Chapter 45 #2
“It was certainly messy for Eldon. Naturally, he could not let the child live, and in the end, that was all it took to dull the shine of the golden queen. My darling sister.”
I glanced at Desmond, who gestured subtly for me to step back, away from Iris.
“Eldon buried her with her bastard, not a week after that portrait was finished. He tried to have it burned, but I snuck it out of the palace, at Calyx’s request.”
“You?” I asked, and Iris nodded. “Because you loved her?”
She snorted. “Because I loved him. Because I was fool enough to believe that once he’d mourned her, he would see me.”
“You told Eldon?” Desmond said, and though he phrased it as a question, his words carried the cold stone weight of utter fact. “About the baby. About Lord Calyx.”
Iris nodded again. “I did not anticipate that he might kill them. I believed he would share my grief for an unrequited love and cast them out in shame. But I should have known. Eldon was a monster. He only let Calyx live because he needed a master alchemist. To make…this.” Her hand suddenly clenched around the vial.
“And I wanted that, too. I was a gifted alchemist in my own right, but I was not like Calyx. No one was like Calyx. So I made him an offer.”
“You would run the Alchemary, while he made the Elixir,” I guessed. A woman like Iris could not have been exiled to the Seminary or relegated to teaching. She had chosen her own path. And she’d set the father of alchemy down his.
Iris nodded. “I took on all of it. The entire institution. I freed up all of his time to build this.…” She extended her left hand to take in the entire Conservatory building.
“And to make this.” She lifted her right hand, still holding the vial.
“Two doses. It took years, and by the end, we’d grown dear to each other.
We were going to take the Elixir together.
We would have eternity to perfect our craft.
To lead the world into a new era of science and discovery. ”
“So then, where is he?” Desmond asked. And when Iris remained silent, I understood.
“He refused to drink,” I said, my grip tightening on the candle holder. “Didn’t he?”
“Oh, no. He drank from his vial, as I drank from mine,” she spat. “But while my dose made my entire body tingle, restoring me to the very bloom and vitality of youth, his left him writhing on the floor in mortal anguish.”
I exhaled, horrified by the truth. “He took his own life.”
She nodded, gaze cold and hard with the memory. “He said, as he lay wracked with unfathomable pain, losing control of his failing body, that he would rather be with Avalona in death than with me in life.”
I met Desmond’s shocked gaze.
“He condemned me to eternity,” Iris continued, gray eyes flashing with fury, brows drawn low with the memory.
“Instead of perfecting alchemy with me, he sentenced me to do it on my own. To haul the world, kicking and screaming in protest, toward a progress it does not want and cannot understand. Toward a glorious future that no one is willing to pay for. A fragile advancement that must be secured and defended in brutal ways.”
By the scriveners, certainly. But I knew better than to reveal my knowledge of that dangerous elite.
She sighed, her hand finally falling limp at her side. “I did not know this second vial existed until this very moment. I could not be sure he’d actually made a dose for himself. That he’d ever truly considered taking it.”
“But this is not what you wanted,” I said. “Not what you thought would be here.”
“Of course not.” Her hand clenched around the vial again. “This cannot be all there is.” She ran her free hand over the marble top of the shrine, prying at the edges, examining every inch, as Desmond took advantage of her distraction to shuffle closer to me. “He must have left notes.…”
“What notes?” I asked. “What are you looking for?”
“For mercy!” She whirled on us, eyes flashing.
“When I realized what you’d found, I hoped—for the first time in more than a century—that he might have had some compassion for me.
That maybe all of this—the puzzles and whatever he’d buried beneath his precious Conservatory—was meant for me.
That he hadn’t sentenced me to eternity after all. ”
The truth washed over me like the glow of a lantern lit in a dark room. “You want a cure for immortality.”
“What else?” she roared, swiping the ancient dress onto the stone floor in a paroxysm of rage.
“And it is…not…here!” She whirled around, and her gaze landed on me.
“But you are here.” Something seemed to click behind her gaze, like a key turning in a lock.
“And you.” Her focus shifted to Desmond, then to Wilder. “And him…”
“What do you want with us?” I asked, chills rising as gooseflesh all over my arms.
“Only what you’re already willing to give the Alchemary: your service.”
A growl wound its way up Desmond’s throat. “Why would we ever—”
“For him,” Iris snapped, waving her empty hand through the shadows at Wilder.
Then she turned to me. “As Desmond knows and you have likely already come to understand, one of the central pillars of the Alchemary is the idea that an alchemist’s dedication to their craft—and to this institution—does not end in death.
That matter—the body—can serve science, even after the mind and soul have passed on.
We’ve always interpreted that edict as a dedication of the alchemist’s corpse as components for the craft—an ashes-to-ashes sort of approach.
But I’ve spent more than a century developing another way for alchemists to serve past death. ”
She stepped over the dress crumpled on the stone floor to gesture at Wilder. “Or rather, to suspend the animation of the human body, which is only possible on the very verge of expiry. And that was his state, when I saw him in the infirmary. I had no other choice. It was either this or death.”
“This is death,” I said through clenched teeth, my heart aching as my gaze lingered on Wilder’s vacant expression. “This is the death of his will. Of his autonomy.”
