Give the Dark My Love(45)

I was glad the amputees were all sleeping, and I was glad I’d be gone before they woke. I didn’t want to be here when Dilada opened her eyes. I didn’t want to watch her look at the place where her hand had been.

I stepped outside to catch my breath, to not think about death and blood. Weaving in and out of my thoughts were the events of yesterday morning: the still body of the baby, the way Ronan’s father had blamed me. I slid down the rough brick wall, landing on the bare cobblestones and letting my head rest on my knees. Blackdocks was coming alive, loud and bustling. I wondered if Dilada had ever been able to sell her boat.

The clocks started chiming. The one in the bay, at the top of the quarantine hospital, was a second behind its twin at Yūgen. The day would be starting there soon. Students waking up, eating breakfast, going to lectures.

The thought of it exhausted me.

Master Ostrum appeared at the door. “Nedra,” he said.

I looked up, too tired to stand.

“One of your patients needs you.”

“I’m . . .” I heaved a sigh. “Can’t someone else . . . ?”

But I knew. It was my responsibility.

I pushed against the wall and stood, following him back inside. The black curtains on the windows that marked this place as plague-ridden made the light dim and bleak. The surgical patients were still sleeping from the poppy oil, so at first I didn’t understand why Master Ostrum had led me to Dilada’s bedside. But then I noticed the way her breathing had slowed, faint and stuttering.

I lifted her wrist, feeling for a pulse. It was barely there.

Master Ostrum watched me as I peeled up Dilada’s eyelid and saw the thin film of green covering her rich brown irises.

I cursed.

“We could remove the eyes,” Master Ostrum said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Professor Pushnil has a theory that it would be about as effective as amputating diseased limbs.”

“Professor Pushnil is an idiot,” I snapped. “The green film indicates that the plague is in the brain, not the eyes.”

Master Ostrum nodded once, agreeing with me.

I dropped Dilada’s hand. “Why did you bring me back here?” I asked, not bothering to hide the hurt in my voice. “We could have gone back to the academy without my knowing. You could have spared me.”

“Sometimes, being an alchemist means accepting the limitations of alchemy. It is a hard lesson, but one we must all learn.”

The limitations of alchemy. The book Master Ostrum had given me, the one about necromancy . . . it talked about there being no limitations.

I bit my lip.

“I want to try something,” I said.

“There’s nothing—”

“Please.”

Master Ostrum stepped back as I pulled out my crucible. The Fourth Alchemy spoke of life and death as if they were both temporary, and it offered incantations that touched on the space between the two. Though necromancers used iron crucibles—the metal forged in a series of dark arts—it didn’t mean I couldn’t try to implement those incantations with my golden crucible. It wasn’t quite necromancy, what I planned to try.

But it was close.

Master Ostrum snapped his fingers for someone to bring us a rat, but I shook my head. My crucible was empty, and that was fine. A rat wouldn’t do anything to help Dilada. Alchemy relied on fair trades of equal value. A rat’s life was nothing compared to hers. If I wanted to give Dilada any chance at survival, she required a human life force.

Mine.





TWENTY-SIX


    Nedra



In all the other alchemical trades at Berrywine’s, I was the gate through which pain flowed from the patient into the crucible. But that was reversed now. Now, the crucible was the gate, allowing the plague to flow from Dilada and into me.

I felt the sickness inside her, swirling around the center of the crucible and flowing into me, greedy, wanting to devour her and me both.

Dilada had already slipped into the coma-like sleep of the plague’s final stages, but while she couldn’t feel pain, I was still very much awake and aware of the agony as I attempted to pull the disease from her body into my own. The crucible grounded me, enabling me to tug the strands of the plague into my palm, wrap them around the bones of my fingers, and contain them in one area. Vaguely, I was conscious of the fact that if I let myself go too far, I’d lose my hand or even my whole arm.

But it might save Dilada’s life.

Connecting to her through the crucible felt like trying to force hot black tar into my veins. The disease moved slowly from her to me, boiling my blood and searing my flesh, but when I forced my eyes open, I could see no signs of damage on me, let alone the disease. But I could feel it. I could feel it pooling inside of me. I could feel it clawing under my skin, trying to reach up into my brain, to kill me like it wanted to kill Dilada.

She was just a child, really. She had just been trying to survive. She didn’t deserve this.

“Nedra?” Master Ostrum’s voice was deep, hesitant, unsure of whether he should interrupt me. But he knew better than to pull me away. Interrupting an alchemical transfer could prove disastrous for Dilada, for me, for anyone nearby. This was powerful science, volatile and dangerous.

Why am I doing this? The words flitted through my mind, severing the haze of pain, and I almost pulled away from Dilada at the thought. I liked her well enough, but I barely knew her. I had nothing to prove and everything to lose. But it didn’t take love to sacrifice something of yourself for someone else. It just took desperation.