The Rebels of Gold (Loom Saga #3)(29)

These were the eyes of a man who knew what she was.

“And the best thanks you could give me is what Florence has already promised,” he continued. “The Philosopher’s Box.”

Arianna nodded. She didn’t have any other words. After all, she had spent most of her life pursuing the box in secret, then fighting to keep its existence carefully guarded. Now that people knew, she had to develop a new toolkit, and fast, for managing the topic.

“Vicars sit on the lowest tier.” Florence had the insight to save Arianna from herself. “Then elder masters behind them, younger masters behind that, and every guild is allowed a handful of journeymen to sit along the back.”

“I’ll take my seat, then.” Arianna started for the Rivet’s section.

Florence grabbed her arm and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Sit on the edge? I may need you to speak . . .” She glanced around the filling room. “After all, I got them all to agree to come because of you.”

“I understand, Flor.” The last thing Arianna wanted was to cause Florence to lose esteem with those gathered.

She heeded the girl’s advice. She sat four rows back from the floor, at the very end. She didn’t want to be in the foreground. She was the White Wraith, a member of the last rebellion. Her whole life had been lived in secret—a quality she realized she no longer shared with Florence.

The room continued to fill and Arianna watched nonchalantly as various masters took their seats.

“You always preferred the back.”

Arianna’s eyes swung to an elderly man, smartly dressed in all black that blended with his coal-colored skin and accented his steely eyes and closely-cropped silver hair. A thin line of stubble covered his sagging cheeks.

“You always preferred being clean-shaven,” Arianna pointed out.

“Well, the end of the world can do a number on one’s hygiene.” Willard chuckled and held out a hand. “Let me see you, Arianna.”

She suddenly felt nine years old again. But this time there was no Master Oliver to stand by her side and do the talking for her. Arianna stood on command, walking down to the man whose filled and circled Rivet tattoo was nearly invisible.

“You have hands, now.” He inspected the thin line around her wrists where her ashen Fenthri skin stopped and the steely blue of Finnyr’s Dragon flesh began.

“A recent acquisition.”

“How many organs are you missing?”

Arianna thought about lying. She didn’t want to bare herself to the world. But Florence’s attention was on her. Even while keeping up a conversation with Powell, she observed their exchange periodically; Arianna could feel her eyes on her face like a warm breeze.

“Now . . . only lungs.”

Willard whistled low. “Only lungs . . .” He eyed her up and down, finally letting go of her hands. “It appears the Alchemists were right, too, about their postulations on Dragon magic affecting a Fenthri’s growth. When did you get the blood? Seven?”

“Yes, seven.” The memory was seared into her recollection with the fire of magic hitting her veins for the first time. Killing her. Resurrecting her. Time and time again until her blood ran black.

“And when did you become a Perfect Chimera?”

“Eighteen.”

“Was it Oliver’s work?”

Arianna couldn’t stop a small grin. Willard and Oliver had always been friendly rivals of a sort, two who enjoyed mentally sparring with each other almost a little too much. They had needed each other to thrive, but couldn’t stand the other’s existence in equal measure. A perfect set of counterweights.

“No, no, the final box was not his work.”

“Your own.” Willard reached out a hand, resting it on the pin Arianna had affixed to the edge of her white coat by her collarbone. “And he gave you the circle for it.”

“Just before he died.”

For all the rivalry and competition, there was genuine sorrow to Willard’s eyes at the memory of his deceased friend. “How did he die?”

“I killed him.”

Arianna expected the reaction. She expected the look of shock, the probing stare for a lie where he would find none. Willard said nothing, no doubt expecting her to fill in the blank of the circumstances that led her to such an extreme action. But that was one line of history she wouldn’t fill in, one unbroken stretch for the unrelenting passage of sands in the great hourglass of time to wear away.

They would have her knowledge, her schematics, perhaps even her body for their studies. But she would never give them that memory. She would never share the final moments she had with those she had truly loved. Other than her pin, and the box that pumped away within her, it was all she really had left.

“Well.” Willard dropped his hand from the pin. “If what you say is true, then I expect you had a very good reason.”

Arianna’s mind was blank. She wanted him to rally against her. She wanted to see Willard rage for the death of one of the greatest minds of the last generation.

“Knowing Oliver, he likely commanded it.” Willard shook his head with an ironic chuckle, heavy with sorrow. “There would be no way you could’ve done it otherwise.”

She wanted to refute him. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. But it was the most truthful thing anyone had said in a long time, and betrayed the depth of the man’s familiarity with her. Before Arianna could find any words, he dismissed himself, taking the seat on the lowest tier—the space reserved for the vicar.