Dominic stood in the doorway. He crossed the room in three rapid steps, seized my arm, and pulled me away from the brazier. “What are you thinking? Do you want to go mad, too?”
I shook his hand off my arm. I wheeled on him, an angry outburst on my lips. His usually hooded eyes were wide with surprise.
“I’m sorry!” he exclaimed. “I wasn’t trying to— I only meant— You can’t use the Elixir. It isn’t safe.”
“But you’re the one who started it going,” said Will. Dominic made a confused noise, but Will pressed on. “No, don’t deny it. Where did it come from if you didn’t bring it with you? I didn’t have it. The White Elixir was in the brazier working on the lead when I came back from the shop.”
Dominic’s eyes widened farther, and his slumped shoulders drew back, pulling him upright and defensive.
“He didn’t bring it,” I said, an edge of accusation in my voice. “I did. It was in my pocket. You took it from me while I was sleeping.”
“I didn’t!” he said. “I don’t think…”
He reached into his coat pockets and dug around for a moment before pulling out an empty vial. He stared at it, then at the brazier.
“I didn’t,” he repeated, but with less certainty this time. He looked back at me in appeal. “Was it— You didn’t put it there?”
“Of course not. But I’m glad you thought to get it going. Our money troubles are solved, at least.”
“No, no, no, no,” muttered Dominic. He angled past Will and stood between him and the brazier. “We can’t use it. We can’t.”
“Why not? It’s the next part of the process that causes madness. Making the Philosopher’s Stone.” But as soon as I said it, I knew it was wrong.
“No,” said Dominic. “We hadn’t started on the Stone when Bentivoglio attacked you in the alley. And I…”
He put a hand to his forehead, and his head dropped. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.
“Dominic?” I asked. I glanced at Will in alarm. He caught my look, and his fingers tightened on the heavy silver in his hand.
“I don’t remember burning the elixir,” Dominic said without raising his head.
“You’re tired,” I said. “We were up all night. You had a terrible shock.”
“No,” he said. “No, Thea.”
“Then—” I thought as quickly as my sleep-starved mind would work. “Then we’ll keep you away from the work. We’ll stop. We have enough silver for now. Mother and Bentivoglio—neither of them lost control right away.”
“But if I’ve started to do things without knowing it—”
“We will watch you,” I said. “We will keep an eye on you. You might get better without more exposure.”
“He was so strong, Thea,” Dominic said in a low voice. “It wasn’t natural, how strong he was.”
I started toward him on some instinct to offer comfort, but Will took my arm and held me back.
“I can lock you inside the other room,” said Will. Dominic looked up at him with a glimmer of hope.
“If I get worse, I don’t know if the lock will hold,” he said.
“If you get worse we will know, won’t we?” said Will. “Oughtn’t we have some warning?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Professore Bentivoglio wasn’t himself for days before he became violent. You said that, remember?”
Dominic nodded slowly. He glanced behind him at the brazier.
“You won’t make any more? You won’t go further?”
I met Dominic’s earnest gaze. I had not known him long, but I had seen enough of his goodness to know that if the Stone had rejected even him as unworthy, then the standard was too high for me to meet. My last hope that I could finish the Philosopher’s Stone without falling prey to the madness crumbled.
“Thea,” he said. “You’ve seen it. You know what will happen to you.”
I thought of my mother’s empty eyes and her feral scream. I thought of Bentivoglio throwing me into the wall, then lying in a pool of his own blood, his head smashed in.
“I won’t.” The words tasted like poison in my mouth. Like a curse I was putting on myself, almost as bad as the one I sought to avoid. “I know we can’t.”
Dominic nodded and pushed past us, his head down. He went into the side room and shut the door firmly behind him. While Will fished the key out of his chest and locked him in, I took down the brazier from the fire. The steam was a faint mist now, but I tried not to breathe it in all the same. I put the brazier in the corner and covered it with a filthy rag from Will’s alchemy chest. I didn’t want to touch the elixir. I thought, for a moment, of taking it out and throwing it in the trash, but an involuntary spasm of horror at the idea prevented me.
Will and I sat by the fire, sharing a loaf of bread between us. The elixir hovered between us, though I had banished it to the corner. The second time I caught him gazing in its direction, I shook my head.
“We can’t, Will,” I said with as much certainty as I could muster. “You haven’t seen what it does. Death is better than what happened to my mother.”
“I don’t agree,” said Will quietly. “There isn’t a cure for death, but there may be one for your mother.”
I grasped in my mind for some comfort to offer him. But there was none: only the Stone, which had slipped through my fingers. My mother had made it. She had succeeded. If only I had seized it and run.
“If only she hadn’t destroyed it,” I groaned. The memory of the glass ovum shattering where she had thrown it was suddenly as fresh and wrenching as it had been then. Will set down his bread, barely touched, and took my hand. He ran his thumb over mine, staring down at it. Pricks of pleasure ran up my arm, but with the pleasure was some alarm. Will hadn’t touched me like this before, so casually. Some boundary seemed to have been breached, and since I did not yet know what it was, precisely, I could not feel entirely at ease.
