“From what we’ve been able to ascertain, based on what we found and what Yoslyn told us, you three uncovered a staircase hidden in the floor of the Conservatory foyer. Wilder rushed down first—naturally—and stumbled into a trap. He broke two clay jars, the contents of which combined to form a poisonous gas. Fortunately, that gas is heavier than air, so it hasn’t risen above the staircase, which spared Yoslyn entirely. But Wilder…”
“Didn’t make it,” I finished, my voice brittle. Fragile.
Desmond swallowed, and his steady gaze was a seawall holding back the tide of grief. “You were on the verge yourself, for a few hours. But then you made a sudden recovery.”
“From the viable air?”
He shook his head. “That was all they could think to give you, but it can’t account for your recuperation.” He exhaled, his gaze holding mine. “There’s been a lot concerning you that no one can seem to account for lately.”
“Where is he?” I demanded softly. I couldn’t process the rest of it. The unanswered questions and Yoslyn’s curious, heartbroken expression. “Where is Wilder now?”
“I…” Desmond frowned. “In the morgue, I assume. They’ve isolated his body, in case any of the natural postmortem processes were to release any of that gas from his lungs.”
A sob burst free from my chest. “This is my fault. It’s all—”
“No.” Desmond flinched, as if the word tasted bitter. “Wilder rushed down the stairs, into the unknown. He’s always been reckless, and it was bound to catch up to him eventually.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” he insisted. “It brings me no pleasure to say. In fact, I would give anything for the opportunity to have been there. For the chance to have seized his cloak and knocked some sense into the back of his skull. I wish he were here to scold, and I swear to the stars that this time I’d make him hear me. But Idomean it. My brother made his typically impulsive choice, and this time, for perhaps the first time in his life, his instinct failed him.”
I closed my eyes, and Wilder’s face flashed across the dark expanse of my vision. Not his usual grin, but the way he’d looked right before he’d rushed down the stairs.
Relieved. As if somehow, even though he’d had no idea Yoslyn and I had even found a puzzle, he’d already been desperate for the solution and afraid he’d fail to find it.
But that made no sense. And now I would never know the reason. I would never again get to…
“Tell her the rest.” Yoslyn sank onto the edge of my bed, her hands clutched in her lap.
I turned to Desmond, my stomach twisting, though there couldn’t be anything for it to reject, considering how long it had been since I’d eaten.
“What’s happened?” I demanded softly. “What more could there possibly be?”
He sighed, regret flashing in brief lines across his forehead. “You’ve been expelled.”
Numb, I nodded.
I’d dreaded those very words for weeks, since the moment I’d decided to stay, despite the odds stacked against me. Despite the dense fog that my memory had become. And now that I’d heard them, they meant…less than nothing.
What was the point of staying, of rising to the highest possible ranks of alchemy, when those already there—the very top of their craft—used it to kill and manipulate, but could not save a life?
When the very father of the art had confessed his own inadequacy, failed to save his true love, and used his talent to set up a series of puzzles that had killed my best friend in the world—a man who’d loved me, for no reason I could understand.
Why in all the universe would I want to be an alchemist now?
“How is she?” a familiar voice asked, and I looked up to find Keryth peering at me from the doorway, her face half shrouded in shadow from the dark landing. Her pinched expression was equal parts concern and curiosity, and I got the distinct impression that she already knew about my expulsion. That it was only the fact that I was no longer her competition that allowed her to feel any concern at all.
“Get out,” I croaked at her. “Drown in a sea of your own false tears, for all I care, but do it out of my sight.”
Yoslyn gaped at me. Keryth huffed, standing straight and stiff, and clearly mortally insulted. From behind her, I heard a chorus of gasps, from which I understood that several of our female classmates loitered on the landing.
“I’m no longer a student?” I said as footsteps clomped softly down the narrow spiral stairs.
Desmond nodded.
“Then get me out of here. Please, please, get me out of here.”
He stood and crossed my room in two long strides, a soldier relieved to have orders.
