Chapter 44 #2
The truth of that hit me like a blow to the gut, and I set my cup carefully on its saucer. “That’s why I wrote in code.…” Past Amber had known. At least, she’d suspected. “I didn’t trust you either. That’s why I wrote all of my research notes in a language no one else could understand.”
He nodded. “I think that’s true. I thought you were being paranoid at the time. That it was another way this place was changing you. But maybe you knew the Bluehelm was trying to keep tabs on you.”
I arched both brows at him. “Well, Past Amber was certainly no imbecile.”
“Neither is Current Amber.” His frown faded. “I don’t think he stopped observing you after your memory loss. I thought it was odd, at the time, how the Bluehelm knew to appear at Dr. Winhoof’s office during your examination. Wilder wanted to deliver you straight to her, but—”
“You insisted I go to the Panacea wing.”
He nodded. “And yet the Bluehelm appeared there and observed most of your examination. I think Wilder alerted her.”
“Seconds before he died, he looked relieved.” I blew over the surface of my tea again, letting the fragrant mist wash over my face in an attempt to calm the pitching of my stomach.
I did not like thinking ill of the dead. Especially of Wilder.
“Relieved?”
“Yes. When the staircase opened in the Conservatory foyer. He looked distinctly relieved. I remember thinking that was odd, because I’d expected him to look as surprised as I was that the staircase even existed.”
“He was going to tell the Bluehelm,” Desmond concluded. “That’s why he rushed in. You’d had no luck recovering your memory, and they didn’t know you had completed the formula for the Philosopher’s Stone. Wilder was running out of things to report, and your potential was looking…” He shrugged.
“Dubious. Which meant his time at the Alchemary was likely nearing an end. But he thought he could buy more if he brought her whatever we’d found in Lord Calyx’s secret hiding place. And instead, it killed him.”
“Do you think it’s his formula for the Stone?” Desmond asked.
“I don’t know what else it could be.” I shrugged.
“We know he finished the formula and that he used it. He described the gold-flecked silver solution. But he clearly never thought to drink it. Whatever method he tried to square the circle was a failure, and so his solution became inert. It took the form of that beautiful, clear stone, which he mounted in a ring. I cannot imagine what he would have hidden beneath the floor of the Conservatory, if not the formula for the Philosopher’s Stone. ”
“She cannot get it,” Desmond said quietly. “We cannot let the Bluehelm acquire that formula any more than we can let her find out what you are. What you’ve done. She is not the only rot at the Alchemary, but she is its wellspring, and—”
I sat straight, on the literal edge of my seat. “So, let’s go get it.”
Desmond frowned. “The noxious gas—”
“Has certainly dissipated quite a bit, with the passage of two days’ time, yet the threat of it has likely kept everyone else away. If any of it does remain, it is unlikely to injure someone who has become the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“That’s too much to risk—”
“Desmond.” I reached across the table to seize his hand, which wrapped around mine with a warm strength, as if on instinct.
“If the gas remains, I will not descend the stairs. You have my word. But I cannot remain here, simply wondering.” I stood and sipped as much of the scalding tea as I could manage.
“You may accompany me if you like.” I divested my expression of any evidence of how badly I wanted that. “But I will go, regardless.”
Despite his concerns about the danger, and to my great relief, Desmond would not let me sneak into the Conservatory alone. The front door had been barred, which we knew because he’d been forced to steal in the back way in order to make a postcoital elixir for me just hours before.
We snuck in that same way and were relieved to find that while the atrium was officially off-limits, there were no guards posted to bar our entry. No one else, it seemed, would dare disobey the Bluehelm’s orders. Especially when they might only be rewarded with death by a lingering noxious gas.
“It’s gone,” Desmond whispered as he peered into the dark stairwell, holding his candle as low as he dared without actually descending. “I think the fumes have dissipated. Though the official word is that that was expected to take several more days.”
“That was said to keep people away,” I whispered, and Desmond nodded. “I’ll go first, just in case. If I start coughing, you turn around immediately,” I ordered.
“Without hesitation,” he said, his gaze locked onto mine. “But I shall be carrying you in my arms, upon my retreat.”
I gave his hand a warm squeeze. Then I started slowly down the spiral staircase, holding my own candle.
Cobwebs stretched from the low ceiling of a narrow, stone-paved corridor, wafting gently under the influence of a breeze so slight I could not feel it.
There were no branches or corners in the passage.
No more traps or puzzles. At the end of the short path stood a plain wooden door with a decorative metal triangle set into it.
A ring the size of my palm had been cut into the wood around the triangle, and inside it had been carved a square, and within that a smaller circle.
I knew the shapes, and I knew exactly what would fit into the empty lines, but as I reached into the left pocket of my frock for the metal ouroboros, the scrape of a shoe heel on stone made my head snap up. Desmond stiffened at my side as I peered into the darkness beyond our candlelight.
“Someone’s here,” he whispered, and suddenly I understood why no one had tried to stop us from descending the hidden staircase. “The Bluehelm was watching.”
“Waiting for us,” I agreed. Because she didn’t have the pieces that would unlock this puzzle, and it would be easier to wait for me to bring them than for her to try to find them.
My pulse whooshed like ocean waves as shadows stirred at the base of the spiral staircase. A single right foot stepped into the light, bare and masculine, with a strong, high arch. It had an odd sheen in the flicker of my candle—an almost glowing golden cast.
An aurum. Yet even in the dim light, I could see that the tint of this poor man’s skin was much deeper—much more golden—than the aurums I’d seen before.