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “And yet, he is living. Or, more accurately, he is dying very, very slowly.” Iris slowly paced the floor in front of him, her shadow shifting across the stone walls of Calyx’s…
catacomb. “I’ve induced a state of biological dormancy, which allows me to take control of his physical function. I can tighten my grip.…”
She lifted her left hand, and when she clutched it into a fist, Wilder shuddered and collapsed to the dusty floor, his joints cracking and bending at odd angles.
“Stop!” I shrieked, lurching toward him, until Desmond pulled me back, one arm tucked firmly around my waist. “Let him up!”
“Or I can loosen it.” Iris spread her fingers wide, and Wilder blinked, then he stood, more swiftly than should have been possible, and for one instant, I saw something in the fleeting clarity of his expression that I recognized.
He was still in there. Wilder was alive, inside the golden shell of his body.
“Let him go!” I demanded, and Desmond’s grip on me tightened for a second.
“I cannot,” Iris said. “If I release my control of him, that biological dormancy will end, and he will die. Unless…” She lifted the vial.
“I am prepared to make you an offer. Both of you.” She glanced at Wilder, just as his expression emptied into that disturbingly blank look.
“All three of you, actually. The three brightest minds this institution has seen since Calyx died. Together, you might actually rival him.”
“What are you offering?” Desmond demanded, finally releasing me.
“I will give your brother a drop from this vial,” she said. “Just enough to bring him back from the brink of death, so I can loosen my hold on him.”
“Give him all of it,” I demanded. “Cure him. Let him go.”
“No,” she snapped. “Even if I could do that, it would be unfair to him. I would not sentence him to the very fate I’m trying to escape, and if you were thinking clearly, you would not ask me to.
Do you think he wants to live to see both of you wither and die?
To go on living after everyone he loves has passed on?
Whether or not you spend that interval entangled in your own desire, in utter disregard for his affection. ”
I had no answer. In the moment, I didn’t care what Wilder wanted, or what an infinite future might bring. I just wanted him back.
Iris paced across the uneven stones toward us, brushing aside a cobweb dangling from the low ceiling.
“I will give him enough to reverse what the poisonous gas did to him, but you will need the rest of the Elixir in order to hold up your end of our deal. You will analyze what is left and use it to come up with the formula. And you will use that to find a way to reverse it.”
“You want us to cure you,” Desmond said. “Why would we do that? Why would we do anything you want?”
“We will!” I said, shooting a look at Desmond as I grabbed his hand to silence him. “You have my word.” Then I nodded at Wilder. “Fix him. Now.”
Iris cocked one brow in Desmond’s direction, and when he nodded, somewhat hesitantly, she uncorked the vial and turned to stand in front of Wilder.
He opened his mouth at some unspoken signal from her, and she dipped her finger into the serum.
When she pulled it out, a single drop of a thick, viscous, coppery liquid clung to her fingertip, already forming a bulbous tip as it was pulled toward the ground.
She held her finger over Wilder’s extended tongue just as that drop gave way.
The coppery drip flattened on his tongue, and his entire golden form seemed to shudder. He closed his mouth. He blinked, then he blinked again. Slowly, the golden sheen seemed to fade from his skin.
Wilder frowned. He blinked again, as if clearing his vision, and his confused gaze found me. “Amber?”
I burst into tears as I ripped my hand free from Desmond’s. I raced past Iris to throw my arms around Wilder.
He returned my embrace, a little more slowly than I would have liked, and his arms were cold, though they seemed to grow warmer with every passing second.
“We have an accord, then,” Iris said. “And in case you have any thoughts about abandoning your obligation therein…” She gestured again at Wilder, and he suddenly stiffened in my arms. He shoved me back, his eyes horrifically blank again, and seized my throat in his left hand, squeezing so that I could draw in only the thinnest of breaths, no matter how I clutched at his wrist and fought his grip.
“Wilder!” Desmond lunged forward. “Let her go!”
Wilder’s right hand shot out and slammed into Desmond’s chest, sending the larger man reeling backward into the shrine, gasping for breath, clutching his own sternum.
“You cannot break his hold,” Iris said. “But I will let you have him, for now.” She waved her hand again, curling her fingers, and Wilder’s hand fell away from my throat. I stumbled backward, rubbing at my neck, while he blinked and awareness rushed back into his eyes like the morning tide.
“Amber!” He reached for me, but I shuffled farther away, until I felt Avalona’s dress beneath my heel. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what—”
“He truly doesn’t. He has no control over it,” Iris said. “So understand that if you veer from the task in any way, I will take him back. I will set him to my bidding.”
“What bidding?” Desmond demanded, still rubbing his chest.
She backed toward the door to the small chamber with Petyr behind her, and though I wanted to free him, too, I knew better than to ask, considering that we hadn’t even truly managed to free Wilder.
“The wolves are at the gate, Desmond. They’re coming from all angles. Some, in fact, have already dug their dens deep into our garden. And if you cannot do as you promised—or if you will not—then instead of working with you, Wilder will fight the wolves with me.”
With that, she turned and marched into the dark corridor, leaving the three of us to stare at one another in utter shock.