Suddenly the meaning of Desmond’s bittersweet smile settled into place.
“Wilder,” I said. “It was Wilder’s concoction.”
Desmond nodded. “The prevailing theory is that whichever unnamed miscreant slipped something into Pryce Wishart’s morning tea dyed every inch of his flesh blue—and saved his miserable, unworthy life in the process.”
When Desmond was well absorbed in his own work, weighing out an endless series of ingredients bound for the athanor, I angled my body away from him and used a clean scalpel to prick the tip of one finger.
Carefully, hidden by my satchel, which I’d propped up on my own workstation, I smeared a drop of blood across the tiny little scroll, which I held open at the top with the handle of the scalpel and the bottom with a small pair of laboratory tweezers.
I would have preferred to perform the task alone in the storage closet, but I knew from experience that if I was gone from his sight for too long, some odd instinct led Desmond to call out for me.
This tendency had grown more noticeable in the days since I’d shared his bed, and I’d consciously decided not to study the impulse. In fact, I was pretending not to have noticed it, as I pretended not to notice when he snuck into his office every few days to hypocritically avail himself of whatever elixir Wilder was selling him.
By the time I had pressed a cloth to my finger to stop the blood welling from the small cut, words had appeared on the tiny scroll.
Unfortunately, they were too small to be clearly read.
Swallowing a sigh of frustration, I took the scrap of parchment into the supply closet, where I pulled a glass magnification lens from its drawer. The light was dim in the closet, but there were no prying eyes, so I held the scroll carefully in my palm, angled toward light spilling in from the doorway, and fitted the clear glass lens over it.
From beneath the convex disk of glass, the words appearedjustlarge enough to read.
My sun, never again shall she rise.
Beautiful, but frail.
Now the moon shines.
When the ouroboros bit off its tail.
The heavy door of the Seminary library swung slowly shut behind me, and I exhaled as my gaze settled on the grand table—the focal point of the large room. Somehow, I’d never noticed that the chairs surrounding it numbered twelve. That was likely because I’d never seen our entire cohort gathered there before.
Three of the chairs stood empty.
“Amber!” Yoslyn waved at me from across the open space, gesturing at the empty one next to her.
Several of our classmates, as well as a couple of underclassmen seated at smaller tables, glared at her for shattering the reverent feel of the room.
Wilder’s head pivoted in my direction, and he scooted his chair abruptly farther from Raelah, who seemed disappointed by his sudden disinterest.
Wilder and I had hardly spoken since class the previous Wednesday. We weren’t ignoring each other, exactly. I was giving us both some space to think through what had happened at the Black Trial celebration, and as far as I could tell, he had the same intent.
I avoided his gaze as I rounded the table toward the seat Yoslyn had claimed for me with her satchel. Which was wholly unnecessary. Our classmates didn’t dislike her as vehemently as they disliked me, but they seemed much less eager to sit next to her now than they’d been before the Black Trial.
Pryce seemed to have suffered no disgrace from the fact that he, too, should have failed the trial. Likely because no one else here knew that.
As I sat, the remaining two empty chairs suddenly seemed tragically conspicuous. I did my best not to look at them. Not to think about Kornell’s failure. About Petyr’s death.
Adria had been released from the infirmary that very morning, after five full days of treatment, but she still looked a bit…peaked.
“Thank you all for coming.” Keryth Malcom stood from the far end of the table, running one hand over the green ribbon braided through her long blond hair. She let her gaze skip over those gathered with an air of self-appointed authority. Most heads turned her way, but Cressa looked bored as she doodled surprisingly skilled beakers, tongs, and alembics around the edge of a sheet of parchment with her lead stylus.
Gavin sat to Cressa’s right, followed by Pryce, who seemed to be going out of his way to avoid eye contact with me. Adria, Raelah, and Wilder sat across from them.
Wilder was staring at me. I could see that on the edge of my vision, but every time I turned to confirm it, he’d evidentlyjustdecided to focus on Keryth and the reason she’d called this meeting of our entire cohort, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon that could have been better spent studying.
“Having spoken with several of you privately, it’s come to my attention that while we all knew at least vaguely what to expect from the Black Trial, we stand in utter ignorance of what we’ll be facing in three weeks at the White Trial. Does that sound accurate?”
Mumbles of assent made their way around the table as students shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, and I could practically feel the underclassmen in the room leaning in. Trying to hear.
