“Don’t. You were right. Your system was much better. And a couple of weeks ago, you stepped back into this lab and walked around as if you remembered organizing it.”
“I didn’t,” I insisted. “I still don’t.”
“And yet, your instinct functions as if you do. Because your instinctisa form of memory, letting you call upon experiences you don’t consciously remember.”
“Stars above,” I murmured. Was he right? Was I subconsciously remembering things I had no active recollection of?
I turned in a slow circle, and with every drawer or cabinet my gaze fell on, I recited its contents. Even the ones I had no memory of ever opening. Then I rushed around the room, opening drawers and cabinets. Verifying my hunches.
They were all correct.
I turned to Desmond, astonishment probably shining on my face like a freshly polished pane of glass.
He granted me a quiet smile. “My point is that that same instinct is likely available to you in other aspects of alchemy.” He hesitated for an almost imperceptible instant. “And of life.”
Because lifewasalchemy. And alchemy was life.
“All you have to do is trust your instincts.” Desmond stepped closer, his voice lowered to a near whisper, as if he were letting me in on a very special secret. “Which essentially just means trusting what Past Amber already knows.”
My instincts…
What did Past Amber know?
An impulse seized me. I wrapped my hands around fistfuls of his shirt, rose onto my toes, and kissed him directly on the mouth.
For one heartbeat, Desmond stood stiff and unyielding, and my mistake—my horrifically erroneousinstinct—loomed over me like the guillotine, hungry for the crunch of my spine.
Whatin the name of entropy was I doing?
I let go of his shirt and dropped onto my heels, intending to flee the room, and the building, and the Alchemary, and my own humiliation.
But then Desmond’s hands curled around my hips in a bruising grip, pulling me closer, higher, until I was balanced on the very tips of my toes. He made a primal sound at the back of his throat, like a half-starved dog tearing into a steak suddenly dropped in front of him, and a blistering need unfurled deep within me, hot tendrils curling low and tight. Gripping me with a desire I recognized on a bone-deep level but could not remember ever having felt before.
Desmond’s mouth crashed down upon mine. His tongue plunged into me with greedy, demanding strokes. His hand slid up my spine and splayed across my back, the heat from his palm burning into me as if the sturdy material of my frock were as insubstantial as a fleeting thought.
My fists tightened again around handfuls of his tunic. My head tilted, granting me greater access to his mouth, and that one long kiss fractured into a dozen more, urgent and reckless, until we were feeding from each other with each salacious flick of his tongue across my lips, with each ravenous tug of his lip between my teeth.
I did not think.
Icouldnot think.
This moment was not about thought. It was not about analysis, or reason, or planning. A fire burned between us, white-hot and blistering.
In alchemy, fire represented strong emotions such as passion, love, anger, and hate. Fire was yellow, orange, and red: bright, vibrant, flickering colors, constantly in flux as they released energy. Fire, written as an upward-pointing triangle, was considered hot and dry.
Hot, yes. Definitely. Butdryseemedwhollyinaccurate.
Fire was considered masculine, based on its destructive power alone, yet I’d never felt more like a woman in my life than I did with this blaze burning inside me, changing me as surely as flame changed every alchemical ingredient it touched.
Fire is alchemy. And alchemy is life.
This was my life.
I had no memory of it, and if I’d stopped to think about it, I would not have been able to identify a single bit of empirical evidence, but I knew—knew—that this was right, even if it had never happened before. Desmond’s hands on my body…his lips on mine…his tongue—the wet heat and the taste of him…
The fire burned, and itwouldconsume me, as every flame consumes without thought—without reason or restriction—until its fuel is used up.
Iknewthat.
