“Wilder.” I caught his arm as he tried to turn. “I want it all back. Good and bad. I want yourtrustback. Your confidence.”
“Those golden eyes will be the death of me,” he whispered staring straight into mine. “Very well.” He sighed. “During our first year—Fundamentals year—I suffered from a particular lack of confidence. A certainty, deep down, that I did not belong at this hallowed institution.”
I frowned. “Why would you ever think that? When we were children, the recruiters came to Innswood specifically to seeyou. To see shocking feats of alchemy performed by a twelve-year-old. Don’t you remember? It was pure luck they even noticed Desmond and me.”
His grin bloomed again softly. “I was a bit of a miscreant, wasn’t I?”
“A bit?” I scoffed, and Wilder laughed.
“Well, it turns out that playing around with alchemy is fun.” He gestured at the three tables still occupied with his illicit projects. “But classwork ishard, and for the first time in my life, it wasn’t enough to just be…me.”
The backs of my eyes stung as I watched the remembered insecurity play out behind his expression. I took his left hand and squeezed, encouraging him to go on as my thumb stroked over the long-healed scar from a chemical burn on the back of his knuckles.
“I understood how everything works in here.” He gestured again at the lab tables. “But in there…” His arm swept downward, indicating the lower floors of the building, dedicated to classrooms. “Dates of important discoveries, the history of the Alchemary, lives of important historical figures, even the names of twenty different styles of beakers—I know how tousethem, but does it really matter what they’re called?”
Yes, of course it mattered. Without the names, how could one ask for a specific beaker, list it in a requisition form, or pass the complete details of an experiment forward as knowledge of the craft?
“The names of techniques and various theorems? Lab reports and inventories, and detailed records of every failure? How does any of that help?”
Oh, Wilder. I squeezed his hand harder.
“I know, I know,” he whispered. “I can see it on your face. You know how important all of that is, and you don’t even remember learning any of it. I know it’s important, too. But I’m not good at it.”
“Oh, I’m sure—”
“No.” He twisted his wrist slowly until my hand was cradled in his, and a shiver ran up my spine as his thumb stroked my palm. “I’m good at a lot of things.Reallygood at a couple of them.” A rakish heat flared behind his eyes. “I understand that with the same open-eyed objectivity with which I swear to you that I amnotgood at the pedantic aspects of alchemy. Which are largely all that are measured around here. All that are valued. So for the first time in my life, friendships—relationships—were being formed based on a common measure of worth, and…” He exhaled slowly. “I was found lacking.”
“You were left out.” I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been one of those turning away from him.
He nodded. “And that led to me losing confidence in other areas.” He shrugged, and the motion tugged my hand. “But there’s an elixir for everything, right? And the one place I hadn’t lost confidence was the lab.”
My nose crinkled as I looked up at him, suddenly aware of how close we stood. “You made a cure for…insecurity?”
“Not a cure. A treatment. It only works temporarily, but itdoeswork.”
“How so?”
Wilder shifted awkwardly on his feet, reluctance layered into his hesitation. “It dulls inhibition, allowing the more entertaining and charismatic aspects of one’s personality to shine through. There’s also some evidence that it draws others to you, through the bodily emission of some essence we cannot yet detect through scientific measures.”
“Some secretion—a natural bodily extract or vapor—we cannot see, smell, or taste…” I mused, intrigued by the idea.
He smiled, clearly pleased by my interest. “Not consciously, anyway.”
“Have you discovered the manner of secretion? Is it something in the saliva? The sweat? Humors exhaled from the lungs?”
“I do not know, and the truth is that my studies don’t lie down that path,” he said.
I swallowed a pang of disappointment. That path soundedfascinating.
“My point is that while I did not succeed on the first attempt to make this elixir, a use became clear for one of my more utilitarian failures, and now Professor Robards can keepMrs. Robards happy. And likely some womenotherthan Mrs. Robards, if we’re being honest.”
He leaned closer, though there was no one around to overhear, and his smile was back. “Take a good look at him when he arrives for class. You’ll notice that some afternoons, directly after the lunch hour, he seems to be inrathera good mood. And that he may smile surreptitiously at a certain female member of the faculty.”
I wasn’t particularly comfortable having that kind of intimate knowledge about my favorite professor.
“And Professor Robards pays you for this…merchandise?” I asked.
Wilder shrugged again, and this time he looked away. “In a manner of speaking.”
