“I am,” I admitted. “I mean no offense to you, as he is your blood relation, or to my own memory of Desmond from childhood, but…he’s not entirely pleasant to be around.”
Wilder laughed, eyes shining with delight. “I’ve been saying that for years, yet everyone around here acts as if Desmond Gregory’s name is synonymous with the term ‘erudition.’ ”
“Is it not, though? I’ve heard his Mastery-year exam and trial scores were quite high.” Keryth and Adria, another girl from our cohort, had said as much in the Refectory, at the midday meal, though they’d had no idea I was listening.
Wilder’s blue eyes narrowed on me. “That is entirely beside the point. Scholarship and discipline are not the same as natural aptitude and cleverness—asgenius, dare I say it?”
I rolled my eyes at him fondly. “I sensenohesitation in your willingness to say that.”
Wilder paced the length of my narrow room. “Desmond is good at processing other people’s ideas and extrapolating from them. Confirming, recording, and explaining them. Combining them in semi-novel fashion, in order to ‘push boundaries’ and extend the application of known theories. But at the end of the day, he is a noted scholar,notan innovator.”
“Nota genius,” I said, amusement lifting one corner of my mouth as I watched him pace.
“Exactly!” Wilder did not note my jest at his expense. “But everyone else seems oblivious to that distinction, and their misguided adoration has given himquitea high estimation of himself. And yet he marches across campus as if he does not know that women—and a few of the men—stare at him all day and no doubt contemplate his countenance when they are alone in bed at night.” He huffed. “If a man is attractive, that manknowshe is attractive, and I cannot deny that my brother is, based on his resemblance to me alone.”
I snorted, but Wilder hardly noticed.
“And yet Desmond seems entirely unaware.” He sank into my armchair, and finally his attention returned to me. His eyes narrowed. “Why are you watching me like I’m a buffoon dancing at court in a patchwork jerkin?”
My laughter broke free beneath the strain of that mental image. “Apologies. It’s just that I’ve never seen anyone openly lusting after your brother on campus, though hehasbeen afforded his own laboratory suite and seems to have earned his colleagues’ deference. Is it possible you’re viewing him through a skewed lens?” My brows arched. “Because you’re envious?”
Wilder huffed. “Of courseI’m envious. His contributions to alchemy are valued, while mine are disparaged.”
“Indeed.” I gave him a solemn, sympathetic nod. “Though my hesitance to avail myself of his lab space has more to do with the fact that he’s still trying to have me removed from the Alchemary.”
“Well, if you’re hoping to use the lab while he’s not there, you’re out of luck. He works late.” Wilder pulled at the end of my coat, which was draped over the arm of his chair. “Ow.” He jerked his hand back and shook it, flinging a drop of blood across the room. “What…?” He lifted the hem of my robe, angling it into the light from my candle, and frowned when that light glared off something stuck in the fabric.
“Glass.” I carefully plucked the large shard of leaded glass from where it had evidently become embedded during my confrontation with the window in the student lab. The shard was half the length of my thumb and about a quarter as wide.
I set it on the edge of my desk, where it practically glowed in the flickering lamplight, reminding me all over again of the artwork I’d destroyed.
“Come.” Wilder took my hand as he stood, trying to tug me toward the open door and the world that lay beyond the Dormitory. “Let’s get you some air.”
“I cannot.” I pulled my hand from his grip and sank into my desk chair again. “Our first exam is on Wednesday, and if I don’t pass, I’ll be expelled.” That knowledge had sat at the back of my mind for nearly a month, but it felt more like a weight on my chest now, slowly pressing the air from my lungs.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re going to pass.”
The dismissive tone of his voice lit a fire in my gut.
“You don’t know that!” I snapped. “You can’t possibly! I am not the girl I was a month ago.” I lowered my voice, trying not to notice the hurt in his eyes. “The ‘genius’ isgone, Wilder. I count myself lucky that reading about a concept seems to unlock whatever understanding I once had. But it’s a base-level understanding, and it doesn’t tumble the next obstacle from my path. I have to read the next thing to relearn it, and then the next, and I don’t have any understanding of how much I’ve forgotten. Of how much I still have to relearn. I can’t remember what it is that I don’t know, and while I read pretty quickly, there are only so many hours in the day. And the night.”
My sigh seemed to empty not just my lungs, but my very soul. “And relearning the basic terms and concepts doesn’t bring me up to the level of skill needed to pass a Mastery-year examination. Or to survive the first trial. And in case it’s entirely slipped your mind, that’s only a couple of weeks away.”
“It hasnotslipped my mind. I just think that you need a break.”
“What I need is a miracle. I can’t keep studying night and day at the expense of my health. That’s terribly inefficient. Especially given that I’vealreadylearned all of this, have I not?”
“Most assuredly,” he said with a gesture at the sheets of parchment I’d scribbled all over. At the textbooks opened and stacked upon one another in inscrutable layers of information. “Better than anyone I’ve ever known. They know that.”
They, presumably, were the leadership of the Alchemary.
“That’s why they’ve kept you. That’s why they’re letting you move into Des’s lab. That’s why they’re making Pryce pay for the window, when—”
“They’remaking him pay? I thought that was his family’s idea?”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Wilder said. “My guess is that the Bluehelm suggested it, so she could keep you both. They want the Wishart money, but they need the Fallbrook brain.”
Something twisted deep inside me at his words. At the mention of a brain that felt more like lost legend than like a part of my own body.
