Pryce gasped and backed away, his anger at me eclipsed by the shock of whatever I’d just done.
I spun around, my satchel swinging at my side. Blood welled from three of my knuckles and from a long cut across the back of my hand, glittering oddly in the torchlight flickering through the brightly colored leaded glass.
Through what was left of it, anyway.
Previously, the stained glass window had taken the shape of a blue beaker suspended above a flame comprised of hundreds of shards of hand-tinted glass in every possible shade of red and yellow.
Now the top of the beaker remained, its narrowed, lipped mouth intact. But the bottom half of it and most of the flame were gone. They lay spread across the floor at my feet in a thousand shards of brightly tinted glass.
“No…” I swore softly. I’d broken aone-hundred-fifty-year-oldwork of art—one of few parts of the Alchemary constructed by the alchemists themselves, rather than by the Toolkeepers hired to bring the designer’s vision to life.
Leaded glass was an alchemical art. Amasterskill, involving an intricate knowledge of which elements could produce which shades and how to stabilize them all. And how to mold the lead frames and cut the glass shapes perfectly.
I clutched my bag and pulled the door open. Then I ran down the hall, chased by both the echo of my own footsteps and the horror of what I’d done.
Pryce’s parting shot echoed down the corridor toward me: “You’ll be lucky if they don’t throw you out just for that.”
My gulping breaths reverberated around me in the narrow eastern stairwell as I raced down two flights of stairs, then down the central corridor and out through the front doors. I burst into the quadrangle, gasping for air, tears burning in my eyes. I slung my satchel over my shoulder, dimly noting how cold the wind felt against the back of my injured right hand. Then I took off across the grass, with no destination in mind.
My feet moved of their own accord, my brain still mired in the shock of what I’d done as I weaved between hulking topiary sculptures that looked ominous, swathed in the moonlight, though they looked almost whimsical during the day.
I didn’t realize where I was going until I found myself in the first-floor atrium of the Conservatory.Whydid my legs keep bringing me here, all on their own?
The scroll-shaped plaque by the stairs caught my eye again, and again Desmond’s name held my gaze. He would know whether I should formally apologize to Pryce and the school, offer to work off the debt, or just write to my father to come get me so I could slink off in quiet disgrace.
No.
My spine straightened, my fist clenching around the strap of my bag. I would not leave.
As scared and embarrassed as I was—as angry and flustered— that was not an option.
My head fell back, and the sight of the moon shining through the spiraling display of leaded glass overhead sent a wave of nausea through me. It was a stunning reminder of the art I’d just destroyed. Of why and how that had happened.
I swiped tears from my face with my left hand and turned toward the staircase, leaning for a moment against the wall to catch my breath, to breathe past the nausea, and when I straightened, I realized I’d left a smear of blood across one edge of the plaque bearing Desmond’s name, just below the top roll of the sculpted scroll. Cursing softly, I wiped it clean with one edge of my cloak, then I took the steps two at a time, all the way to the second floor, racing through a rainbow of colors cast by moonlight shining through the glass panels in the ceiling.
I forced myself to walk down the hall like a sane person, instead of racing as if an entire pack of wolves were on my trail, and only when I stood outside of Desmond’s suite—his name still appeared alone on the slate—did it occur to me that there was essentially no chance he’d be inside at this time of night. And even if he were, he was more likely to capitalize on the broken stained glass to get me removed from campus than to give me any true advice.
Dejected, I turned from the door without knocking and headed toward the stairwell, the back of my right hand pressed against my cape to keep blood from dripping on the white marble floor.
I was halfway down the hall when the squeal of hinges echoed startlingly all around me.
“Amber?” Desmond’s voice washed over me, and I froze. “What’s wrong?”
I turned to find him studying me from the doorway, most of which his broad form occupied. His gaze raked over my tear-damp face, and he frowned, a thunderous expression I couldn’t quite interpret.
Then he stepped to the side and held the door to his suite open. “This way,” he ordered.
As unreasonable as it felt, I wanted to object, more to his tone than to his offer. But considering how much trouble I was in…
Desmond’s office was a small, neatly organized lamp-lit room attached to his private lab space. He sank into his desk chair, the only one in the room, and motioned me forward.
My feet would not move. Not even the few steps from the doorway to his desk.
With a sigh, he stood and took my left hand, calloused fingers warm in mine, and tugged me forward patiently until we stood in front of his chair. But instead of sinking into it, he gently lifted my satchel from over my head and set it on the floor, propped against his perfectly ordered bookshelf. Then he lifted me by my waist, without even a grunt of effort.
I gasped at his touch and felt my face flush, even as I grasped at the slopes of his biceps to steady myself. Before I could form thoughts coherent enough to truly question what was happening, he turned and set me on his desk.
A soft sound escaped my throat, and though I could ascribe no specific meaning to it—no intent at all; it was pure reaction—Desmond’s mouth quirked into a private little smile that was gone almost before I’d seen it. That smile sent a shower of sparks to explode in my belly.