My pulse spiked violently, and for an instant, the entire world seemed to swim around me. How was this possible? Had the mysterious illness taken hold of the Alchemary itself while Desmond and I were secluded in shared mourning?
A matching left foot stepped forward, along with the cuff of a simple pair of linen trousers, and as the man wearing them stepped farther into the light, a second figure appeared behind him.
I couldn’t even look at the second man, however, because my gaze had caught on the first pair of golden feet and the matching golden hands that swung at the sides of those linen trousers.
My heart thumped painfully. I knew those feet. I knew those hands. I knew that gait, for all its odd stiffness, and…
He took another step, and I gasped at an achingly familiar set of features as the light fell over them. They were cast in that same oddly golden tone, glimmering with a strangely metallic glow.
“Wilder,” I whispered.
Desmond made a choking sound deep in his throat.
“Aurums,” he replied softly, and I shook my head, even though I’d had the same thought.
Because that wasn’t right. Aurums could not move.
They were flesh made stone—yes, an oddly glowing, metallic stone, yet stone nonetheless, of a sort. Aurums were frozen in their own form.
And Wilder had died without ever getting sick, so he could not be an aurum, any more than an aurum could be marching toward me.
But how else could he be walking this way, living and breathing—presumably—after I’d seen him die? How could he and…
Petyr. The other strangely golden figure, who also stood shirtless and oddly solemn, was Petyr Lorena, who’d died during the Black Trial, five weeks before. But had he died? Could he have, if he was standing here in front of me?
“What is happening?” I whispered.
Desmond stood eerily still at my side, every muscle tensed.
“I have not yet drawn a logical conclusion.” Even without glancing his way, I could tell that his uneasy focus was glued to his brother’s face.
I could feel the grief and confusion—the anger—rolling off him like smoke from a bonfire, and I understood his shock.
Wilder’s appearance was a knife plunged back into the still-gaping wound in my heart. In my soul.
“The facts do not support the conclusion stalking bodily toward us, substantial as the days they were born,” Desmond whispered. “Petyr and Wilder died.”
“Did you see their bodies?” I whispered.
He shook his head.
“I don’t understand what is happening,” I said as unanswered questions and unwelcome theories battled for space in my mind.
“But I know that only one person has ever had any control over Wilder, and that same person is responsible for bringing aurums to the Alchemary under the Crown’s seal in order to study the condition.
” She was also quite likely the most powerful alchemist in the world.
“The Bluehelm,” Desmond whispered.
“Indeed,” I said as the aurums stalked closer, golden skin shining in the light of our candles.
I did not understand what had happened to Wilder.
I couldn’t even be certain he was alive.
But I was certain that if Lord Calyx’s formula—or even a sample of his gold-flecked solution—was behind that door, it might be the only thing in existence that could help Wilder.
That could cure him, if he was alive, or let him rest in peace, if he was not.
Unease crawling across my skin, I turned toward the door, but a horrific screech spun me around again as a golden blur suddenly raced down the corridor toward us. I screamed, and Desmond shoved me back as he lurched into the center of the passageway.
“Open the door!” he shouted. Then Petyr slammed into him. Desmond grunted from the impact, planting his feet on the stone floor, trying to stop the golden human battering ram from driving him bodily into me.
Wilder raced forward, oddly silent, and as I fumbled to fit the metal ouroboros into its circle on the door, I heard the repeated thunk of flesh against flesh, followed by Desmond’s grunts, both of pain and of effort.
Pulse racing, I glanced back as I dug the square from my pocket and saw Desmond swinging with one fist while he blocked a blow with his opposite arm, his knees bent, the toes of his boot dug firmly into the edge of a stone tile on the floor, to shore up his footing.
Muscles stood out in his neck and through the material of his tunic, a bruise already forming on his chin.
“Hurry!” he gasped as he threw another blow, which thunked horrifically against golden flesh surely as hard as stone.
I whirled around and shoved the metal frame into the square etched into the door, then pulled Queen Avalona’s ring—Lord Calyx’s inert Philosopher’s Stone—from my other pocket.
When I pressed it to the circle at the center of the symbol, a great grinding echoed from behind the door, rumbling up from the floor to thrum throughout my body.
Behind me, the grunts and blows echoed at a frantic pace, and I flinched with each one until a final, heavy clank rang from behind the door. It creaked open, just an inch.
Holding my breath in case of another toxic trap, I shoved the door open and rushed past it.
Inside, my candlelight cast flickering shadows across a small chamber, entirely empty save what could only be described as a broad stone shrine at one end.
An elaborate green gown lay draped across the long marble surface, layered with cobwebs and clearly brittle with age.
Tucked into the crook at the gown’s elbow was a single dusty corked vial, its contents obscured by more than a century of grime.
Three portraits hung on the wall above the shrine.
The one in the center depicted Queen Avalona wearing the inert circle ring and the green gown, though in this painting, she was not visibly pregnant.
In the portrait on the right, she held her doomed infant son, in what was likely the only portrait of him ever painted.
In the portrait on the left, the queen stood side by side with Iris, Lord Calyx’s assistant, whose hooded robe was fantastically detailed in black, gray, and honey gold. Unlike in the wedding sketch, in the painting, Iris’s face was clear and detailed. As was her resemblance to the tragic queen.
I gasped as I stared at the stunningly familiar face of the woman who would go on to become the very first Bluehelm of the Alchemary—one hundred fifty years ago.
“Cressa,” I whispered.
And in my shock, I finally noticed that the chaotic violence behind me had given way to absolute stillness and silence.