“I can do that much,” he said very quietly.
“Don’t trust them.” I was so tired. I wanted sleep, but didn’t know if I would ever wake.
“I’ll fix this, Bee,” said Will. “Trust me.”
16
Valentin returned. He came to my side, peered closely at me. I knew, of course, what he looked for, and tried to show it to him. He touched my forehead.
“Please let me help Will,” I said. “Please take me to the workroom. You need me there.”
He stared at me a long moment, and then nodded. He produced a key and unshackled me. I slipped my wrist out as the manacle released, moaning. I pulled myself up and rolled my shoulder. Relief flooded me. Valentin rounded the bed and unchained my other wrist. I wrapped my arms around myself, then held my wrists up in front of me.
“How long was it?” I asked.
“Sixteen days,” said Valentin. “I am sorry.”
I pushed myself to the edge of the bed and gripped the side. I dropped my head as a spell of dizziness overtook me. I shook it away and pushed myself to my feet. I grabbed Valentin’s arm when I almost fell, and felt him flinch away. A small, private smile twisted my mouth. I had become a thing that frightened a man twice my size. I did not want to think how dreadful I must look, after sixteen days of chained madness. The smell was appalling, even to me.
I had a bath. Valentin summoned Rahel’s companion, Berit. She helped me into and out of it with a look of deep distaste for my dreadful state. I did not mind. I felt the same distaste, and an even deeper relief once I had bathed and dressed.
I inspected my wrists. They were hideous. Scabbed over in patches, red and even bleeding in others. One of them oozed yellow pus. The pain was acute. I hadn’t felt it this strongly when I awoke. I decided to take this as an encouraging sign. The blur was still there. The confusion at the edge of my thoughts still pulsed, fingering its way to the center. But I was calmer. The bath helped.
Valentin returned with bandages and an ointment that I could not imagine was strong enough for the job it was expected to do. He sat beside me and held my hand in his with a gentleness that surprised me. He spread the ointment into the wounds and wrapped them. There was something different about him. He looked sad.
“I did warn you,” I said.
“You did,” he agreed.
“I warned my father, too, but he didn’t listen any better than you did,” I said. “Why is he here? Do you know?”
“He is here for you,” said Valentin. “He wants to help you and take you home.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that.”
Valentin raised his eyebrows, but without his customary cold incredulity. “Why not?”
“He doesn’t care about me,” I said.
Valentin secured the bandage on my wrist and released my hand. He sat back and regarded me. “I do not know your father well,” he said. “But from what I have seen of him in these last weeks, I think you may be mistaken about that.”
He helped me to my feet. It was slow going, down a hallway and then the stairway. Screams traveled down them. I looked up at Valentin, a painful question on my face. He nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Dominic.”
We made our way up the stairs, Dominic’s screams tormenting me at each step. My heart pounded and my vision blurred, but I forced myself on, clinging to Valentin’s thick arm. I would be there when the Stone was made. It was mine, my work. I would be there to be certain they used it as they had promised to.
Dominic’s screams stopped, and in the sudden quiet I heard raised voices from the library. Valentin hesitated before the door, glancing at me. He knocked before I could make out what the voices were saying. They fell silent.
“Komm herein,” said a woman with a low voice. Rahel. I straightened my spine to the best of my ability as we entered, pushing past a German who held the door open. I wished I could walk without clinging to Valentin’s arm.
“Ah, Miss Hope,” said Rahel. She stood in the corner of the room farthest from the fire, her hand on the ledge of the open window and a chair behind her. An oil portrait of a man whose dour expression rather mirrored her own hung over her on the wall to her right. My father stood opposite her, shoulders squared against her.
Will coughed. He was kneeling by the fire, which sent up thick yellow smoke. My throat tightened at the smell.
“Come in,” said Rahel again in German. “Welcome. You are in time to help us settle a dispute.”
My father crossed toward me, hands outstretched. I did not take them, but he held them out anyway, turning his palms up in dramatic appeal.
“Let me finish it, my dear,” he said. I winced at the endearment, which sounded false on his lips. He pointed at Will. “He’ll break it! His hand is barely healed and he coughs every second moment! If he was ever a competent adept, he most certainly is not now!”
“Do it, then,” I said. “I cannot stop you.”
Vellacott glared at Will. “He will not tell me the last step. He said you wouldn’t wish him to. But now that you are here, now that you are awake, you can tell me.”
A smile curled my lips. I shook my head.
“Thea, for heaven’s sake!” my father cried in exasperation. “What good are your secrets now? What does it matter who finishes it?”
They were fair questions. And yet it did matter. The Stone was mine. I would finish it, even if I couldn’t keep it. Even if no one but those of us in this room ever saw, at least we would know who had made the Philosopher’s Stone. I would know.
“If Will can’t do
