“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 eyes. 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.
