Like a death sentence.
Air rushed in and out of my lungs without lingering long enough to perform its function. The room swam around me. I sank onto the edge of the unmade bed, fists clenched around the bedclothes, listening to my chest rattle and wheeze as I hyperventilated yet was unable to stop it.
“Amber.”
Desmond had said my name at least three times before I was able to process the syllables. Before I could draw his face into focus as he knelt on the woven carpet in front of me. “Breathe.Slowly.”
But it wasn’t his advice that brought the world back into clarity and unlocked my lungs. It wasrage.
“You left me.” My words carried the sharp, hot edge of a blade gleaming in firelight.
“I had to run an errand.”
“You left me. OnBlack Trialday. I’m likely going to die today, and you left me here to wake up alone.” Never mind the fact that if I’d slept in my own bedchamber, I’d have woken up alone anyway. Fear had swelled within me, leaving little room for logic.
“I went back to the lab to make this.” As he stood, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a sealed vial, just like the ones Wilder used. Only there was no handwritten label, and I did not recognize the color—the pale, sickly yellow—of the contents.
“What is it?”
“You need to drink it.”
“I will not, without knowing what it is.”
Desmond sat next to me on the bed, a puzzled, disappointed expression swirling slowly behind his eyes. “It is…a remedy. For a problem that only may exist. Because of last night. I swear on my soul that it will do you no harm. It will only prevent… conception.”
And suddenly the reality of what we’d done—of the potential consequences—hit me with the impact of the clock tower collapsing directly onto my unsuspecting body. Crushing me swiftly and terribly.
“Most women buy these in Saltstrand, which we have no time for. Or they get them from Wilder. Which is equally out of the question, for obvious reasons.”
I groaned, scrubbing one hand over my face as guilt rose like a behemoth to overshadow the other facets of my misery. “Wilder. What have I done?”
“No,” Desmond said firmly as he pressed the vial into my hand. “I do not know what passed between you and my brother the night you lost your memory, but I know for certain that you were not then, nor are you now, together as a couple.”
And yet…Wilder had been in my bed. I’d spent the past six weeks at his side—Icaredfor him—and—
“You have done nothing wrong, Amber.”
“And yet you brought me here in secret.”
His sigh carried the weight of the entire planet. “Because while you have done nothing wrong, the same might not be true of me.”
I frowned at him. “What does that mean?”
“It’s…complicated. Amber, drink the remedy. Please.”
“And if I don’t want to?” I stared down at it.
“That is your choice. Entirely yours. But I wanted you to have the option, and I strongly suspect that if you were thinking clearly right now, you would have already swallowed the entirety of that vial.”
He was right. I did not want a child. Not right now. Not when I had yet to graduate—to even survive—the Alchemary and could remember little of the past few years.
I thumbed the cork from the vial and swallowed the contents, grimacing as the bitter taste and viscous texture lingered at the back of my tongue. “That isloathsome.”
“So I’ve heard. If I could take it for you, I would. But despite the Alchemary’s attempts to perfect the human form, men are as yet incapable of conception.”
“I don’t understand what happened last night.”
He turned from his desk to give me a wry smile. “At the time, you understood well enough to havetheories.”
