The Lady Alchemist

by Samantha Vitale

  Sepha reached the station and slumped onto a bench on the platform. She’d done something wrong with the transmutation. And Thuban and Henric thought she was a magician.

  A tug on her tether told her that Ruhen was heading back to the Institute. The tether started reeling in faster and faster. He was on the train. He was coming back.

  It wasn’t long before the train hurtled into the station, the wheels screeching against the tracks as it came to a stop.

  Sepha followed her tether to Ruhen’s car just as he stepped into the twilight. He wasn’t surprised to see her, of course.

  As she looked at him, the weight of everything crashed down on her. The magician’s contract and her failed transmutation attempt. The Magistrate’s expectations. Thuban and Henric’s suspicions. Destry’s trust. The thousand lies she’d told. Everything she’d been pushing to the back of her mind for the past month came rushing to the fore, and she was bending beneath the strain. The slightest breath of wind would topple her.

  Ruhen moved first, striding toward her as if he could see her teetering on the brink. Then she moved, closing the remaining distance between them and wrapping both arms around his waist, squeezing him as close as she could.

  Relief surged through her, so powerful and unexpected she gasped. Ruhen must’ve felt it, too, because he swore and wrapped his arms around her. He rested his cheek against her hair and squeezed her tight, introducing a sway.

  Gods, he was warm and solid. He smelled of the wind and something wild. His touch, the feel of his body against hers, sent a thrill of rightness, a thrill of something else, straight through her.

  They held each other, rocking from side to side, as the rest of the passengers disembarked.

  Then the train was gone, and it was only Sepha and Ruhen in the twilit dark.

  “I’m in trouble, Ruhen,” Sepha said. Her voice was muffled against Ruhen’s chest.

  “I thought you might be.” Ruhen’s voice rumbled through her. “Lately, you’ve seemed … like you were in trouble.”

  Of course he’d noticed. He was bound to notice eventually, considering the way things were between them. The way her contract had forced things to be.

  She’d gotten them into this. But she couldn’t tell Ruhen that.

  “Thuban thinks I’m a magician,” she said instead.

  This time, Ruhen only sighed. He slid his hands up to her shoulders and eased her away. Tipped her chin up with a knuckle and looked her in the eyes.

  It was all she could do to meet his gaze. Gods, he was gorgeous. She shouldn’t notice—shouldn’t allow herself to, because it would only hurt her in the end—but still, she noticed.

  The searching look lasted a moment longer before Ruhen said, softly, “Do you want to see something interesting?”

  She nodded. Ruhen slid his hand down her arm, hesitated, and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. Her mind leapt to that sudden shock in the library when they’d first held hands, and she knew he remembered it, too. And didn’t want to hold her hand because of it. Which was probably for the best.

  Ruhen’s hand was warm and gentle around her wrist as he led her up the stone-slab stairs toward the Institute. Instead of heading through the IAD doors, however, Ruhen veered to the left.

  They walked along the Institute’s oblong outer wall. The moon and the stars lit their way.

  Then they rounded the corner, and Sepha felt a blast of ocean wind so powerful it nearly knocked her over. For a moment, she could only focus on maintaining her balance. But then the wind licked her arms, her face, teased her hair free of her long braid. It was cold and strong, the wind, and her heart surged with a strange sort of wakefulness in response. Something inside her, something that had burrowed down and hidden in some safe and dark and forgotten place, began to stir.

  Sepha leaned into the wind and looked out.

  For the first time in weeks, she didn’t see walls in every direction. They were not far from the cliff’s edge, and beyond that—water, endlessly. The wind kicked up again, and she inhaled deeply as it dragged across her skin, bringing with it the smell of the sea. A smell that was wild, briny, and familiar.

  Ruhen’s smell. He smelled like the sea, even when they were nowhere near it.

  Sepha looked at him, surprised, and saw him staring back at her with a strange, glimmering light in his eyes. She smiled and said, warily, “What?”

