“Are you sure about this dress?” I pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders, shielding my décolletage from the frigid night air.
“I am entirely certain.” The giggle in Yoslyn’s voice told me she’d bolstered her own courage with a precelebration glass of wine. Or two. As did the warm breath that washed over me when she clutched at my arm.
She’d found the dress pushed to the back of my wardrobe and had seemed surprised that I did not recognize it, until she remembered my condition. At which point she’d assured me it was among my favorites.
But Present Ambertrulyhad no memory of Past Amber’s favorite dress, or of how bold she must have felt, walking around with the upper curves of her bosom exposed.
It wasn’t just the dress, though. Even before I’d lost my memory, I’d evidently rarely left campus, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d depended upon my “instinctual” understanding of the Alchemary’s geography, as Desmond put it, until I’d let Yoslyn tug me through the gate and onto the bridge. Past the soldiers standing guard, the Crown’s crest emblazoned upon the front of their black uniforms.
Saltstrand was only half a mile from Alchemary Island, but that distance felt interminable in my heeled boots, with the cold, humid night breeze slicing like a knife through the thin fabric of my unfamiliar attire. With the ocean churning beneath us, night-black waves crashing on the piers beneath the bridge and against the cliffside of both the island and the mainland.
Moonlight glinted on the water, and looking down made me feel dizzy, though I had yet to touch a drop of alcohol. I let my right hand trail over the cold stone bridge railing as I walked, steadying myself just from the light touch.
“You really don’t remember anything, do you?” Yoslyn gripped my left arm as if we were sisters. As if we’d spent every waking moment of the past six weeks glued to each other’s sides.
As if we were friends.
“Not a thing,” I repeated for at least the fifth time. “I’ve been forced to relearn it all from scratch, and I’m as grateful as I could possibly be for the notes I took before I lost my memory.”
“How’d it happen?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted, staring past the end of the bridge at a sparse scattering of cottages and long stretches of farmland. Sheep bleated in the night, and I found the sound oddly comforting. It reminded me of Innswood and my childhood, despite the addition of the salt-tinged air. Farmland reminded me of a time when my parents had lived together, I’d had many friends, and I’d known exactly who I was.
“You don’t know how you lost your memory?” Yoslyn asked, and I shook my head as we stepped off the end of the bridge onto firmly packed dirt, squinting at the dark road as I tried to avoid falling into a hole in the ground or tripping over a rock. “I bet it had to do with your—”
Her mouth snapped shut.
I stopped, pulling her to a graceless halt alongside me. “My what? My research?”
The quarter-moon rode low in the sky, doing little to light her features, yet I could see regret written into every line of her expression.
“It doesn’t matter. Truly. I’m forever stuffing my foot into my mouth, and I’m eager to wash away the taste of my own toes with a good, stiff ale. Let’s—” She tried to tug me toward town, her long curls bobbing with the motion, but I held my ground.
“Are we friends, Yoslyn?”
“The very best of,” she confirmed. “I owe you my life.”
“You owe me nothing.” I let go of her arm and tugged my shawl tighter. “I did nothing any decent person wouldn’t have done.”
“That isn’t true.” Her eyes widened, displaying her gratitude with an exuberance that made me distinctly uncomfortable. “You could havedied, sharing your antidote with me, and no one else—”
“No one else saw you collapse. Any of our classmates would have—”
“No,”she insisted. “They would not have. I can’t swear thatIwould have done that for a classmate, at the risk of my own life. And six weeks ago, neither would you. You would have said that of the two of us, you had more to contribute to the world through alchemy, and risking your life wouldn’t be fair to alchemy in general, to the Alchemary specifically, or to the world itself.”
A cold current churned through my veins, drawing gooseflesh across my arms. “That is both callous andcategoricallyarrogant.”
Yoslyn nodded solemnly. “It’s likely also true. And yet you saved me, with no regard for your own life. Which is why, as far as I’m concerned, we are the very best of friends, from this point forward.”
“I don’t want your camaraderie out of any sense of obligation,” I said, careful to moderate my tone so she heard no insult in the statement.
“That’s not what I’m offering.” Yoslyn shifted to fully face me from inches away, her dimly lit expression fierce and determined. “I’m saying that in my judgment, anyone who would make such a sacrifice must be a good person, and thus worthy of staunch friendship.”
I blinked at her in the dark, hoping she couldn’t see the sudden shine of tears in my eyes. “Very well, then. Friends.” I took her arm again, and we moved forward together, boots crunching on dirt and stray rocks.
Ahead, flickering lamplight and boisterous conversation leaked from a low-ceilinged, wood-paneled establishment that could only be the Dusty Beaker, though I could not yet read the sign attached to the front wall, gently swaying from two short lengths of chain.
“Tell me, then, friend, why you believe my research is responsible for my amnesia.”
