I sighed. “He took an oath, Wilder. He can’t just tell me what’s going to happen in the trial any more than he can tell you.”
“Those are two different scenarios. You’re still operating at a memory—and thus a skill—deficit. He has the ability to keep you safe.”
“It’s not that simple.”
Wilder nodded, a little too hard. “I know. I know he took an oath, and I know that knowing what’s coming would be cheating, technically. But I could not care less. IfIhad information that could save your life, I would give it to you.”
I spent four hours in Desmond’s lab, struggling to concentrate on my own work instead of surreptitiously observing his confidential task before the seed Wilder had planted—whether intentionally or unintentionally—grew roots too big to be ignored.
“My wheels are spinning freely, Desmond,” I finally said as I replaced the last of my freshly washed beakers on the shelf, a task that required me to stand on the counter in order to reach.
He looked away from his work, his eyes still glazed with concentration, his nose crinkled rather fetchingly as he frowned at up me. “To what wheels are you referring?”
“In this metaphor, I am a cart stuck in the mud, and though my wheels may spin freely, they will not find purchase.”
He snorted and turned back to his work. “That is a rather laborious way to say that you feel you’re wasting your time.”
I lowered myself to sit on the countertop with my heels dangling against the cabinet doors. “And do you intend to address the heart of the matter or simply to criticize my phrasing?”
He looked up again. “What have your spinning wheels to do with me?”
“In this scenario, I am a cart with spinning wheels, and you are—” I hopped down onto the floor and crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, truth be told, I don’t know enough about cart construction to say what you would be, but it has come to my attention that you know at least approximately what I can expect in the White Trial, and you have been keeping that from me. Do you deny it?”
“Of course not. The very point of a secret is the keeping of it.”
“I know of several gossipy classmates who would disagree.”
Desmond’s gaze narrowed on me from across the room. He crossed thick arms over his broad chest, still holding a set of calipers. “Are you suggesting my solemn oath to the Alchemary shares some equivalence with the late-night whisperings of a schoolgirl?”
“I am not, but neither do I appreciate your condescending tone.” I mirrored his pose with my own arms crossed over my lab apron. “There isn’t a thing wrong with being a schoolgirl, and girls are not the only ones who gossip.”
“Point taken,” he assured me solemnly.
“I take your point as well: The information you have is far more vital than gossip. Still, you have a choice to make, and that choice could save my life.”
For a moment, Desmond regarded me in absolute silence, so unmoving that he could have been a statue in the quadrangle. Then he slowly, deliberately set down the calipers and planted both palms flat on his work surface.
“It seems to me that you arealsofacing a choice that could save your life. No one is forcing you into the White Trial, Amber. And as I’ve said repeatedly since the first day of this term, if you do not feel ready for a trial, youshould not undergo it. And you know that. Yet somehow you feel justified in blaming me for keeping my oath to the institute to which I’ve devoted my entire life. You would evidently rather see me throw away my career and any benefit it could bring mankind than face a choice you don’t want to make.”
“I…” I could see the fire in my own cheeks like the sun on the horizon of my vision. “No. I apologize. You’re entirely correct. Just because you helped me last time doesn’t mean that you owe me that same help this time. In fact, you owe me nothing.”
Desmond blinked, and with that one small motion, he suddenly looked as startled as if I had slapped him. “I did not tell you what you would face at the Black Trial, and I would not have, even if I’d known. I only highlighted research you’d already done for yourself. I get no credit for how you performed, or for any of your work. And that must be the case with the White Trial, else you will not have truly passed, and the Amber I know and respect would never be able to live with herself under that circumstance. And you are not so changed that you are not stillthatAmber Fallbrook. No matter what you may have forgotten.”
There was something in his words. Something stalwart in the bulk of them, and something heartbroken in the last sentence, the combination of which brought stinging tears to my eyes. A maelstrom of emotion swirled within me, stemming not just from what he’d said but from the unshakable certainty that he was referring, at least in part, to some event or circumstance I could no longer remember.
There was something he was not telling me.
And suddenly, it was all—every bit of it—too overwhelming to bear. Not just that I was unprepared for the trial, but that I shouldnotbe unprepared. That I’d been robbed of my preparedness.
Not just that I could not remember any important event from the past two years of my own life, but thatheremembered much of what I’d forgotten.
It wasn’t just that he knew what I would face at the White Trial when I did not, it was that I’d asked him to compromise the very ethics that made him a stellar alchemist in the first place rather than working to earn my own place alongside him.
And more than all of that, it was the fact that I was compromising myself by asking. And that he knew it.
The laboratory blurred behind my tears, and I swiped them away, which gave me a clear view of the sudden helplessness in his expression.
He had no idea what to do with tears.