  A soft smile. A shrug. That look, the one she might be imagining, crept into his eyes. For once, Sepha allowed her gaze to linger. To wander from his dark gray eyes to his full lips to the strong line of his jaw. The vee of his torso, the breadth of his shoulders. The bob of his throat as he swallowed.

  A fresh gust of wind blew a lock of hair across Sepha’s face. Time seemed to slow as Ruhen brushed her hair away, hooked it around her ear, and let his fingers trail along her jawline. Sepha couldn’t look away from his lips.

  A kiss wouldn’t do any harm. Would it?

  Sepha eased closer, resting a hand on Ruhen’s chest. His lips parted.

  And then—

  Sepha’s contract thrummed with approval.

  The moment shattered.

  “Um,” Sepha said, looking away toward the cliffside. Her voice was hoarse. “Is this the something interesting?”

  “It is,” he said, staring at her for a moment longer before letting his hand drop to his side. He looked out over the sea and, seeming almost shy, said, “I like the water.”

  Ruhen took her wrist again and led her along the cliffside. Sepha had never been so close to the edge before, had never realized how high up it would feel. As they got closer to the cliff, her mind went empty and her limbs tensed. And Mother’s voice, a murmured echo, What if, just for a second, I forget that I’m not supposed to fly?

  She must’ve stiffened or made a sound, because Ruhen said, “Oh! Sorry. Heights.” He pulled her away from the cliff’s edge to a spot where a boulder jutted up from the ground, and asked, “Is this better?”

  Sepha nodded. With a sure, smooth movement, Ruhen sat against the boulder and pulled her down to sit beside him. After a few moments of shy-but-confident shifting, Sepha was settled on the ground beside Ruhen, with his jacket protecting her from the wind. Ruhen fussed over Sepha for a moment, making sure she was comfortably wrapped in his jacket, then settled his arm around her.

  The feeling of overwhelming rightness returned. Sepha drew her knees up to her chest and leaned against Ruhen, resting her forehead against him. For the first time in two weeks, every trace of that throbbing headache was gone.

  Ruhen took a gathering breath. “So. Thuban thinks you’re a magician.”

  “And Henric,” Sepha said. “He wanted me to transmute straw to gold for him. He was being a real ass about it.”

  “Can’t help himself,” Ruhen said, and Sepha breathed a laugh.

  “He’s probably mad at me,” she said.

  Ruhen leaned to the side to see her face. His mouth was parted in an expectant smile as he asked, “Why? What did you do?”

  “I may,” Sepha began, fidgeting with the hem of Ruhen’s jacket, “have transformed a silver crown for him to wear.” Ruhen groaned. “And then I may have smashed it onto his head.”

  “Sepha, no!”

  “And then after that, I might have said something rude.”

  Ruhen clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Well, that should be a much bigger concern than Thuban thinking you’re a magician. Everyone else knows you’re an alchemist, so Thuban can go cry about it to himself. But Henric—Sepha, you know the type of person he is!”

  “What type of person is that?”

  “The type of person who loses three homunculi, of course,” Ruhen said. “Three.”

  Sepha rolled her eyes and jostled Ruhen’s ribs with her shoulder. “Be serious.”

  Ruhen tightened his arm around her, and she leaned against him again. “The question is, do you think either of them means you harm? And if so, woul
d you be safer if you left the Institute?”

  “No!”

  The word came out too fast, startling them both. Sepha took a deep breath and said, as slowly as she could manage, “Even if they do mean me harm, I can’t leave. When I said I was in trouble, I wasn’t just talking about them. There’s something I have to do, and I can only do it here. I can’t talk about it, so please don’t ask me. I don’t have much time to figure it out, but once I do, all of my other problems will go away.”

  For a moment, the only sounds were of the wind and the waves.

  “Is this,” Ruhen touched his own chest, then touched the loose folds of his jacket where it hung over Sepha’s, “one of your problems?”

  Sepha swallowed. His eyes were serious and nearly black in the moonlit dark. Everything in her screamed Lie! Lie to him! But he was only asking for the smallest piece of information about something that had an enormous effect on his life.

  She nodded, bracing herself for an explosion of anger.

