“I haven’t the faintest. It was empty. I think Past Amber—”
“Past Amber?”
“The me I was before I lost my memory. I think Past Amber found that compartment first, and she took whatever was in it.”
“Which means that Now Amber—you—must have it.”
“Or…I hid it.”
Yoslyn’s brows rose, her green eyes shining in the light from the candle at the center of the table. “You left yourself a secret?”
“I left myself nothingbutsecrets.”
She leaned over the table, eyes wide and eager. “Okay, then, let’s go search your bedchamber.”
“I searched the whole room, from top to bottom, when I woke up with no memory and was trying to figure out who I am and what I was studying. Whatever was in that compartment is not in my room.”
Yoslyn arched one eyebrow at me, pointedly. “Well then, we really have no choice but to call in reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements?”
“Someone who knew you well, when you were Past Amber. Someone who might know where you used to hide things. Someone you might even have told about the compartment, when you found it.” She nodded to my left again, and this time I did not turn to look at Wilder. “Letting him in on this little mystery might be a good way to show him that you’re no longer cross. That it was, in fact, unreasonable of you to have been angry with him in the first place.”
I groaned and lay my head on the table, my cheek pressed into the cool surface. Then I sucked in a deep breath, grabbed my satchel, and headed toward Wilder’s chair, motioning over my shoulder for Yoslyn to join me.
“You two have been opening secret compartments all over campus for weeks, and you’re just now telling me about it?” Wilder sat in my green chair, where the ocean breeze from the open window had given his blond waves an adorably tousled look.
“It was mostly her.” Yoslyn had reclined on my bed, her arms folded behind her head against the simple wooden headboard. “And it wasn’t all over campus; it was just in the Conservatory. And to be fair, it was really only two puzzles, until today.” She frowned. “Though evidently Amber was doing this long before even she knew about it.”
“Am I to assume,” I said, “based on your reaction, that I did not tell you about the first one, this past summer?”
“You did not,” Wilder confirmed. “You stayed here for the break, but I went to Innswood, and I’d only been back on campus for a single day when you lost your memory, so Iliketo think youwouldhave told me. If you hadn’t forgotten yourself.”
I let him labor under that delusion, despite the fact that I’d clearly been keeping coded secrets from him in my journal. “So… do you know of any place I might have hidden something I’d found?”
Wilder laughed. “IwishI knew where you hid your secrets. I do not. But…maybeyoudo.”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask you.”
He shrugged. “Desmond says you often act on memories you can’t consciously recall. That you’ll put away equipment in the very same drawer you put it in before you lost your memory, almost as if you remember storing it there.”
I scowled up at him. “Do the two of youfrequentlydiscuss me when I am not present?”
Instead of answering my question, Wilder pulled his blade from its sheath and commenced his habit of winding the handle in and around his fingers as he thought aloud. “I’m assuming that’s what made you pursue these puzzles in the first place: Some latent memory of having found one over the summer made the first one feel familiar and interesting. Or it showed you where to look. Or…howto look.”
“I did find myself a bit preoccupied with it,” I admitted.
“Okay…” Wilder leaned forward, pinning me with direct eye contact. “So, what did you find in the two latest compartments, and where did you hidethoselittle treasures? Because it’s entirely possible you hid them in the same place as—”
“No,” I interrupted, twisting to retrieve the wooden box from the far corner of my desk. “I found a bracelet, and then Yos and I found this tiny little frame, and I put them in this box that used to be my mother’s.”
“I remember that box. Your mother kept dried herbs in it, right?”
“Yes. But there was nothing in the box when I opened it save for my journal, which I still can’t read, and my mother’s ring.”
Wilder sheathed his blade and lifted the metal ouroboros and the square frame from the box. “Wow…” He examined them, turning them over and holding them up to daylight streaming in through the open shutters. “These are beautiful. A bracelet, and…you think this one’s a frame? For what? The world’s smallest portrait? Can anyone even paint something this small?”
Yoslyn shrugged. “Lord Calyx wrote in print too small to read without a magnification lens. Maybe he also painted?”
