He smiled, but the expression was more pain than joy. “I have to go,” he said. I opened my mouth to object, but he spoke over me. “I’ll be back shortly. The Refectory has finished serving the evening meal, but I’ve requested that they pack something for us. I will retrieve that, and I must stop by the lab to mix up an elixir for you as well.”
I could not argue with his reasoning. “Mix up a double batch,” I said. “I cannot fathom how we will get through this, if not together.”
He nodded, and something heartbreaking flickered briefly behind his eyes. “Please do not leave this apartment.” And then he was gone.
I slept all evening in Desmond’s bed, waking only to drink the elixir and the broth he offered and to relieve my bladder. By morning, I felt much better, physically, and though I still had no urge to rise from the bed, when he left to get more food at midday, I forced myself to tread several small circles around the room, to test my stamina. Then I washed myself with the rag and the bowl of fresh water he’d left for me.
Clean again, and feeling stronger than I had since waking, I pulled fresh clothing from the bag Yoslyn had packed for me, and when my fingers brushed a familiar smooth wooden surface, I realized she had included my mother’s box. When I opened it, I further understood that in the chaos of Wilder’s death and my injury, she’d thought to shove the box into my satchel and bring it to my room without anyone discovering how we’d managed to open a secret staircase beneath a floor that generations of the world’s best alchemists had trodden for more than a century and a half.
Dear, dear Yoslyn.
I’d been too distracted by grief to ask if they had expelled her, too.
I folded my worn frock, and as I was about to stuff it into my bag, I noticed in the corner of Desmond’s apartment a wooden crate that appeared to contain a bundle of material. I knelt next to it, certain that must be where Desmond kept his soiled clothing, and was surprised to find one of my own handkerchiefs lying atop the pile, neatly folded, with my mother’s embroidery visible in one corner.
Allof the material in the crate was folded, and though I couldn’t say it was all clean, precisely, very little of it appeared obviously soiled. I removed each piece, one by one, and found several of my own handkerchiefs—two stained with blood—and three whose ownership I could not ascertain. I found a pillowcase, neatly folded, an unfamiliar linen tunic, and an entire set of bedsheets, also of linen, though of a finer weave than the fabric on my own bed.
At the bottom of the crate, I found a journal I recognized from my own childhood.
My heart thumped as I opened it to see my mother’s handwriting. It was a volume of notes from her time at the Alchemary, written in a mixture of my native tongue and her own, which she’d spoken to me when I was a child, until I’d become embarrassed by the differences between the other village children and myself.
As I was scanning the book, surprised by how much I could still read, the door opened behind me and Desmond stepped into his own chamber, carrying a fragrant cloth-wrapped bundle of food.
“Are these mine?” I asked as he set the bundle on the table in one corner of the room. “The things in this crate?”
“They are.” And though he looked pained by the admission, he hadn’t hesitated to admit that he’d had a crate of my belongings this whole time yet had never mentioned them.
He’d never lied to me, that I could tell. Not even when a little white lie might have made me more pleasant to be around.
“Why do you have these things? Why didn’tIhave them?”
Desmond exhaled so long and hard that the loss of breath seemed to deflate him. “Will you sit and eat?” He pulled out a dining chair for me, then he sat in the other.
“Will youanswerthe question?” I returned as I sat, willing myself to ignore the scents of cheese and roasted meat, as well as the needy grumble from my stomach.
“I will, and though I’ve been dreading it for weeks, after all that’s happened, I suspect this discussion will come as a relief. Amber, your things are here because you left them here.”
“Why would I have brought those things here in the first place?”
Instead of answering, Desmond only held my gaze, waiting for me to draw the obvious conclusion.
I sat straighter as it sank in. As embarrassment and a strangely intimate fascination warred within me. “We were embroiled in an affair, were we not?” I finally said, and the verdict felt somehow familiar and yet wholly startling. As if I’d known the truth all along, deep down, yet could still hardly believe it.
Desmond scowled, crossing his arms over his chest. “We were not.”
“We most certainly were!” I wasconvincedof the truth now that I’d discovered it. “That’s why my ‘instinct’ was to kiss you in the laboratory that day. That is why you felt entitled to walk into my room without knocking, and why you refused to discuss my relationship with Wilder, and—”
“Youhadno relationship with Wilder beyond friendship,” he snapped, eyes flashing copper in the light from the fireplace. Arms crossing over his chest. “Not before the night you lost your memory, anyway. And as I’ve said, I wouldvery muchlike to know what changed that night.”
My eyes narrowed as I studied his face. “I was not in a relationship with Wilder, and yet he loved me?”
Desmond nodded solemnly.
“I assume that was a source of tension for all three of us?”
“For Wilder, certainly. And increasingly for me, though I will admit I was not terribly concerned until I discovered that he’d spent the night in your bed.”
“And for me? I felt the tension?”
