“It is fortunate for both of you that this is my decision,” I said. “Not yours.”
The other Prussian had finished cleaning the wound and taping the bandage down. He stepped back.
“Now then.” I stood, marshaling all that were left of my spirits. “We must seal the ovum before the substance oxidizes any further. Will you be so good as to hold the glass steady? I am afraid I cannot trust my own hands at present.”
Valentin made no further protests. Tight-lipped and stiff, he helped me transfer the substance and melt the narrow mouth of the glass egg shut. I half buried the ovum in ash, then sat back on my heels, pressing my palms into the floor to still their trembling. I allowed myself to feel a small measure of relief. The more precise part was over. The rest I could probably do with only half of my mind. I hoped I would have at least that much.
“A sealed vessel under heat,” said Valentin after a few moments. “Will it not explode?”
“That is certainly a danger,” I said. “The heat must be kept regular, and gentle. And even so…”
The possibility frightened me. Exploding vessels were a constant threat in alchemy. I had set aside enough of the White Elixir to make another attempt should this one fail, but I feared my mind would not last long enough to complete it.
“How long now?” asked Valentin.
“Six days,” I said. My mother’s notes had been exact.
“Six days,” he repeated. Valentin’s tone was flat, but his doubts were easy to read. I shared them. Six days was a long time.
“And after the six days, there is more to do?”
“One last step,” I said.
“Your friends do not know how to do what you have done.” Valentin concealed a question in the statement.
“No one does but my mother,” I said. “Unless my father deciphered her code. He stole her notes from me.”
Well, I told myself, in fairness, that was Bentivoglio.
Bentivoglio stole them, and gave them to your father, who did not return them, said my mother. He didn’t throw you into the wall, but only because he did not have to. And then he threw you out.
You threw me out, too, I reminded her.
Yes, she said. And now you know why.
I squeezed my eyes shut and slapped my forehead until I remembered what I had been thinking about before.
“But he didn’t,” I said. “Didn’t decipher the code. If he had, he wouldn’t have come looking for me. He needs me to make the Stone, same as you, same as your Ludwig, same as Will. I am so very needed.”
Valentin stepped toward me. He had been hovering a few feet away, and apparently decided that was not close enough.
“You are right,” I said. My vision was beginning to blur yellow again, but I felt no urge to commit violence. “You are too far. I could hurl myself into the fire, or worse, hurl the ovum out of it.”
I stared at the ovum and the black, burned-looking substance within. It was a pitiful thing, ugly and dead. Strange to think that all my hope now lay in it, in that charred mess coming back to a kind of life.
“Did your mother try to hurt herself, when she went mad?” asked Valentin. He stood over me now. I considered this.
“You know,” I said. “She didn’t.”
“Move back from the fire, please, Miss Hope,” said Valentin.
I nodded. He held his hand out for me to take. I stared at it, blinking back the blurred edges of my sight. It was a large, strong hand. I remembered feeling it on mine in the carriage, the hard callouses and dry cracks in the skin around his fingers. It was the hand that had pulled out Will’s nails, a hand that had killed, no doubt. I put my own hand in it, and hated the sight of it there, trembling and weak and needy. My fingers tightened on his.
The thing was next to him. I had to look at it now; I couldn’t look away, though I wanted to.
It wasn’t a man, or a woman, or a beast. It looked into me and saw straight down to the bottom. My mother had looked at me that way and thought she saw all. She’d been wrong. She had never seen all that this thing saw. No one had. I shuddered and cringed away. I wanted to weep and beg for mercy. But there was no mercy in that thing.
“Miss Hope?” I heard Valentin say as if from far away. “Thea?”
The thing was opening, turning down. Becoming a chasm, pulling me toward it. Once I fell in, I could never climb out. Despair seized me. Like hell, Dominic had said. Worse than death.
“I should have written it down!” I cried. How had I not written it down?
Valentin was asking questions. He understood as well that I was going, that I might not come back. There was one last step, and no one knew it. I opened my mouth to tell him, but the words caught, became nonsense. All I could feel was panic, all I could think was terror. I tried again and realized I did not remember. I didn’t know anything. I screamed.
I fell into the dark thing, into blackness and horror, and forgot everything but falling.
15
I was gone for an age. There was no time where I went, nothing but darkness, terror, confusion. The feeling of being consumed. Eaten, like a meal. Death was better. If I had been capable, I would have admitted it.
