“Thea…” My father took another step toward me. “Is it still you?”
It took me a moment to understand the question. I didn’t answer. I wasn’t quite sure.
“Are you blind?” Will asked. “She is more herself than she has ever been!”
Will turned to me. “Bee, you see it now, don’t you?” he asked. “You can have everything you want, everything you’ve ever wanted. Think of the power, the prestige … You’ll be the greatest alchemist of all time. And I will be … whatever you want me to be. Your servant, your lover—whatever you want!”
And he would be, too. Faithful, or at least obedient. Just as my mother had said. Or was it the Stone that had said it? My memory blurred.
“Everything I want,” I murmured.
“Not everything, Thea,” said my father. “I thought that, too, once. That’s the man I was when you met me. I cared for nothing but alchemy. You saw what it made me. How I treated you. It wasn’t until you were gone that I saw everything I had been blind to when all I could see was the Stone.”
“You blame the Stone for that?” I asked.
“No!” he cried. “I blame myself, as you will blame yourself if you allow the Stone to change you!”
But it did not sound so terrible, to be changed. After all, what was I without it? Without alchemy? Just a clever girl with nowhere to apply her talents. Beyond that I did not know. And at this moment, I did not care to learn.
“It isn’t just for me.” I said it only because I needed some response, but it reminded me of what I had almost forgotten.
Will was partly right. I did want the power and fame the Stone offered me. Perhaps I wanted them most of all.
But they were not all I wanted. It took an effort to recall this.
We will heal them, I said to the Stone. My mother and Dominic.
I had to know for certain. I felt the Stone hesitate.
You tempt me with power. With Will. Why do you not tempt me with that? We can heal them, can’t we?
The Stone did not respond at first. We were too close, now, for it to lie to me. He was sick. They are not sick.
“Yes, they are,” I insisted, aloud. “Their minds are sick.”
They are not sick. They are mine.
“So let them go,” I said.
I felt its absolute refusal. I pushed back against it, but it was unbending. It would not yield. The effort exhausted me. My mind pulled back. Dominic and my mother seemed so far away. I remembered that I cared what became of them, but not why. Did it matter, what became of lesser people?
Lesser people? That wasn’t what I thought of them. It did matter. I tried to tell myself so, but my thoughts tangled. I was upset. Best not to think about it. Set them aside, grieve after I made the decision.
The decision …
What decision?
“Thea?” My father was before me, holding me by both shoulders. He looked up into my eyes. He was searching for something. His eyes darkened. He hadn’t found it.
My father jerked away and stared up, like he saw something.
The sound of musket fire rang out from the deck.
Will shrank back and huddled against the wall of the cabin. His face crumpled from confidence to horror in half a moment.
“They came,” he cried. “They followed.”
My father opened the door and climbed up to the deck. I followed him. Just outside, he threw out his arm to hold me back.
A privateer ship had come up beside the Ariadne. Small pools of smoke hung in the air over each ship. Another shot fired, and another small pool appeared. I could just make out the dark blue uniforms of the Germans. The Ariadne’s crew had taken shelter here and there on the deck. The captain was not very far from us, crouched behind a bulkhead and reloading his sidearm. He saw us.
“Get back in the cabin!” he shouted. “They’re trying to come aboard!”
A shot burned past me, so close I could feel its heat. Behind me, Will screamed. I turned to see him falling backward through the doorway, blood blossoming on his newly perfect shoulder. He’d been hit.
I looked over to the privateer. It was a smaller vessel, but full of well-armed sailors, judging from the clouds of gun smoke. Through the smoke, three grappling hooks flew across the water and caught in the rigging of the Ariadne. Three men holding the attached ropes climbed onto the guardrails of the privateer. Martin swung first, but a musket shot grazed his arm. He fell into the water between the ships with a scream.
My father pulled me down to my knees and turned so his body was between mine and the direction of the musket fire. “Give it to them, Thea,” said my father. “Give Valentin the Stone. Let him heal Dominic if it can be done.”
I shook my head.
That small denial was all the assent the Stone needed. It moved. The crawling fingers of its power thrust forward.
Blinding light filled my mind, my sight. My hand, holding the Stone, glowed red. I dropped to my knees, my arms thrown wide.
We were fusing. The bliss that had been promised before was gone. All I felt was a total powerlessness. The light cut through the fog in my mind like the crack of a gunshot through the rumble of the sea. I saw it all.
I saw what it meant to join with the Stone, now that it was too late.
It was a transfer of ownership of myself. My mind was pushed aside, watching from far away. I tried to move my eyes to my father, tried to force my lips to beg for his help. I failed.
In my desperate mind, I screamed
