It wasn’t bad at first. It could have been a normal cough. It started in his throat, but quickly went deeper. It took hold and shook him, tearing him from me. I pulled back in alarm as he folded, fumbling with his handkerchief, turning away. He wanted to hide it, but there was no hiding this.
When the coughing finally subsided, he did not look at me. He couldn’t meet my eyes, couldn’t make a joke. I understood then, though deep down I had known from the moment he opened the door. Will was dying.
It was worse than everything else. Worse than my mother’s madness, my father’s rejection, Dominic’s trouble, worse than fleeing from the law. The thought of Will had been enough when everything else had disappointed. I could face losing the rest when finding Will was still ahead of me.
“Have you seen a doctor?” I asked.
“I never met a doctor who could cure consumption.”
“If you got out of this horrible place—”
“I would still be dying.”
His flat tone sent a chill down my spine. I opened my mouth to protest, but Will cut me off.
“Your friend.” He nodded toward the wall. It took me a moment to realize that Dominic must be resting in the other room. “He went to work while you were sleeping and I was gone. I got back to find him melting something in my brazier.”
“What?”
Will nodded toward the fireplace, an oddly careful look on his face.
“See for yourself.”
I pulled myself to my feet, taking the hand Will offered for support, and took a deep breath to fight down a spell of dizziness. I recognized a sharp, fresh scent.
“The White Elixir?” I asked Will. “But I thought you said you hadn’t made it?”
“I haven’t. Your friend brought it with him. He was transmuting some of my lead, and it seems to have worked.”
I crossed the room and stared into the brazier. The White Elixir was pooled like quicksilver around a large lump of glittering metal that was distinctly not lead. I felt in my pockets for the vial I had brought, and found it missing. Will held out tongs to me. I reached in with them and pulled out the lump, which was about the size of a fist. The White Elixir released it, coming together again and losing its liquid shine. I touched the metal. It was warm and pleasant to the touch.
“You said this was lead?” I asked Will. “You’re quite certain it was lead?”
“Quite certain. I spent my last silver a long time ago,” he replied.
I knew this was what the White Elixir was supposed to do, but I had never seen the results before. Now I held them in my hand. Silver, made from alchemy. I passed it from one hand to the other, rubbed my thumb over its smooth, warm surface. I wanted more.
“Do you have any more lead?” I asked. “Or tin?”
Will went to the chest against the wall, full of a familiar array of instruments, vials, and metals. He took a dull gray block, pewter, and dropped it into the brazier. We watched, entranced, as the elixir parted around it, then slowly began to bubble and spread across its surface. The bubbles turned to steam, and a thick smoke rose into our faces. I fanned it away, entranced by the process I had only half believed was truly possible completing itself before my eyes.
I took Will’s hand without thinking. For a moment, it remained cold and unmoving in mine, and I panicked, imagining he was about to draw away. Then, to my relief, his fingers closed around mine and squeezed. We watched wordlessly, hand in hand, until the steam slowly thinned and the elixir parted again. This time I lifted the newly created silver from the brazier and dropped it into Will’s outstretched hand. He stared at it for a very long moment.
“I had almost despaired,” he said quietly. “I had almost resigned myself to believing what they all said about us. That we were either fools, or frauds.”
“It is real.” I knew exactly how he felt. We had talked of it once. We were both young enough to abandon alchemy as a failed pursuit and choose something else. I had considered it, and so had he. I had met alchemists who had spent their whole lives looking for this and never found it. Talented men who could have done anything. But they had done this, and failed. The waste of it.
And now I held what they had died striving for in my hand. That meant we had been right not to abandon alchemy. But even more than that, they had all been right not to. Because this was not just silver that I held in my hand. This was proof that the basic elements of the world could be changed. Our detractors believed we sought this only for riches, and to be sure, most of us did. But the best alchemists, the ones I admired, who went the furthest—they saw past riches, past fame. They knew what it was to stand outside of society, to look at the world and wish it were different. Better. If we could turn pewter and lead into silver, then we didn’t simply have to take the world as it was given to us. We could change it. Lead into silver was only the beginning. Next was silver into gold. Sickness into health. Death into life.
“You said you had almost succeeded,” he said, not taking his eyes from the silver.
I didn’t know what he meant at first.
“The Philosopher’s Stone. You said you had almost completed the process to make it.”
I met Will’s eyes, and for a moment I felt the desperate need that I saw there inside myself. We both needed the Stone. There was so much we had to heal.
“What are you doing?”
Dominic stood in the doorway. He