“What did she destroy?” he asked.
It took me a moment to understand what he meant.
I closed my eyes and winced at the thought. “My mother made the Stone. She destroyed it when she attacked me.”
Will’s thumb went still, and his grip on my hand tightened. When he spoke, his voice was thick and desperately quiet.
“She made the Stone. You saw it.”
I tried to pull my hand away, but he didn’t let go.
“I saw it, yes. Just before my mother nearly killed me.”
“Why?” His voice was a low growl of despair. “Why would she?”
“Why?” His grip on my hand was almost painful now. His fingernail pressed into my palm. “Will, have you not been listening? She was mad! She was destroying everything! The Stone, me, nothing mattered to her!”
I tore my hand free and stared at him. He caught sight of my expression and his face flooded with regret.
“I’m sorry, Bee,” he said. “I didn’t mean it. Forgive me. It’s just … the Philosopher’s Stone!”
He started to cough, and in the several minutes it took for the violence of it to pass, my anger at him had faded away.
“I know,” I said. “I understand. Believe me, I have asked the same questions myself.” I put my hand on his knee. It felt awkward and strange, and I wished at once that I hadn’t. But I left it there a moment before drawing it away.
“You know how to make it, don’t you?” he asked.
I sat very still while I considered how to answer. I did know how. I had the White Elixir. My mother’s notes were in my mind, each step more deeply imprinted than the last, as they grew closer to the goal of every alchemist, of all the work I had ever done.
“Bee. It is the only thing that can save me. It is the only thing that can save your mother.”
“I don’t know that for certain,” I said without believing. “We have no proof that it will do what the corpus says it will.”
“We had no proof the White Elixir could turn base metal into silver, either,” said Will.
I shook my head and shut my ey
es. It was dangerous to let him talk, dangerous to look at him and know he was dying. Everything he said was too much like what my own heart told me.
“We’ll go mad, Will,” I said in desperation. “We’ll kill each other. We will never get to use the Stone.”
I looked away, trying to shake off the memory of sulfur. I tried to arm myself, ready for him to argue again as I felt certain he would, perhaps should do. But instead his arms closed around me again.
“I’m sorry, Bee,” he said. “I don’t want to push.” His voice was gentle, like his hand on my arm. I didn’t want to fight with him. I didn’t want to deny him anything at all, and certainly not his life. A sob caught in my chest.
“There must be another way,” I said, knowing there wasn’t.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Will. He laid his cheek against the top of my head and let out a long sigh. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’d started to think I was never going to see you again.”
The sadness in his voice was more than I could bear. I dropped my head into his chest and breathed hard, desperately fighting not to weep and losing the battle.
“Don’t, Bee.” Will put his hand on my head and ran his fingers through my hair. “I hate making you cry. I’ve wanted to make you laugh since the first moment I met you.”
I exhaled sharply and turned a sob into a strangled laugh.
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Oh yes,” said Will. He coughed again, but moved past it quickly. “You looked at me with those big, serious eyes of yours, and I took it as a challenge. I wanted to see what you looked like with a smile on your lovely face, one I put there.”
I turned my face up to him. I could almost smile at him.
“And what did I look like?”
“Beautiful.” His smile was as warm as summer grass. “Happy. You should have so much happiness in your life, Bee. So much more than you’ve had.”
I laid my head against his chest again. I couldn’t look at him smiling at me like that, with the proof on his own drawn face and hollowed cheeks of how little happiness was left in life for him.
He helped me to the pallet and lay beside me. I leaned my forehead against his sternum. He laid one hand on my hip, still but in a way that suggested it might move at any moment. I held my breath. I didn’t know if I wanted his hand to move or not. I wasn’t sure if I liked it where it was, if I wanted more or less of what he might do. Something was different than it had been in France, when every small increase of intimacy had been an exquisite thrill. I hadn’t asked him to lie next to me, but I had come to his door without a chaperone. I had asked to sleep under his roof. I wasn’t sure what assumptions he had made, or what he thought I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted myself, but it felt too late, somehow, to tell him that now.
But when his hand did move, it was only to stroke my hair. I breathed in deeply and let the tension leave me.
“I missed you, Bee,” he whispered.
“I missed you, too.”
And slowly, I fell asleep, even with the disquieting rattle of his breath against my ears and the feeling of his thin, hard body against mine.
11
I woke up with a new plan. I couldn’t let Will die. I couldn’t let my mother waste away in madness. I was frightened of the curse, of course I was. With what I had seen I could hardly be eager to subject myself to it. But Will was dying. I reached for him as I surfaced from sleep. I would do what we both knew he needed me to do, though he wouldn’t ask for it. I would make that sacrifice. And when I had made the Stone, whatever had happened to me, Will could use the Stone to cure it. We would be as before, but stronger. We could go anywhere together. Be anything we wanted. We would have each other, and we would have the Stone. Will, the Stone, and my mother cured and grateful but far away. It was all I could think of to want.