  But no—that would’ve been Father’s reaction, and Ruhen was nothing like Father. Regardless of how angry Ruhen got, he wouldn’t explode.

  Ruhen’s eyes wandered across her face and then away, to look out over the sea. A long moment, and then he looked at her again. “But it’s magic.”

  This time, she didn’t answer. He took that for the confirmation it was and looked back out over the sea. “Well,” he said, “let me help you. I won’t ask you any questions, but maybe I can speed things along. If you need me to read something for you.”

  A month ago, Sepha would’ve refused. But she’d spent the last four luckless weeks searching for answers that never appeared; and now she only had two months left. Until—

  There was no need to explain everything to Ruhen—not yet. But there was no need to let her pride prevent her from solving her problem as fast as possible, either. “All right. Since you insist.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” Ruhen said. He smiled, and her entire face went crimson.

  Once her thudding heart and its echo, the contract, had calmed down, Sepha said, “Where were you today? I missed you.”

  Ruhen smiled his lovely half-smile. “You missed me?”

  Grinning despite the thousand emotions churning inside her, Sepha said, “Yes, damn you.”

  Ruhen’s smile turned excited. “I went to Balarat.”

  “What for?”

  With his free arm, Ruhen reached across her and fumbled for something in his jacket pocket. For a few glorious seconds, she was surrounded by him, the hard angle of his jaw inches away from her face as he dug through his pocket. Then he eased away, placing a small parcel in her hand. “For your birthday,” he said. “Just keep in mind that not all of us are fabulously wealthy. It’s not much, I mean.”

  Sepha blinked down at the little parcel. Two people—three, if she counted Henric, which she didn’t—had remembered her birthday.

  Shakily, she opened the package and tipped its contents into her hand.

  It was a thin, silver necklace with a pendant the size of a coin. Squinting in the darkness, she lifted it to catch the light and smiled.

  “A willow!” she exclaimed. “Ruhen, it’s lovely.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said. “I noticed that you wear your ring every day and thought you might like something to go with it.”

  Sepha glanced at her right hand, where her L ring shone a dull silver. She hadn’t taken it off since the day Thuban had given it to her, but she never would’ve expected anyone to notice. But Ruhen had noticed, just like he always noticed everything.

  With a shy smile, Ruhen held out his hand for the necklace. Sepha let the chain slither into his cupped palm. She turned, lifted her hair, and held her breath as Ruhen hooked the chain around her neck. His knuckles brushed against her skin, and the pendant slipped coolly down to rest against her chest.

  “Thank you,” she said, tracing the outline of the pendant with one finger. And because she couldn’t bear not to, even though she was a damn idiot for doing it, she leaned up and pressed her lips against Ruhen’s cheek.

  He went very still, and she pulled away, embarrassed. She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

  The contract thrummed along with her heart as Ruhen leaned closer and rested his forehead against hers. He traced her jawline with his thumb, and her eyelids flickered shut.

  For a moment, they were still but for the warm breath that mingled between them.

  Then Ruhen moved, skimming his lips along her cheek until he pressed them, slow and soft, against the hollow beneath her ear. It was merely the hint of a kiss, and Sepha’s breath caught in her throat. An entire universe existed in the place where his lips touched her skin, and still she wanted more. Desperately.

  Ruhen pulled away. Whispered, “Happy birthday,” and held her close, hiding his face in her hair.

  Leaving Sepha to figure out what in all After she was going to do.

  There was, of course, the contract to consider, and the fact that nothing, nothing, could happen between them.

  But there was also the fact that he made her laugh, contract or no.

  And the fact that Ruhen felt right, and no Ruhen felt wrong.

  Her heart beat in time with the contract beside it.

  Gods, she was in trouble.

  The sign posted on the mess hall door was big, bold, and impossible to miss.

  From the OFFICE of the MAGISTRATE

  ANYONE found assisting, harboring, or

  concealing the presence of a MAGICIAN

  is GUILTY of TREASON.

