“No, I assure you the little beast is quite rigid,” I said. “It won’t—”
“There’s something in its mouth,” she insisted.
I huffed. “Yes. Its tail. That’s the defining characteristic of the ouroboros.”
She shoved the bracelet so close to my face that I started to back away out of instinct. Then the flicker of the white torch flame shone on something just past the snake’s tiny fangs.
“It’s just the end of the tail,” I said. “Looks like it might be tipped with a jewel, like the eyes.”
“But why bury a jewel where it can’t be seen?”
I shrugged. “The entire bracelet was hidden.”
“Yet intended to be found,” she noted. “Thus the formula for revealing it. Whoever orchestrated this little adventure appears to have been hiding clues in plain sight, waiting for someone observant enough to notice them. To see what’s there.”
She had a point. Whatever had gone wrong for Yoslyn in the Black Trial clearly had nothing to do with deductive reasoning.
I took the bracelet and examined it in the light, letting my attention linger on every detail. Each individual scale. And finally I realized that one of them was raised just enough that I could wedge my fingernail beneath it. When I did so, my heart pounding with the fear that I was about to ruin yet another priceless work of historic art, the scale rose a mere fraction of a millimeter and spun ninety degrees. Which allowed me to spin the one next to it. And the one next to that. When I’d spun four tiny scales in a row on the snake’s back, the resulting gap loosened the scale pattern just enough to allow flex in the ring.
Gently, I tugged the tail from the snake’s mouth, and indeed, the tip was crowned with a tiny red jewel. And just beyond where that jewel had rested between the metal fangs, I found the end of a minute piece of parchment, rolled up like a scroll.
Yoslyn shuffled her feet with uncontrolled anticipation as I carefully unrolled what was likely a very old document, no longer than the width of my smallest finger. But then her feet went still as a disgruntled sigh slid from her throat. “It’s blank.”
I nodded. “Or…itappearsthat way.”
“Invisible ink? Like on the bone plaques?”
“That seems likely, given that this paper unrolled into the same shape the plaques were molded into.”
“Do you have any more of the solution that reveals the print?”
I nodded. I had not told her that solution was blood.
Carefully, I replaced the tiny scroll and tucked the snake’s jeweled tail back into its mouth. Then I rotated the scales to hide the seam again and slid the bracelet into my pocket.
“I will let you know what it says,” I told her as I retrieved my satchel from the floor and lifted the strap over my head. “You have my word.”
“…And finally, don’t forget that essays on your personal struggle with the universal forces of entropy are due on Friday,” Professor Robards said. “And with that—” He frowned at the class, and I followed his gaze to the third row, where Varrah sat at a work surface shared with a classmate, her hand in the air. “Yes, Varrah?”
“I just thought that before we dismiss, we should all congratulate Amber on passing the Black Trial.”
“Yes! Thank you, Varrah!” Professor Robards’s eyes lit up as he turned to me. “Congratulations to our class teaching assistant for making it through the first of her Mastery-year trials! A triumph indeed!”
The class burst into heartfelt applause, which likely had more to do with their own ambitions than with my success—if I’d survived, surely they all could!—and I aimed a smile of thanks at Varrah.
“One down, three to go,” I said as I stood, and the class laughed politely.
Professor Bollinger was writing something on the large framed slate when I arrived for our afternoon class. Wilder gave me a tight smile as I slid into my chair next to his.
I returned the expression with as genuine a smile of my own as I could muster.
I’d managed to avoid this awkward moment that morning in the Ethics and Advancement of Alchemy because Professor Edmiston had sent us all to the library to find sources for an upcoming paper. It had been easy to steer clear of Wilder in the stacks.
But now…
“Are you okay?” he whispered. “I apologize if I startled you the other night.”
“No, I—”
