finally, he stepped back just far enough that I could see his face.
That I could see he was examining mine. “Are you ready? Did you sleep?”
“Too long,” I admitted. “I intended to wake early and study.”
“If you aren’t ready, it isn’t for lack of studying,” he said. “In fact, we studied too much for my personal preference. I’m a bit afraid of jinxing myself.”
“Because you didn’t study at all for the Black Trial?”
Wilder grinned. “Precisely. If I fail this time because there’s too much knowledge clanking around in here, jamming up the gears”—he tapped the side of his skull—“I shall blame you entirely.”
I laughed. “Fortunately for me, too much knowledge has never been your problem.”
“And on that note…” He held out his arm, crooked at the elbow, inviting me to take it. “May I escort you to our doom?”
He made such a joke of it, with his formal posture and indefatigable grin, that I could not help but return his smile. And take his arm.
The attendant with the severe blond bun led all ten remaining members of our cohort into a small stone building behind the Conservatory, which I’d always mistaken for a maintenance shed. Inside, we found nothing but a rough stone floor and another door.
Beyond that second door was a broad set of smooth marble steps, leading deeper into the earth than I’d ever been.
As I descended, my pulse pounding, I reached back to grip Yoslyn’s hand and forward to squeeze Wilder’s shoulder, unburdened by my satchel, because we weren’t allowed to bring any notes into the White Trial.
The white arena was a thing to behold, and if I weren’t preparing to face my own purification and rebirth—or die trying—I probably would have been in awe of it.
The round competition space itself was much larger than the amphitheater and was entirely paved in white marble stones, cut and polished to a slick mirror finish.
The arena was sunken below the audience seating, so that spectators—far fewer than in the Black Trial—could observe the competition from above.
Desmond sat among them, on the row behind the Bluehelm and several senior professors and staff members.
My Mastery-year classmates and I were led into the arena and stationed just inside its perimeter, at ten workstations equidistant apart. An eleventh and twelfth stood empty: reminders of Kornell’s failure and Petyr’s death.
For this trial, there were no official observers. No one other than the competitors had entered the arena, and that fact made my very bones ache with nervous anticipation.
When the spectators had all taken seats, the Bluehelm stood, and all eyes turned her way. Bright white torchlight flickered across her taught alabaster skin, which made her cheekbones look sharp, the hollows beneath them deeper than usual.
“There are no specific instructions for the White Trial.” Her voice boomed across the huge space, no doubt aided by specially designed acoustics.
“The trial has two stages, and at a certain point, anyone who has not found their own way into the second stage will be given access to it. You may use any materials at your workstation. Your only goal is to exit the arena. But to pass the trial, you must be one of the first eight to do so.” She glanced around the arena, briefly looking at each of us. “You may begin.”
With that, she took her seat.
Startled by the stark brevity of her speech, at first I could only stare at her, waiting for more. But no more came. No words of history or tradition. Of comfort or encouragement. The Bluehelm was all business today, and I took that as an indication that I should be as well.
I glanced at Wilder, who occupied the station two to my left, then at Yoslyn, who was directly to my right.
The workstations were angled to face the center of the arena, so we could all see each other, but the spacing was so great that it would be difficult to understand what anyone else was actually doing.
My gaze strayed to the marble wall behind Wilder. The surface of the stones was too smooth to grip, and they were so cleanly cut and so tightly packed that the seams were hardly visible. My fingernail would not fit into a single crack. There was no hope of climbing out.
The door we’d entered through had closed neatly behind us, and I’d lost track of it when I turned to claim my station. Wherever the door was, the gap around it was now indistinguishable from the seams in the stones themselves, and I had no doubt that even if I could find it, it would not open.
It was unclear how we were intended to escape the arena, or how alchemy would aid in that endeavor. So I turned to the workstation in front of me to see what had been provided.
The supplies were basic, but plentiful: The usual array of ingredients and equipment.
Three burners, an entire rack of vials in several shapes and sizes, and a generous allotment of beyn.
I would have preferred to distill it myself—I’d tried out several basic recipes over the past month—but the time required for that would cost me.
Not that I really understood the challenge yet, and…
A great grinding suddenly echoed, seemingly from everywhere at once, and several of my classmates gasped. I looked around for the source, even as the ground trembled beneath my feet, and I noticed that while my entire cohort looked startled, not one of the spectators did.
Yoslyn stood with both palms pressed to her work surface, as though it might shake apart without the extra stability, and Wilder stared, wide-eyed, at the ground.