Valentin stood, his eyes on the black mess in my hand. I was not the only one whose hopes were dashed by the Stone’s destruction.
“It’s clear enough, isn’t it?” Valentin asked. “She destroyed it somehow. What I wish to know is why?”
Valentin stepped back from me. He stared across the water at the swiftly departing Ariadne. His still face twitched. That and a hot gleam in his eyes were the only signs of his anger.
“I saw him,” he said. “Will. You healed him. Is that it? You healed him, so you were finished with the Stone? What about Dominic? What about your mad mother?”
“Dominic,” I said. Fear quickened my pulse. “Did you hurt him?”
“Very little, though it was no thanks to you that we did not kill him.” Valentin’s voice was rising. His eyes flitted from me to the Ariadne. A muscle worked in his jaw. It was killing him to watch Will get away, even with a bullet in his shoulder. “And all for nothing. I should go belowdecks and kill him now. He would be better off.”
“Dominic is here?” I asked. “He is on board?”
I climbed laboriously to my feet without waiting for Valentin’s answer. I tried to run, but my legs failed me. My vision blurred. I would have fallen if not for my father’s arm around me.
“A few moments ago your heart wasn’t beating,” my father said. “You need rest.”
I shook my head, though my body screamed its agreement. “I need to see Dominic,” I said. “You do not understand. He might … he might be…”
But I couldn’t say it. The hope was too fragile to be spoken out loud. Mercifully, my father did not press. He made some silent plea with his eyes to Valentin, who was just interested enough to lead us down the companionway stairs to a cabin much smaller and fouler smelling than mine on the Ariadne. The cabin had no window. The only light was what filtered faintly in behind and above us. I squinted as my eyes adjusted.
Dominic lay on the ground in the corner, completely still. My father and I crossed the cabin in two shaky steps and knelt beside him. He was bound hand and foot, and the strap was still in his mouth. He might have still been mad, but unconscious. Or he might have been dead. It occurred to me then, for the first time, that killing the Stone might have killed him, too. And if it had killed him, then it had also killed my mother.
Then I had killed my mother.
I hesitated long enough that my father felt for the pulse for me.
“He’s alive,” he said. “I think he’s sleeping.”
Dominic opened his eyes.
Even in the dim light, there was no mistaking the difference. Before, they had been burning coals, wells of fury and hatred toward every object. Now, they were just Dominic’s. Warm brown, bloodshot, intelligent. And at the moment, very confused.
My father untied the strap in Dominic’s mouth first of all, then set about freeing his hands.
“How…?” came Valentin’s voice from behind me.
I sat back on my heels and stared at Dominic. Relief battled the empty ache in my heart. He was free. My mother was free. My great achievement amounted to this—that I had managed to undo the devastation I had inadvertently caused.
“You did it.” Dominic’s voice was hoarse and as raw as an open wound. “You made the Stone. You saved me with it.”
“I made the Stone.” The memory of longing I had felt for it was like a phantom pain in a lost limb. “And then I destroyed it. I saved you from it.”
My father finished untying Dominic’s feet and looked up at me.
“It was taking you,” he said. “I saw it. I looked in your eyes and you weren’t there.”
Valentin heaved a deep sigh of frustration and stalked to the door. Martin stepped into the doorway, blocking his way.
“We should tell the captain to turn around, go north,” Martin said in German.
“The ship carrying William Percy is going to Caen,” said Valentin. “So we go to Caen.”
Martin cast an unfriendly eye on me. “The Graf will want her more than he wants Percy. She made the Stone once, she could do it again.”
I met Valentin’s eyes as he turned them on me and shook my head.
“I can’t do it again, Valentin. I destroyed the Stone itself, the true Stone, not just its corporeal form. It had a kind of shadow existence apart from its body.” I cast about in my mind, trying to make enough sense of what I had experienced when I was one with the Stone to put it into words. “When it fused with me, it was vulnerable. It was afraid I might drown. I thought … if I died, it would die, truly die, forever. It can’t be made anymore. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
“You did not die,” said Valentin.
“Near enough,” said my father.
“Das ist lächerlich,” Martin told Valentin. “She is a liar. The Graf will want you to take her to him. You know this.”
Valentin’s face did not show the conflict I knew must be in his mind. It would be bad enough to go back to his master without the Stone. But to have let the last alchemist go as well, when she had been within his power?
The last alchemist. A sour laugh curdled in my throat at the thought. I was doubly the last alchemist now. I had been chosen to make the Stone, to be taken by it. That was what the Stone had meant by the name. And then I had destroyed it forever. I had made myself the last alchemist in a different way—by preventing anyone from coming after me.
“We go to Caen,” Valentin repeated.
“I will keep her aboard, then,” said Martin. “You find Percy, and return. Then we all go north.”
Fear tightened my chest. I closed my eyes. This was exactly what Valentin ought to do. It was the only way to fulfill his orders. It was the only
