Wilder’s appearance was a knife plunged back into the still-gaping wound in my heart. In my soul.
“The facts do not support the conclusion stalking bodily toward us, substantial as the days they were born,” Desmond whispered. “Petyr and Wilderdied.”
“Did youseetheir bodies?” I whispered.
He shook his head.
“I don’t understand what is happening,” I said as unanswered questions and unwelcome theories battled for space in my mind. “But I know that only one person has ever had any control over Wilder, and that same person is responsible for bringing aurums to the Alchemary under the Crown’s seal in order to study the condition.” She was also quite likely the most powerful alchemist in the world.
“The Bluehelm,” Desmond whispered.
“Indeed,” I said as the aurums stalked closer, golden skin shining in the light of our candles.
I did not understand what had happened to Wilder. I couldn’t even be certain he was alive. But Iwascertain that if Lord Calyx’s formula—or even a sample of his gold-flecked solution—was behind that door, it might be the only thing in existence that could help Wilder. That could cure him, if he was alive, or let him rest in peace, if he was not.
Unease crawling across my skin, I turned toward the door, but a horrific screech spun me around again as a golden blur suddenly raced down the corridor toward us. I screamed, and Desmond shoved me back as he lurched into the center of the passageway.
“Open the door!” he shouted. Then Petyr slammed into him. Desmond grunted from the impact, planting his feet on the stone floor, trying to stop the golden human battering ram from driving him bodily into me.
Wilder raced forward, oddly silent, and as I fumbled to fit the metal ouroboros into its circle on the door, I heard the repeated thunk of flesh against flesh, followed by Desmond’s grunts, both of pain and of effort.
Pulse racing, I glanced back as I dug the square from my pocket and saw Desmond swinging with one fist while he blocked a blow with his opposite arm, his knees bent, the toes of his boot dug firmly into the edge of a stone tile on the floor, to shore up his footing. Muscles stood out in his neck and through the material of his tunic, a bruise already forming on his chin.
“Hurry!” he gasped as he threw another blow, which thunked horrifically against golden flesh surely as hard as stone.
I whirled around and shoved the metal frame into the square etched into the door, then pulled Queen Avalona’s ring—Lord Calyx’s inert Philosopher’s Stone—from my other pocket. When I pressed it to the circle at the center of the symbol, a great grinding echoed from behind the door, rumbling up from the floor to thrum throughout my body.
Behind me, the grunts and blows echoed at a frantic pace, and I flinched with each one until a final, heavy clank rang from behind the door. It creaked open, just an inch.
Holding my breath in case of another toxic trap, I shoved the door open and rushed past it. Inside, my candlelight cast flickering shadows across a small chamber, entirely empty save what could only be described as a broad stone shrine at one end. An elaborate green gown lay draped across the long marble surface, layered with cobwebs and clearly brittle with age.
Tucked into the crook at the gown’s elbow was a single dusty corked vial, its contents obscured by more than a century of grime.
Three portraits hung on the wall above the shrine. The one in the center depicted Queen Avalona wearing the inert circle ring and the green gown, though in this painting, she was not visibly pregnant. In the portrait on the right, she held her doomed infant son, in what was likely the only portrait of him ever painted.
In the portrait on the left, the queen stood side by side with Iris, Lord Calyx’s assistant, whose hooded robe was fantastically detailed in black, gray, and honey gold. Unlike in the wedding sketch, in the painting, Iris’s face was clear and detailed. As was her resemblance to the tragic queen.
I gasped as I stared at the stunningly familiar face of the woman who would go on to become the very first Bluehelm of the Alchemary—one hundred fifty years ago.
“Cressa,” I whispered.
And in my shock, I finally noticed that the chaotic violence behind me had given way to absolute stillness and silence.
“Beautiful, wasn’t she? Avalona, I mean.”
I spun, startled, and the light from my candle flickered over Cressa Baxter’s face. My gaze raked over her features, assessing. Comparing. The same light brown skin and gray-ringed eyes. The same pouf of dark, red-tinged ringlets.
“My sister was renowned, in her day, as the most beautiful woman in the world. Few remember that she was also quite an intellect, and a very tender soul.”
“Your sister?”
Her laughter held a bitter, sour note. “That bit, like so much else, has been lost to history. Still, sibling rivalry is an age-old story. One your Gregory brothers certainly understand,” she said, tossing a glance through the open door into the dark, eerily quiet corridor.
“You’re…Iris? The first Bluehelm?” I blinked at her, frowning as I struggled to draw a coherent conclusion. “How…?”
“I am Iris, theonlyBluehelm,” she said, and though I knew that voice, its cadence—its odd gravitas—was entirely unfamiliar. “I have run the Alchemary under various names, wearing various faces, for a century and a half. But I always eventually come back to this one.” She ran her fingers down her own smooth cheek in an eerily graceful motion. “When there’s no one left to remember it.”
“But you’re a student.” Clearly that wasn’t true, but when comprehension would not come, my thoughts defaulted to what I knew. What I’dthoughtI knew, at least.
