How could he possibly justify his own hypocrisy? And which one was he taking?
Wood creaked, presumably as he stood. I backed away from the door, and a second later, Desmond called my name.
“Yes?” I resumed my normal footsteps so they could be heard.
Desmond appeared in the doorway just as I did, and we collided rather gracelessly. Which led to awkward chuckling and mutual apologies, while we still stood much too close, until my heart began pounding in my ears and I stepped back. Then back even farther.
“You didn’t have to stay,” I said, hands clasped nervously at my spine.
“I did, actually,” he said. “I couldn’t very well leave you unsupervised with multiple experiments running at once, could I? It would fall on me, under that circumstance, if you were to burn the building down.”
“Marble doesn’t burn,” I pointed out, trying not to be offended by the implication that I could fail so spectacularly.
“This building isn’t entirely marble,” he replied with a very slight smile. “And most of the furnishings are wooden.”
“There is quite a bit of marble, though. And lead,” I said, thinking of the heavy, fireproof roof tiles. “And glass. And bone.”
“Bone?” Desmond arched one brow over his compelling copper-brown eyes.
“All of the plaques mounted to the walls. And my father mentioned that some of the door and window facings are also made of bone.”
“Ah, the Toolkeepers’ legends.” He huffed. “Take most of that with the requisite grain of salt. This place was built long before Cornelius Fallbrook was born.”
“Yes, but the Toolkeepers are just as likely to have passed down knowledge of their trade and practices as we are here at the Alchemary, are they not?”
Desmond nodded, one brow arched. “I suppose so.”
We stood there for a moment, in silence. When his gaze lingered, and when I felt mine inclined to do the same, I looked off into a corner of the laboratory. “I should go,” I said. “I should…sleep. I have class in the morning.”
“But you will return tomorrow night, after the evening meal.” He was issuing neither invitation nor request, but a direct order.
I nodded. “Evenings in the lab with you. Days ‘meandering in alchemy’ with your brother. As you suggested.”
Desmond’s expression shuttered so swiftly that I almost gasped at the sudden change. “That isnotwhat I meant to suggest.”
I indulged a small smile as I turned and left him standing in the office doorway, no doubt staring after me.
Wilder and I broke our fast together on Wednesday in the Refectory, and he noticed the elevation in my mood. He claimed to be as thrilled as I was that my evening with Desmond had gone so well, yet he scowled at his porridge as if its flavor were more bitter than usual.
His tea, it seemed, suffered from the same fault.
I still felt lost during our morning class, confused by concepts I had not yet caught up with, but I took notes studiously, and I found my mood buoyed by the opportunity to stare at the back of Pryce Wishart’s cobalt head. Professor Bollinger seemed shocked to see his student’s entire visage so startlingly blue, but even as his gaze slid less than subtly in Wilder’s direction, he made no comment other than to compliment Pryce’s “inspired devotion to his water affinity.”
Wilder, for his part, also seemed more cheerful during class. His contributions to the discussion were characteristically droll, and afterward, I swallowed a sharp stab of jealousy to see him surrounded by several young ladies and one of the young men—Petyr Lorena—each looking fawningly up at him.
Had he not seemed so satisfied by the attention, I might have felt guilty about sneaking out of the classroom while he was distracted. Instead, I worried that he wouldn’t even notice me missing, though we’d taken lunch together every day for the past month.
Today, I had no time for lunch.
Desmond had given me access to the Conservatory research library, and Iitchedto be among the stacks, reading about the Conservatory plaques and how they’d come to hold hidden alchemical symbols.
I could not have said for certain why I did not intend to tell Wilder about my plans.
When I’d woken with amnesia a month before, I’d had an overwhelming sense that I was forgetting something vital and specific, beyond my general memory loss. As if I’d been on the verge of completing some important task and could no longer remember what needed to be done.
That feeling came back every time I picked up my coded journal, and some latent understanding associated it with the fact that Past Amber had chosen, for whatever reason, to keep the journal’s contents from both the Gregory brother I’d woken up beside and the one I’d evidently spent many long evenings of research with.
The people I’d clearly been closest to, for the past two years.
