I turned the trim piece over, and sure enough, there was an indention in the back of it that was the very shape of that knob.
The trim piece popped into place, locking around the knob with a satisfying click that also functioned as a trigger to slide the riser back into place, covering the hole beneath the stair tread as if it had never been there.
Toolkeeper ingenuity at its finest.
“Well, I’ll be damned…” Yoslyn said, staring at the unmarred staircase. “It’s like it never happened.” And if not for the metal square nestled in her palm and the ouroboros bracelet hidden in my bedchamber, I’d have to question whether any of it really had.
On the morning of the White Trial, I woke up alone, as on the morning of the Black Trial. Only this time I was in my own bed, as if it were a normal day.
It was not.
Keryth had not called another meeting in her self-appointed roll of cohort chancellor. Yoslyn and I had not discussed the trial, in an unspoken yet mutually-agreed-upon decision to ignore the fact that either or both of us might soon die. Instead, in the moments we’d stolen from academia, we’d postulated the purpose of the bracelet and the frame, tossing out absurd theories over late-night snacks. Yet coming to no real conclusions.
Wilder and I had discussed the White Trial at length. He was openly willing to help me, despite being my direct competition, and though I felt certain I had less to offer, I was just as willing to help him. As far as I was concerned, until the trial actually began, we were in it together, as we’d been in nearly everything together since we were small children.
We did not revisit our kiss. We did not even acknowledge it.
Wilder seemed convinced that the White Trial would involve fire, because purification in alchemy was almost always through flame. I could not disagree with his logic, but neither could I help pointing out that rebirth was rarely ever through fire, and the White Trial was just as likely to take rebirth as its theme.
Because we had no specific task to focus on, we’d spent the last week before the trial refreshing ourselves on every theory we’d ever studied—some of which I could not remember studying in the first place—and every formula we’d ever been taught or come up with. Wilder was generous with his invented formulas, as I was with Past Amber’s notes.
Yet on the morning of the trial, I woke up covered in sweat, in the middle of a panic that had evidently begun in my sleep. In my very dreams.
I bolted from bed and rushed to throw open the shutters, then stood staring out the window, hyperventilating, letting the frigid ocean breeze dry my damp skin. Counting on the rhythmic crash of waves against the cliffside to calm my racing heart.
Death felt only hours away. And as loathe as I would have been to admit it, humiliation seemed just as likely, and far more horrible.
Everyone would eventually die. I did not want my legacy, like my mother’s, to be the humiliation of failure.
I rinsed myself at the washbasin and got dressed, and as I stared at myself in a smoky handheld glass that had been my mother’s, an odd sense of foreboding washed over me—a quieter, more somber version of the fear that had woken me.
For a moment, the resemblance to my mother was so strong in the glass that I did not recognize my own face. When had I grown to look so much like her? Had I forgotten that, as well as two years of memories?
With a sigh, I set down the glass and opened the wooden box where I’d found her ring. Where I had stored both the bracelet and the ornate metal frame. If I didn’t survive the White Trial, someone would find them among my things. Yoslyn, perhaps, if she fared better.
Otherwise, Wilder. Or Desmond, if he packed up my belongings for my father.
Soft steps echoed on the landing, and a knock sounded on my door. I snapped the box closed and set it on the corner of my desk.
“Come in,” I said as I stood.
Wilder pushed the door open, and an instant later, I found myself swallowed by his embrace.
“Are you afraid you won’t get a chance to hug me after the trial?” I asked as I laid my head on his shoulder, amazed to find that he still smelled exactly like he had as a child. Like herbal tea, and the sweet, earthy smell of a childhood spent outdoors, and most of all, like a whirling tempest that will not settle for any force in the world.
In fact, I could feel his very soul raging, barely contained by his flesh and blood, as I returned his embrace.
“On the contrary,” he said into my hair, and I had the distinct impression that he was breathing me in as well. “I’m just a selfish boor who refuses to wait that long.” Finally, he stepped back just far enough that I could see his face. That I could see he was examining mine. “Are you ready? Did you sleep?”
“Too long,” I admitted. “I intended to wake early and study.”
“If you aren’t ready, it isn’t for lack of studying,” he said. “In fact, we studiedtoomuch for my personal preference. I’m a bit afraid of jinxing myself.”
“Because you didn’t study at all for the Black Trial?”
Wilder grinned. “Precisely. If I fail this time because there’s too much knowledge clanking around in here, jamming up the gears”—he tapped the side of his skull—“I shall blame you entirely.”
I laughed. “Fortunately for me, too much knowledge has never been your problem.”
