It would be good to know that I wasn’t striking off down an erroneous path that could get me killed. Or at least fail to save my life.
“No, I cannot.”
My heart plummeted into the cold depths of my stomach. “But—”
“Amber,” he interrupted. “I mean that quite literally. I cannot tell you what poison will be administered to the students because I do not know. I am not involved in designing the Black Trial.”
“But you’ve endured it.”
He nodded. “I also worked as an official observer of last year’s trial. Which is how I know that the poison used during my trial year was not repeated with last year’s students. The trial changes every year. I do not know specifically how it will go this year.”
“Could you make an educated guess?”
Finally, he gave me a small smile, his eyes crinkling comfortingly with the expression. “I could, and I have. But…” He gestured at the row of poisons I’d created. “So have you.”
With that, he turned back to his workstation, leaving me alone with my theories and projects.
At first, I had enormous fun, despite my anxiety about the trial. I practically danced around Desmond’s laboratory, a song ringing through my head while I mixed, and lit, and timed, and measured, and adjusted, and recorded. I flitted from table to table, one eye on the hourglasses, the other on the height of flames and the softly bubbling contents of half a dozen suspended beakers and rounded vials.
Yes, my classmates had been preparing for the Black Trial for a month and a half already, while I’d essentially had only one week, because it had taken me more than the first month of class just to relearn what I’d spent two years learning in the first place. What none of them had forgotten.
But while I’d had to fight for that base-level knowledge—not just for the alchemy skills themselves, but for understanding of what skills I should even be trying to reacquire—knowledge fit into place quickly for me, and self-evaluations had assured me that retention was no issue.
I felt relatively good about my prospects, going into my own trial preparation, despite the tense anticipation from the entire Mastery cohort.
Until my first antidote failed. Utterly and terrifyingly. It had absolutelynoeffect on the drops of poison I applied it to.
I rallied, mentally, and had already adjusted the formula and started slowly heating fresh ingredients before I tested the second antidote on its poison.
It, too, failed, and my confidence bruised as surely as my tailbone had the time I’d fallen from the fourth rung of the loft ladder as a child, on an errand for my mother.
My smile disappeared. The song faded from my thoughts.
I dug in and tried harder, pulling textbooks from Desmond’s office for reference. Double-checking my measurements, and heat levels, and timing. Making careful, detailed note of each failure.
Wishing upon every star in the sky that I’d made up with Wilder and snuck him into his brother’s lab long enough to help him with my memory elixir.
Ignoring the concerned looks I could feel coming from Desmond, even as I refused to look up and acknowledge them.
But then the third antidote failed, and I could only clutch the edge of the worktable, breathing in and out slowly as I held in a scream of frustration, shocked by the sharp pain like a thousand knives stabbing the inside of my throat.
“Amber?” Desmond’s voice was a cold wash of reality against the white-hot roar of my own frustration. Of myhumiliation. I’d learned so much,sofast. Despite my exhaustion, I’d loved the process and had felt, up to that very moment, that every second devoted to studying was time well spent.
“I’m fine.” I spun away from him, swiping tears from my eyes before they could fall, and hurried into the supply closet, where I snatched my satchel from its hook. I dug into the inner side pocket and felt an instant modicum of calm as my fingers brushed the smooth, cool, rounded glass of a slim vial.
Desmond appeared in the doorway just as I tipped the uncorked vial up to my lips.
A snarl rumbled up from his throat as he snatched the vial, spilling several precious drops on the floor.
I swallowed the half that had made it into my mouth as I whirled on him, anger blazing from my eyes, burning in my very veins.
“Whatdo you think you’re doing?” I demanded, reaching for the vial.
He stepped back and turned the vial to read the distinctive label, coming perilously close to spilling more of the contents. “What is this?” He frowned at the writing, and I realized he did not understand Wilder’s product code. Which meant this elixir was not the one I’d seen him take that night in his office.
“If you don’t know what it is, why would you feel justified snatching it from my hands?” I demanded.
“Because I recognize Wilder’s diagonal label, and none of his elixirs have been properly tested or approved for production and distribution.”
