Only, in the one I’d drawn, the outer tines were rounded, curving in toward the center like a demon’s trident, in my signature notation.
Any time I wrote the symbol, it appeared exactly like that on the page, my fingers forming those curves automatically.
“Cinis,” I agreed. “Or ash.” And what I’d relearned about ash spilled from my mouth as fast as the words blossomed in my head. “The word meansdust, generally, and can mean anything from fireplace soot to incinerated human remains, but in alchemy it refers to the end product of the calcination stage: what is left after the prima material has been purified by fire. Symbolically, in the field of Apotheosis, ash is the incorruptible glorified human body that has survived the purifying ordeal.”
“I understand that.” Yet Wilder’s soft smile looked distinctly impressed. “And I’m pretty sure you just quoted a textbook passage verbatim.”
“I did.”
“How many times have you read it?” His gaze scanned the texts open on my desk, evidently looking for the one I’d quoted.
“Once.” I sighed. “I don’t have time to read most of this more than once.”
His eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Amber.” His voice was so soft it almost seemed to be coming from within my own head. “Most people can’t read something once and remember it word for word.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “The genius isnotgone.”
I looked up and found tiny versions of myself reflected in his eyes. “So, I could do that before?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “We didn’t talk about… alchemy.”
“Then what did we talk about?” I regretted the question as soon as I’d asked it, suddenly certain that Wilder and I must have spent more time in bed than in the lab. Which might have been the only time we had together, if he’d spent nights in the student laboratory while I’d been set up in Desmond’s space.
“Air,” I said, feeling suddenly compelled to change the subject by a discomfort I could not explain.
Wilder blinked. “What?”
I tapped the other alchemical symbol circled in the margin, an upward-pointing equilateral triangle bisected by a horizontal line roughly half of the way down.
“In alchemy, air represents heat and moisture, in the form of water vapor, which is condensed from it. Because of that, the air symbol can also represent blood, which is a life-giving force.”
“Ash and blood,” Wilder said. “Any idea why you wrote those? Or circled them?”
“None.”
A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth, his eyes flashing playfully in the light of the lantern. “Maybe you were talking about bodies. The glorified human form…” He stroked one finger slowly over the symbol for ash. “Hot and wet…” That same finger slid over the bisected triangle representing air. Or blood. “I think you made dirty notations when you got bored in the lab.”
I arched one brow at him. “Without more context, I could just as easily have been talking about murder. About spilling blood from the human form, then burning the corpse.”
He scowled. “Why do you always ruin my fantasies?”
Laughter bubbled up from my throat; he’d been giving me that look since we were children. “Every girl needs a lighthearted diversion.”
“Tears,” he said, snatching the journal from me so he could snap it closed.
“Pardon?”
“Tears are warm and wet. Maybe you were writing about making someone cry.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Why would I have made someone cry?”
Wilder gave me a strange, sad look. “Maybe it’s better that you don’t remember everything.”
Gazes followed us as Wilder and I stepped into the quadrangle, each burdened with an armload of my personal notes and supplies. He had practically dared me to stop wasting time and move into Desmond’s lab, and when he’d offered to help carry my things, I’d realized I was out of excuses.
“What are they saying?” I whispered as we crossed the long axis of the lawn, headed straight toward the towering Conservatory. “What is the gossip?”
“About you? There’s no gossip,” he said.
I gave him a look. “I know you were at the Dusty Beaker last night.” I’d overheard Yoslyn and Keryth as they’d walked down the stairs past my open door that morning, talking about how fetching he’d looked. How a couple of pints turned the younger Gregory brother into a charming and gallant libertine.
