I winced. The thought of Dominic sent real pain through my body and a twist of panic through my mind.
“I can only hope he will recover, somehow,” said Vellacott. “Like you did.”
I shook my head.
“You—you think not?” My father’s face fell.
“The Stone let me go,” I said. “It chose me. I don’t know why, but it did. That is why I recovered.”
My father stared at me.
“It … chose you?”
I had not put it into words yet, even in my own mind. But I knew it all the same.
“It was in my mother’s papers. In her notes. Alchemistam ultimam lapis elegit. Get them. I’ll show you.”
My father rose hastily and left the room. He returned with my papers and a shamefaced look.
“I should have thought to return them to you sooner—”
“It doesn’t matter now.” I flipped through the papers until I found the one with the warning. I pointed to the scribble in the margins. “There.”
My father bent over it with a frown. “The Stone chooses the last alchemist,” he translated. “And woe to whom it does not accept. What does it mean, the last alchemist?”
“I’m not sure … It’s to do with making the Stone, obviously. Maybe the Stone can only be made once, so whoever makes it is the last alchemist. As for the Stone choosing, I thought it meant you had to be worthy, like Brother Basil said. Virtuous,” I said. “But it isn’t that, not that at all. It simply … chose. It wanted me, and not Dominic or Bentivoglio or my mother. So it let me go.”
“What do you mean, it let you go?” He turned to me, his forehead creased. “Are you saying that the Stone somehow … held your mind?”
“Yes. It is what causes the madness. The Stone took my mind, and Dominic’s. And Mother’s. I saw them. It…” I recalled the laid-bare feeling of madness, the sense of being consumed. I shuddered. “It feeds on them.”
“But how can that be? It didn’t exist yet, when you went mad. It wasn’t finished.”
“Not finished. But somehow it was already there, in some form. I felt it. I—I saw it.” I thought of the dark figure and shuddered. “I know.”
We fell silent. I did not want to think of the sinister implications of what I was saying. I felt my mind trying to slide past them.
“Will tried to fuse with the Stone,” I told him. “It rejected him. It wants me to complete it.”
I took Will’s letter from my bedside table and handed it to him. I stood before him while he read it. When he finished, he looked up at me.
“Thea,” said my father. There was wariness in his eyes and warning in his voice.
“I’m going to meet him, Father,” I said. “I’m going to get the Stone and use it to cure Dominic and Mother.”
“Thea, think of what you’ve just told me,” said Vellacott. “The Stone is dangerous. You say it is feeding on their minds—what will it do to you, if you complete it? We don’t understand it. We don’t know how it works or what it will do.”
“I know it needs me to work,” I said. “And I know it heals any ailment. Every text says that.”
“But, Thea, the risks—”
“I know them,” I said, and suppressed another shudder. “Dominic knew them, too, when he took them to save me. He said—”
I didn’t want to say what he said, after he had recovered from the first threat of madness. I forced it out.
“He said it was like being among the damned in hell. And it is,” I said. “It is. I can’t leave them there.”
My father’s head drooped. He took a long, shallow breath. He shook his head.
There was no way to explain to him how much I needed the Stone. How everything in me screamed for it. It was something I needed for myself, but he did not see that. I tried another angle.
“You said you feel responsible for what happened to Dominic,” I said as gently as I could manage. “Then think how I must feel. When the situation was reversed, he chose to face the same risk for me.”
“I know,” said Vellacott. “I was there. I didn’t stop him.”
“Then you will not stop me,” I said.
He looked up at me again with an anguish I had not expected. I took a step back. It was too much. I could not accept responsibility for that much misery from him. I went to the window and let him gather himself.
“If you still wish to help, I would be grateful if you would go to London and find Valentin,” I said. “Tell him to meet us across the channel in Caen with Dominic if he still wants the Stone.”
“You will go to your mother first?” Vellacott asked.
I nodded.
“Valentin will take the Stone from you,” said my father. “Will you let him have it, when you have healed them?”
I did not answer at first. I closed my eyes and let myself feel the low throb of longing that flared up into fierce desire at the thought of giving up the Stone.
Give it up? No. Never.
But first things must be dealt with first.
“Tell Valentin I will,” I said.
19
I arrived in Portsmouth late, the night before I was to meet Will on the docks. The salt air hung so heavy that I tasted it when I licked my cracked lips. I walked down the dock and stared at the ships in the enormous port, my eyes glassy from the sharp sea wind. The church bells tolled the late hour, and a ship in the harbor fired its guns in agreement.
Will was here, somewhere. And the Stone.
The Stone. I had felt it calling to me, stronger and stronger as I drew nearer to the port. It was a throb inside me that never stopped, a soundless keening that set my mind and heart racing. Since Will had taken the Stone from me, I had never stopped