  If an ALCHEMIST

  (MILITARY or COURT)

  DISCOVERS such a

  TRAITOR and MAGICIAN,

  the ALCHEMIST is henceforth

  AUTHORIZED and COMPELLED

  to EXECUTE both persons ON SIGHT

  for CRIMES against TIRENIA.

  “Gods and After help us,” Ruhen breathed after reading it out loud to Sepha.

  “I know,” Sepha said, surprise mixing with dark satisfaction. “It seems …”

  “Extreme,” Ruhen finished, a muscle working in his jaw.

  “Right,” Sepha agreed. “I knew things were bad with the rebellion, but I didn’t know they were this bad. Gods, the Magistrate must be panicking to make a law like this! Magicians deserve whatever they get, but now they’re killing non-magicians, too!”

  Ruhen gave her a sharp look. “That’s what upsets you about this?”

  Sepha squinted at the squirming letters. “They’re killing non-magicians, Ruhen! Of course that’s what I’m upset about.”

  Ruhen flung a hand toward the poster. “They’re killing people, Seph. People. Without a trial. Even if—”

  Ruhen stopped abruptly as several people burst out of the mess hall, then leaned closer and continued in a low whisper. “Even if they are magicians, they’re still people. Born the way they are, just like you were born the way you are. Except they’re being hunted and killed for it.”

  “Yes, they’re people,” Sepha hissed, heat rising in her cheeks. “People who do things like this.” She motioned between them, and Ruhen’s eyes narrowed. “People who make Wicking Willows. People who kill people!”

  “So just because some magicians are wicked, all of them deserve to die?” Ruhen was close now, his eyes dark with an intensity Sepha didn’t understand.

  Her voice came out soft. “Ruhen, all magicians are wicked.”

  The intensity in Ruhen’s eyes disappeared, replaced by something blank and dull, and Sepha felt as if she’d just failed a test. Ruhen’s muscles strained against his shirt as he rumpled his hair with both hands, then smoothed it over to one side.

  Ruhen didn’t speak again until they’d gotten their breakfast and taken their usual seats at a corner table, away from the Military Alchemists. They’d missed the morning rush, and Ruhen’s friends had already vanished into the library. “So, it was a magician who did this?” He
copied her motion, gesturing between them.

  Sepha shot him a sideways look. “How else could it have happened?”

  Ruhen rolled his eyes. “Gods, Sepha, just answer the question.”

  “Yes,” Sepha said, sarcasm drenching her voice. “A magician made this magical connection. Shocking, I know.”

  Ruhen glared. “It wasn’t a stupid question.”

  “I didn’t say it was,” she said, although she knew she may as well have. She met his eyes for half a second, then looked away. “But I don’t know why you asked. I told you it was magic. You should know it was a magician who did it.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  Sepha’s gaze snapped to Ruhen. “Of course it is. Magic and the magicians who make it are evil,” she said, Teacher’s time-worn phrase slipping easily from her tongue. “If there were no magicians, there would be no magic. Just imagine how much better off we’d be without them.”

  Ruhen’s expression was blank and unreadable. “Don’t tell me you believe that.”

  “How can you not believe it, after what we’ve been through?” Sepha asked, pushing her plate away and leaning closer to him. “Wicking Willow. Train derailment. This thing between us. All magic. All bad.”

  Using the word bad to describe the tether clanged uncomfortably in her mind, but she was right. The tether and everything that came with it were bad. Worse than bad. Evil.

  “I don’t believe it because I’ve lived in too many places and talked to too many people and read too many books,” Ruhen said. His voice got faster, more emphatic. “There’s the type of magic that magicians use, and then there’s this other magic, big magic. That’s where magicians’ magic comes from, if the magicians I’ve met are to be believed. Even if you killed every magician, there’d still be magic. And the fact that you never learned that, the fact that the information is there and they never taught it to you, just shows you how afraid the Magistrate is of magicians. Who aren’t evil, by the way. Magicians can be good if they want to, just like anyone else. Evil is a choice, not a birthright.”

  Shock spiked through Sepha, then anger, and she hissed, “So you talk to magicians, then?”