“I don’t know what else it could be.” I shrugged. “We know he finished the formula and that he used it. He described the gold-flecked silver solution. But he clearly never thought to drink it. Whatever method he tried to square the circle was a failure, and so his solution became inert. It took the form of that beautiful, clear stone, which he mounted in a ring. I cannot imagine what he would have hidden beneath the floor of the Conservatory, if not the formula for the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Shecannotget it,” Desmond said quietly. “We cannot let the Bluehelm acquire that formula any more than we can let her find out what you are. What you’ve done. She is not the only rot at the Alchemary, but sheisits wellspring, and—”
I sat straight, on the literal edge of my seat. “So, let’s go get it.”
Desmond frowned. “The noxious gas—”
“Has certainly dissipated quite a bit, with the passage of two days’ time, yet the threat of it has likely kept everyone else away. If any of itdoesremain, it is unlikely to injure someone who hasbecomethe Philosopher’s Stone.”
“That’s too much to risk—”
“Desmond.” I reached across the table to seize his hand, which wrapped around mine with a warm strength, as if on instinct. “If the gas remains, I will not descend the stairs. You have my word. But I cannot remain here, simplywondering.” I stood and sipped as much of the scalding tea as I could manage. “You may accompany me if you like.” I divested my expression of any evidence of how badly I wanted that. “But I will go, regardless.”
Despite his concerns about the danger, and to my great relief, Desmond would not let me sneak into the Conservatory alone. The front door had been barred, which we knew because he’d been forced to steal in the back way in order to make a postcoital elixir for me just hours before.
We snuck in that same way and were relieved to find that while the atrium was officially off-limits, there were no guards posted to bar our entry. No one else, it seemed, would dare disobey the Bluehelm’s orders. Especially when they might only be rewarded with death by a lingering noxious gas.
“It’s gone,” Desmond whispered as he peered into the dark stairwell, holding his candle as low as he dared without actually descending. “I think the fumes have dissipated. Though the official word is that that was expected to take several more days.”
“That was said to keep people away,” I whispered, and Desmond nodded. “I’ll go first, just in case. If I start coughing, you turn around immediately,” I ordered.
“Without hesitation,” he said, his gaze locked onto mine. “But I shall be carrying you in my arms, upon my retreat.”
I gave his hand a warm squeeze. Then I started slowly down the spiral staircase, holding my own candle.
Cobwebs stretched from the low ceiling of a narrow, stone-paved corridor, wafting gently under the influence of a breeze so slight I could not feel it. There were no branches or corners in the passage. No more traps or puzzles. At the end of the short path stood a plain wooden door with a decorative metal triangle set into it. A ring the size of my palm had been cut into the wood around the triangle, and inside it had been carved a square, and within that a smaller circle.
I knew the shapes, and I knew exactly what would fit into the empty lines, but as I reached into the left pocket of my frock for the metal ouroboros, the scrape of a shoe heel on stone made my head snap up. Desmond stiffened at my side as I peered into the darkness beyond our candlelight.
“Someone’s here,” he whispered, and suddenly I understood why no one had tried to stop us from descending the hidden staircase. “The Bluehelm was watching.”
“Waiting for us,” I agreed. Because she didn’t have the pieces that would unlock this puzzle, and it would be easier to wait for me to bring them than for her to try to find them.
My pulse whooshed like ocean waves as shadows stirred at the base of the spiral staircase. A single right foot stepped into the light, bare and masculine, with a strong, high arch. It had an odd sheen in the flicker of my candle—an almost glowing golden cast.
An aurum. Yet even in the dim light, I could see that the tint of this poor man’s skin was much deeper—much more golden—than the aurums I’d seen before.
My pulse spiked violently, and for an instant, the entire world seemed to swim around me. How was this possible? Had the mysterious illness taken hold of the Alchemary itself while Desmond and I were secluded in shared mourning?
A matching left foot stepped forward, along with the cuff of a simple pair of linen trousers, and as the man wearing them stepped farther into the light, a second figure appeared behind him. I couldn’t even look at the second man, however, because my gaze had caught on the first pair of golden feet and the matching golden hands that swung at the sides of those linen trousers.
My heart thumped painfully. I knew those feet. I knew those hands. I knew that gait, for all its odd stiffness, and…
He took another step, and I gasped at an achingly familiar set of features as the light fell over them. They were cast in that same oddly golden tone, glimmering with a strangely metallic glow.
“Wilder,” I whispered.
Desmond made a choking sound deep in his throat. “Aurums,” he replied softly, and I shook my head, even though I’d had the same thought. Because that wasn’t right. Aurums could not move. They were flesh made stone—yes, an oddly glowing, metallic stone, yet stone nonetheless, of a sort. Aurums were frozen in their own form.
And Wilder had died without ever getting sick, so he could not be an aurum, any more than an aurum could be marching toward me.
But how else could he be walking this way, living and breathing—presumably—after I’dseenhim die? How could he and…
Petyr. The other strangely golden figure, who also stood shirtless and oddly solemn, was Petyr Lorena, who’d died during the Black Trial, five weeks before. Buthadhe died?Couldhe have, if he was standing here in front of me?
“What is happening?” I whispered.
Desmond stood eerily still at my side, every muscle tensed. “I have not yet drawn a logical conclusion.” Even without glancing his way, I could tell that his uneasy focus was glued to his brother’s face. I could feel the grief and confusion—theanger—rolling off him like smoke from a bonfire, and I understood his shock.
