“What even the scriveners haven’t managed, in all this time. You completed your research. Your project. With the beyn you made from our…passion. I was angry. I was hurt, because I realized that nothing was sacred for you, outside of alchemy itself. Then you showed me what you’d done.”
He looked simultaneously proud and wounded, and the incongruence set medeeplyon edge.
“You’d found the formula, Amber. You’d come up with the very solution Lord Calyx described in the notes I’d stolen from the research library for you: a thick, gold-flecked silver suspension that glowed even when no light was present. You’d madethat very thing, even though he never recorded his formula. You’d come up with your own. And all you had left to do was—”
“Square the circle.” My voice sounded hollow. Distant. “That’s the part he never figured out: how to combine spirit with mind and body.”
“But you had. Yousaidyou’d figured it out, anyway, and squaring the circle was all you had left to do.”
“How?” I found myself leaning forward, perched on my knees, though I had no memory of taking that position. “Did I do it?”
The disappointed look he gave me—as if my interest and enthusiasm had turned me into Past Amber all over again—broke my heart. “I don’t know. I asked you not to do it, but I have no idea whether or not you did.”
“You asked menotto complete the Philosopher’s Stone? When hundreds of alchemists have tried and failed to do that very thing over the past century and a half?”
“Yes.” His voice was soft, yet his tone was hard. Impermeable. He plucked at a loose thread on his trousers, then finally looked up again and met my gaze boldly, as the breeze stirred his dark hair. “I could see what it was doing to you. What it could turn you into. You were corruptible, Amber. Just like any of us would be, in your position. Even aside from the threat of the scriveners, this place had already changed you. And I knew that if you finished the stone, I would never get you back. You would never getyourselfback.”
“That’s the point!” I snapped, anger flashing in a million fiery explosions all over my body. “That’s what the Philosopher’s Stone does! It changes everything it touches into something better! Transmutation, at its highest form.”
“I didn’twantsomething better!” He stood, a single eerily fast and smooth motion, and the boards creaked beneath his feet with a startling cacophony. “I wantedyou!You.As you were. There isnothingalchemy could have done to improve you. It was only dragging you down, morally. Ethically. This place was making you into a monster, and if you’d finished the Stone, you would haveinstantlybecome the most powerful person here.”
“And you were jealous!” The words exploded from some bitter font deep inside me, though I could not fathom its origin. I’d felt nothing of the sort since I’d woken up without…my memory.
Sudden understanding bruised me from the inside. It wasrememberedbitterness. The ghost of it, anyway.Thiswas that inexplicable anger I’d felt at Desmond, over and over, though now it felt terribly…explicable.
I stood, facing him at the end of the dock, that same breeze ruffling my hair, and even the waves suddenly seemed fiercer, in concert with our discord.
“I was not jealous of your power, Amber.” Disappointment echoed in his voice. “I am already a scrivener.”
I blinked at him, shocked.
“I’m not above corruption either. I told you, it wasyouwho pulled me back from that brink. Long before I joined their ranks—corruption does not begin or end with scrivening. You were a light in the dark, Amber. A flame lit beneath ice.” He reached for my hand, and I let him pull me closer, across the dock. “You kept me human, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, but Iclungto you because of that. Nothing seemed to have any depth or texture when you weren’t around. The world had no color aside from the red of your lips and the gold in your eyes. You reminded me what the true goal of alchemy is, and I thought we would reach it together. But then—”
“I began to lose sight of it.”
He nodded. “I wasn’t jealous. I was terrified of losing you.” He blinked, and it was like a veil had descended over his expression, blurring all of the detail. Shielding his thoughts from me. “But I lost you anyway. That night, you stormed out of the lab with your suspension, and the next time I saw you—when I came to your room to tryagainto make it right—I found you in bed with my brother.”
He let go of my hand, and it fell to my side like a horrible dead weight.
“And you had no idea how he’d gotten there, and no memory at all of completing the formula. Of making the gold-flecked silver suspension. On one level, you were an entirely different person. You were agoodperson, who had no recollection of ever hurting me or any of your cohort. Who didn’t seem capable of ever becoming that person again. Because you didn’t remember what you’d done, or how you’d managed it. You’d lost skill, but you’d regainedyourself. And I couldn’t stand the thought of you becoming that other person again.”
“And yet, I did.” My eyes fell shut, and tears burned behind the closed lids. The ocean breeze felt suddenly frigid. “I got Wilder killed.”
“No.” Desmond pulled me close on the wooden planks, gripping my shoulders. Peering into my eyes. “No, you did not do that. As tragic as his death is—as excruciating as it is for me to even think about—Wilder did that to himself. Do you hear me?” He took my chin and stared straight into my eyes.
I could only nod, even though I did not believe a word of it.
“What happened to the solution?” I asked. To the gold-flecked silver fluid Lord Calyx had described and that I, evidently, had created.
Had I squared the circle? Or had I wound up with another beautiful, inert gem?
“I have no idea,” Desmond said. “And I will admit that when I realized you’d lost your memory, I thought one of the scriveners had stolen your suspension, to complete it for themselves. That you’d lost your memory as a result of that theft or to cover it up. But you had no physical injuries, and no one ever claimed to have completed the Stone. So I have no idea what happened to your suspension, or whether you ever actually squared the circle.”
That night, I dreamed of my parents. Of a day during my childhood when my mother had packed a lunch and we’d picnicked at the side of a lake on the west edge of Innswood. In reality, my mother had collected herbs and various soils all afternoon while my father had sketched his latest commission in a notepad with a lead stylus. I’d skipped rocks, pouting, because I had not been allowed to bring Wilder Gregory on our family outing.
In my dream, however, my parents laughed while they nibbled their cheese and bread. They sipped wine and told me stories. My mother spoke to me in her native language—my dream recollection of it was flawless—and my father tutored me in Toolkeepers’ notation. We swam together in the lake, and…
I woke up in a cold sweat, with a sudden epiphany firing through my brain like sparks from a flint stone struck in the dark. The dream was a message. A signal from Past Amber, who’d sometimes fought her way through during my subconscious hours and sent me confusing flashes of memory.
