“What’s the point of coming to the estate every afternoon if I’m not making progress?”
For the first time, Will puts his pen down, leans back in his chair, andregards her with a sigh. She tenses, sucks in her breath. The sear of his gaze makes her flutter in panic, makes her want him to do it again. She can’t quite understand her reactions to him, so different from her blushing affection for Ari and the way she’s always seeking him out. Ari is pure and desired by everyone, unattainable to her. But there is dark energy in her attraction to Will, something sharp, a blade that cuts.
“You say you’ve memorized everything in the books you’ve been assigned,” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
“Every transmutation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Should I switch our professor with you, so you can train the rest of your classmates?”
Now he’s just messing with her, and she flushes with frustration. “I’m not asking to be a teacher. I’m just saying that—”
“A teacher is simply someone who understands their subject so well that they can impart the wisdom to others.” Will laces his fingers together. “Can you do that?”
“Well…” Her voice trails off as she tries to puzzle out what answer Will wants.
“Ah. Perhaps one’s not as knowledgeable as one thought.”
“That’s not what I’m here for,” she says.
At that, a hint of cynical amusement curls at the edge of his lips. “And you know what you’re here for?”
She hesitates again. She’d sounded so effortlessly defiant in her head earlier, when she’d decided to march over here like a petulant kid. “I know I’m not here to sit idle,” she replies.
Will’s gaze wanders across her face, and she fights down a rush of heat. He rises from his chair, then steps up to her with his hands in his pockets. When she looks up at him, she has to crane her neck. She backs up instinctively until she feels the edge of the desk pressing against her thighs, imagines him pushing her against the wood, thinks of the way he’d blindfolded her during her test in the courtyard, wanting him to tug her head back until her throat feels exposed.
“What do you want?” Will asks her quietly.
“I—” she begins, and pauses. “I thought you were supposed to teach me that,” she finishes.
“Apprentices always think they’ve got everything figured out,” he says. “They want to skip to the rewards, so they come barging into my office, wasting my fucking time.” He narrows his eyes at her. “Arrogance breeds bad alchemists, Miss Lang. Your time will come. But for now, you will honor the patience required of alchemy. There is a reason why we pace the class the way we do. Memorization is not mastery. You must prove yourself capable enough to be valuable on the job. These are Diamond’s rules, not mine. But Iamhere to enforce them. Do I make myself clear?”
“How will I prove anything if I’m not allowed to try?”
“Enough, Miss Lang.”
His voice is a quiet rebuke, and Sam senses it’s time to stop. He’s standing so close to her that she can make out the slashes of brown in his dark irises. Her heart races frantically.
After a while, he looks away from her and takes a seat again. She waits while he writes something down on a document, wondering which of his buttons she can push, as if she desires to see him angry with her. Anything is better than his disinterest, her unbearable invisibility. She waits a little longer, just in case he says more to her.
But he doesn’t look up again, and after another beat, she takes her leave. As she goes, she makes Will a silent, bitter promise.
I’ll get you your proof.
The next week, on a breezy spring evening, Sam stays late at the Observatory and takes a stack of books outside, where she sits against the low brick wall surrounding the courtyard. She stares listlessly out at the gleaming tiles. There is a frustration bubbling in her chest, fighting to break free. In her heart, she knows she’s outgrown her classes, and her hands ache to do real transmutations. But no one here believes in her, not even Will. She stares at the swaying tree branches, then grabs one of her books and opens it.
It’s a course book on bioalchemy, far ahead of what they’re currently learning. She turns a yellowing page to the first formula and reads through the steps for transmuting a leaf into wood. She reads in silence until the twilight has grown dim enough for the courtyard’s lanterns to flicker on. After a while, she reaches behind her and pulls several leaves off the bushes, then holds them out in her palm.
She touches the leaves carefully, letting her soul stir as her fingers trail along the leaves’ stems, their green surfaces still full of active chlorophyll that hasn’t yet realized they’ve been severed from life. She concentrates, pulling forward her soul, then closes her eyes and tries to sense the organic material in the same way she’d done when Will had first tested her.
There is, she has learned, a vast and uncrossable gulf between the organic and inorganic, such a difference between the living force present in a leaf and the unchanging and undying nature of a stone, that she fully expects the structure of it to feel unrecognizable against her fingers. But even with this knowledge, she’s stunned.
Shimmering under the surface of the dying leaves is a soul, wholly distinct from her own and yet every bit as hungry to live.
She studies the structure of it with her touch. The thousands of pages she’s read and internalized now come to the surface, and she tries once again to transmute the plant, concentrating on the capillaries in the leaves, bringing forth the circles and geometry in her head, thinking of the necessary steps to turn the leaves into wood. If no one will guide her, then she will just have to guide herself. Her brow furrows, and this time she keeps reaching, even as the ache in her own soul grows into a real pain. Her lips part; she winces. Continues on. She isn’t sure if it’s supposed to hurt this much, but she doesn’t want to stop either. Again comes that sensation, right at the edges of her fingertips, the transmutation so close to happening.
