Desmond met us on the second floor and led us into his laboratory, where Wilder set my belongings on the nearest table. He shook his brother’s hand, and I got an odd feeling—part nostalgia, part anxiety—as I watched them standing face-to-face. They said nothing to each other. Not a word. They seemed to have come to some sort of unspoken understanding, but it felt like the kind of compromise where both parties wind up not happy but equally disgruntled and resigned.
Wilder gave me a hug, then left the room. A moment later, his footsteps echoed as they pounded down the stairs.
Desmond and I faced each other in awkward silence from opposite sides of an empty lab table until Wilder’s steps had completely faded. Until we heard the distant, soft thump of the huge front door, one floor below.
“I was afraid you’d revoke your invitation, after yesterday.” After I’d stood up to him in front of the Bluehelm and my professors.
“I’m disappointed by your lack of faith in me. I would never go back on my word to you.”
“You keep trying to get me kicked out, Desmond.” I frowned up at him, unable to understand the series of contradictions that seemed to form his entire being. “That makes you difficult to trust.”
He frowned. “Why would it? I’ve been nothing but honest about my efforts.”
“Yet less than transparent about the reason.”
“That is not the same as dishonest.”
I couldn’t fault his logic. But neither did I like it. “You are infuriating,” I said, staring directly up at him from across the table, my hands splayed on the surface.
His left brow rose, and when the corresponding corner of his mouth matched it, I found myself unnerved by his resemblance to Wilder. “Well, we seem to have that, at least, in common.”
Desmond left the laboratory door open while he showed me my work space, and I could only stare around the room. I’d been there before, of course, but being welcomed into the space felt different than sneaking in. Desmond’s lab was as large as the entire student lab on the third floor of the Seminary, and he was allotting me a full third of it, when I’d only had a single table before.
He gave me a tour of the supply room—he had a large closet, where the students only had a wall cabinet—and showed me where my supplies had been stored. “But you’re welcome to anything you need from my stores as well,” he added, one hand propped against a wall hook from which hung several thick aprons. “Though I’d ask you to start making your own beyn. Not because I’m selfish with mine, but because distillation of one’s own beyn is the hallmark skill of any elite-level alchemist, and thus it is a worthy pursuit.”
Which I knew, of course. Just as he clearly knew that I had not yet begun redeveloping my own formula, since being struck with amnesia.
“Thank you.” I stared at an array of equipment I hadn’t even glanced at the day before, when I’d only needed what was laid on out his drying rack. This time, my gaze skimmed vials of brightly colored powdered ingredients and already-mixed, carefully labeled suspensions. Burners, and beakers, and vials. The immense athanor, which I would only have to share with one person.
And I burst into tears.
Desmond gaped at me, clearly perplexed, while I tried to reclaim my composure. “What…?” he began, hands opening uselessly at his sides. “What is the concern? Is the supply closet lacking?”
“Quite possibly.” I wiped tears from my face with the backs of my fingers. “But if so, I would have no way of knowing. And I’m fairly certain that even before I lost my memory, that wasn’t the kind of problem I would cry over.”
“That’s accurate,” Desmond said. “But you seem somewhat changed since then. Beyond simply missing your memory.”
“I suspect I’m more thansomewhatchanged.”
“No.” He crossed his arms over his tunic, firmly anchoring his opinion with the display of authority. “You are only somewhat changed. The Amber Fallbrook I knew and”—he cleared his throat, his cheeks flushing slightly—“respectedis still in there.”
“And do you respect this version of me? This version that flounders, and breaks windows, and bursts into uncontrolled fits of emotion?” I’d had no idea that I cared about his answer until I asked the question. Then, suddenly, I seemed to hang on his silence, balanced on the precipice of it, arms flailing over the chasm as I waited for words that might pull me back from the edge.
Or send me plummeting over.
“As odd as it might seem to you, I think I respect this version of you even more. Though I admit I hardly know what to do with the tears.” He frowned at my damp cheeks. “Howeveryoualways seemed to.”
I frowned up at him, clutching the strap of my satchel until the leather cut into my palm. “How could you possibly respect me, diminished as I’ve become?”
And what on earth had I done with tears?
Desmond sighed. “The Amber I knew a month ago was brilliant, in every sense of the word. She was clever and shrewd. Vibrant, luminous, and intense. She was vivid, arresting, andcolorful. You are still all of those things.”
I shook my head, fully prepared to argue, but he went on.
“Yet that Amber Fallbrook had never faced a true hardship. Things came easily to her. Words. Theories. Experimental techniques.” He paused, and his gaze seemed to retreat from mine. “Choices.”
Choices?
