“It’s cold,” I whispered. Though truth be told, I hadn’t noticed.
“What’s wrong?”
I sidestepped him and started down the alley without answering, and he didn’t try to stop me. But then, just before I stepped out of reach, Desmond’s left hand captured my free one. He didn’t pull me back. Neither did he let me go.
My mug clattered to the ground, tin ringing against roughly paved stone.
“You survived,” he whispered. “Against all odds, you made the antidote, and you survived, and you saved another student. What could possibly be wrong?”
Somuch was wrong. And I felt all of it, deeply. But there was no way to put a single bit of it into words without sounding like an ungrateful wench.
“You gave me the answer,” I finally said, turning slowly to face him. “I’m sorry if that sounds ungracious, and it’s certainly not the only source of my current mood. But…I didn’t save Yoslyn.Yousaved us both, by underlining the relevant parts in my research.”
“No—”
“Yes,” I insisted. “I would never have figured out the antidote—the formula—in time without that, and if anyone finds out—”
“Amber. You savedyourself.Youdid that research.Youtook those notes.Youcame up with those antidotes, six months ago. Today, amnesia was the only thing locking you out of work you haveevery rightto understand and to utilize. You should be able to access your own skills, memory, and research, just as the other students can. All I did was point you in the direction of work you’d already done.”
I blinked up at him, studying the way shadow sharpened his cheekbones. Deepened the copper flecks in his eyes. “You showed me exactly what to do.”
He nodded, accepting my accusation in a manner that almost felt gracious. “I showed you what to dowith your own research. Withyourtheories and formulas. And if you hadn’t figured out what the toxin was on your own, you never even would have seen the lines I left in the notes. The before version of you doesn’t get credit for that.Thisversion does.”
It wasn’t his words that convinced me. That loosened the vicious grip my rib cage had claimed over my lungs, and my heart, and my soul. It was the conviction echoing in his voice. Glowing behind his eyes.
“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’vedamn wellearned.”
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—“anywherebut 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 maketwoelixirs. 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. Wilderisan inherently unpredictable and destructive force. When you and I say that Alchemy is life, the statement is aspirational. For Wilder, it isabsolute 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 thethreeof 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, Ididfeel the cold.