I opened my eyes, ready to tell him. My chest was tight with terror. I would tell him quickly, get it over with before I could change my mind. But he wasn’t there. I pushed myself up and squinted at the tiny window. It was layered so thickly with grime that I could not be certain, but it appeared to be twilight. I had slept all day, and I felt no more rested. I glanced at the brazier in the corner, still covered with the rag. I went to it and stared at the White Elixir inside. It was stunningly beautiful, dense white and shining. Like an opal, but more so. I should write down my mother’s notes, so that Will could continue if I went mad before it was finished. Then I would need to check his stores. He most likely didn’t have everything we would need. When he got back, I would send Will out with the silver to buy the supplies. And Dominic could—
It was the first time I had thought of Dominic since awakening. My stomach twisted with guilt as I went to the low door and knocked quietly. When there was no answer, I called his name.
“Thea?” he answered.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. “Are you … are you hungry or—?”
“Or deranged?” he asked. His voice sounded closer now. He was just behind the door. “No, not yet. I’ve got a fever, though.”
I slid to the ground and leaned my head against the doorframe. My mother had been feverish.
“Perhaps you are just ill,” I said.
“Bentivoglio had a fever,” said Dominic.
“Do you feel—” I tried to imagine what it would feel like, to fall the way my mother and Bentivoglio had. “Aggressive? Or violent?”
Dominic was quiet a moment. I could hear his rough breathing, just beyond the door. I pictured him there, his head leaning against the frame just as mine was.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I keep thinking of your friend. I keep seeing his face and wanting to hurt him.”
“You want to hurt Will?”
“Yes. And I heard … something that wasn’t there. A voice.”
“What voice?” I asked, dread churning my empty stomach.
“My father’s,” he said, very quietly. “Telling me to do things he wouldn’t have told me to do. It’s him, but it’s not. He wasn’t a very good man, but he wasn’t like … like this.” He was quiet again, breathing hard. He might have been crying. “Don’t let me out, Thea. Promise me you won’t let me hurt you or anyone else. I’d rather die than be a murderer again.”
“You aren’t a murderer, Dominic,” I said. “You don’t really think that, do you? Don’t you know none of this was your fault?”
“I know that a man is dead because of me. I know that his family has lost him because of me. He had children. They won’t see him ever again.”
“But you had to defend yourself!”
“You defended yourself from your mother without killing her,” said Dominic. “I should have been more careful. I could have, if I’d thought more quickly. Like you did, didn’t you? You’re quick.”
I didn’t want to think about how quick I’d had to be the night my mother tried to kill me. I had been very quick indeed—quick to strike. I recalled the Comte’s face as he looked up at me from my mother’s side. Mon dieu, Thea, you could have killed her!
“I had help,” I said. “My mother’s patron was there. We overpowered her together. But even so, I nearly killed her. It was only a happy chance that the blow I struck wasn’t fatal, and an unhappy chance that yours was.”
We fell into silence again. I put my palm flat against the door, wishing I could send some peace to him that way. He was a good man, to take this so to heart. I hadn’t spared a thought for the blow I’d dealt my mother since I left France. It occurred to me that it might have killed her, after all, by some delayed effect. That sometimes happened with head wounds. And in her altered state, who knew what damage I had done her?
“You’re kind, also,” said Dominic, interrupting my line of thought going in quite the opposite direction.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m afraid you do not know me very well.”
“I feel I know you better than I know most people,” said Dominic. “I know you risked yourself to help me when I am no one to you
.”
“You aren’t no one.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, I just meant that you barely know me. You don’t owe me anything.”
I chewed my lip and considered this. We hadn’t known each other long, but I did feel he deserved loyalty. I sorted through what I knew of him, what he had done to make me feel that way.
“You defended me from Bentivoglio,” I said. “You took my side. You took me in when I had nowhere to go.”
“Anyone would have done that.”
“My father didn’t,” I said.
“Your father—” Dominic’s voice dripped with disapproval, but he stopped himself from pronouncing a condemnation.
“My father is like most men. He only cares about himself.”
Quiet again.
“Do you really think that?” asked Dominic after a moment.
“That my father only cares about himself? Surely you wouldn’t argue—”
“No, no. Not that. That most men are like him.”
“Oh.” I had said that without giving it much thought. It was a truism of my upbringing. I made a few mental exceptions. Will, of course. Dominic as well. “Do you not?”
There was another long silence. I was beginning to understand why Dominic thought I was so very quick, by contrast.
“I suppose I do, but maybe not like you do. Men are selfish; women, too. But we don’t have to be. We aren’t meant to be. We could always repent. Even your father, even now…”
I had almost believed this when he’d said something similar in the pub. But since then my father had behaved even worse. I’d felt a fool for hoping even then. Now, that small hope was dead.
“No,” I said quietly. “I’ve seen enough. He won’t get any more chances from me.”
Dominic went silent again, though I had the feeling he wanted to say more. Then the front door opened, and I looked up, expecting Will.
It wasn’t Will.
I leapt to my feet. Three large figures stood in the shadowed hall. It was the police, I thought in a panic. Then one of them stepped inside and spoke with a heavy accent.
“You are Miss Hope?” he asked.
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