Alia sits up, clutching her knees to her chest.
“One day, the Alchemist declared that he’d done the impossible: he’d transformed a solid lump of lead into pure time, he said. All the lord had to do was eat it.”
“But the Alchemist was clever,” I hear Alia whisper.
“Correct,” the seamstress replies, sounding pleased. “The cruel lord was poisoned and died, allowing the Alchemist and the Sorceress to escape. They parted ways, and soon discovered that their magic was so powerful, it seeped into the blood of all the people in Sempera.”
“But why did they part ways?” Alia asks.
“The Alchemist hadn’t told the Sorceress that the magic they performed to create blood-iron came at a great cost—the Sorceress’s immortality. She was furious at his betrayal.” The seamstress’s voice takes on a ringing, tragic quality.
“Though it took generations for a single dark hair of her head to turn gray, she aged. Unlike the Alchemist, she loved this life and this world, and didn’t want to leave it. But eventually, she tamped down her anger and returned to her old friend, seeking her immortality back.”
Across the dormitory, another woman with a frail, papery voice begins to speak. “The Alchemist told her: ‘In order to make you immortal, I must have your heart for safekeeping.’ So she transformed her whole heart into a word she whispered in his ear. His throat moved like he was swallowing it down. Then, he passed her a handful of pebbles and told her to eat them, and she would live forever.”
Other girls chime in now with whispered shouts of liar! And thief! My eyes flutter closed, imagining what a stone would taste like.
“Girls, hush and let me finish,” the old seamstress says. “But the Sorceress remembered how the Alchemist had fooled the wealthy lord. Suspecting another betrayal, she decided instead that the Alchemist should be force-fed the little rocks—twelve of them, in all—and then drowned. She did this herself.”
Alia gasps.
“But something curious happened,” the seamstress says in a theatrical whisper. “The Sorceress saw a silvery shadow rise from the Alchemist’s broken body, and dart away across the earth, too fast to chase after. Within the silver, something glowed dark red and pulsing. Too late, the Sorceress realized that the Alchemist had indeed tricked her—he had stolen her heart.”
“Could she get it back? Her heart?” Alia asks. But I don’t hear the seamstress answer. I’m already falling into a fitful sleep, shadowed by nightmares I can’t remember in the morning.
The next day, Lora informs me that I’ll be working at a small party of nobles in one of Everless’s prettiest follies: an enclosed garden courtyard heated year-round by a fire pit fed by melted blood-iron. Time makes the flame burn bright and long. I try not to retch at the thought.
All day, she’s been teaching me and a few other kitchen servants the art of self-effacement: our role, she says, is to make the Gerlings think their meal has simply materialized. My task is to keep their wineglasses full.
From the cellar that feeds up into the walled gardens, I can hear the Gerlings’ aristocratic, musical laughter, the chime of tinkling glasses. Friends, relatives, and other noble families linked by time, have flocked to Everless in the weeks before the wedding. Likely they all want to boast they are among the first to mingle with the Queen and her heir. The aristocrats have swollen from their usual thirty—the four Gerlings and their grandparents, great-grandparents, and most favored relatives—to almost two hundred. They fill the dining hall to the brim every evening, dazzling in silk and feathers and jewels. My nerves flutter as I think of walking among them knowing that Papa meant never to set foot on the estate again.
What if I see Roan? Does he remember the accident—does he blame Papa, or his brother, or me?
Does he remember me at all?
“Now, now, enough with the faces.” Lora gives me a nudge as she sails past me holding a massive cake, decorated with spun sugar. “Tonight they’ll be too far into their wine to notice if you make a mistake.”
“Or they’ll just be quicker to anger,” I point out. But Lora is already gone, replaced by a butler who orders the servants into the gardens.
I swallow, clutching the carafe of wine in my hands so hard I fear it’ll break. I’ve swept my hair forward to conceal my face—and though I am no longer the skinny, knobby-kneed girl of my youth—I’m terrified that Liam will remember me.
And I’m terrified that Roan will not.
The walled garden, small compared to Everless’s grand staterooms, flickers with light from torches held aloft in wrought-iron sconces. Smoke drifts toward the stars overhead. Willow trees sway gently in the breeze, and the heady scents of flowers and wine float along with it. It’s like I’ve stepped into spring, though the stars overhead still have a wintry coldness to them. Beyond the wall, I can see Everless flags shuddering in the icy wind—but it’s transformed here into a gentle, cool breeze, tamed by the time fire.
In the middle of the garden, the fire—white-hot and as tall as me—snaps within a bronze enclosure, sending waves of warmth through the garden. It’s beautiful, but thinking of the wasted time to feed it makes my insides burn with rage. I look quickly away.
Nobles drift through the garden, the women glittering in gowns of velvet and silk, the men tall and imposing and dark-or silver-haired. Rings of gold gleam on dozens of fingers. A trio of musicians fills the garden with treacle-sweet chords.
Instinctively, I look around for Roan. To my dismay, the first Gerling I see is Liam. He’s leaning against a vine-covered wall at the opposite end of the garden, talking to his mother, Lady Verissa.
For an instant, I feel as if I’ve been shrunk down, turned into a child again. Liam was always on the fringes of our little band of friends, a silent and watchful contrast to outgoing Roan. He’d sometimes show up in the doorway, quiet as a shadow, and watch us play. I was wary of him even then, of his stillness and his eyes so dark they seemed to swallow light, but Roan idolized him.
It makes my teeth grind, now, to think of the kindness Roan showed him—the kindness that Liam betrayed. But to betray someone, you must first care for them. I doubt Liam Gerling knows that feeling at all.
Certainly not from his cold mother, Lady Verissa. She must be in her fifties or sixties, though she looks thirty, radiant in an emerald satin gown that leaves her arms bare. She’s beautiful in an unnerving way, with glass-sharp cheekbones and deep blue-violet eyes.
I give them a wide berth as I begin to make my rounds.
The level of wine in my carafe quickly falls—another fine way to spend so many centuries, by drinking it away, though I suppose with so much time to waste, what’s the difference?—and I’m about to return to the kitchen when a woman snaps her fingers at me.