Madly (8 page)

“You don't have to stop for me. If you're embarrassed, I'll start and you can join in.” He sings another pop song, and not only is he handsome and smart but he has a great voice too. I could really hate this guy.

I've spent so long on the floor; I yearn to stretch my legs. I grab my notebook and head over to the shelves. The ladders are still in place from the last time I'd climbed them—Emilia hadn't bothered with the stock, just the books. I nip up to the spot where I'd found the Merlin's beard and make a start. The song's refrain jumps
into my head. But as I open my mouth to sing, I notice something strange. The remnants of a dust ring on the shelf. Two jars have been hastily pushed together to conceal it, but there's slightly too much space between those jars and their neighbors. I move the jars back to their rightful positions and ponder.

Merlin's beard.

Merrimack plant.

So what would be between them? Then it hits me. Merpearl. Merpearl, that wasn't on our shelves two days ago. Merpearl, that I failed to acquire at the Rising. Merpearl, the ingredient we'd had all along that someone had hidden so we wouldn't succeed in the hunt. And it isn't hard to guess who the culprit is.

I trip down the ladders, mind muddled with absolute fury, and land next to Zain. He's still singing, but he stops when he sees my face. He opens his mouth but I jump in before he can say anything. “Is that offer of a lab tour still on?”

“Sure.”

“Could we do it now?”

“Um, I guess.”

“Then let's go.”

He carefully returns the jar he was holding to its exact position on the shelf. Then he follows me out the shop door. I stop to flip the sign on the front from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
, and slam the door shut behind me.

Chapter Seventeen

Princess Evelyn

SHE FELT HER HEART RACING within her chest, but this time the feeling was pure agony. Why had Lyn not yet responded to her advances? Why did she still remain aloof? Did she not recognize the pain she was causing Eve; was she so cold-hearted and mean-spirited that she couldn't see how every moment they were apart was tearing her to pieces?

Eve had laid out a beautiful dinner for two with her best silverware and gilt-edged china, hand-decorated with the utmost care. She'd issued the invitation herself, written in her finest cursive on thick cream paper embossed with her seal.

Yet the seat opposite remained empty.

A small box sat on Lyn's place setting. Inside was Eve's favorite merpearl ring. But she wouldn't have the chance to propose, if Lyn never came. How could she refuse? This was cruelty, plain and simple.

An intense, real pain suddenly shot through the palms of her hands. She looked down and saw that she had been clenching her fists so hard her fingernails had pierced the skin and left little half-moon frowns, each of them stained red.

It should have been simple to find someone to marry her and to wear the crown. She'd known her whole life that one day the magic would become too much for her, and she needed to find someone to share the burden with. Her parents wouldn't let her forget it. And when she turned sixteen they had started an audition process. Over a thousand young men had signed up to try out for the part of her future husband. The media went into a frenzy over the process. Crown magazine even ran a weekly “Hot or Not” chart, ranking the latest suitors.

She entertained the idea because it felt like a silly game, right up until the magic overwhelmed her for the first time. She had a glimpse of what it would be like to lose control completely. Suddenly, the pressure felt real, intense, like she was trapped in an hourglass and the sand was quickly rising.

That was why it had to be Zain.

He was her best friend. She'd believed, foolishly, that he was her only option. She'd even asked him, once. They'd been seventeen and sitting between the turrets of the Western Tower, a wing her mother hated because no matter how many rugs they hung on the
walls or magical heaters they fired up, draughts seemed to find their way through every crevice and set the china tinkling in their cabinets. Evelyn and Zain loved it, though—the wind seemed to chase them into hidden parts of the castle, blowing open secret doorways behind tapestries and whistling up cobweb-covered stairwells. They'd found a staircase that led up to the very top of the tower, and they could look down on the entire city of Kingstown. It was one of their favorite places in the world.

Sometimes she wished she could join the world below, like Zain could. He would tell her stories of his life at normal school, although she often wished he'd attend the elite academy that she did. She respected his decision not to let his high Talented status offer him too many privileges. She used to tease him for being obsessed with history. Zain had the inside track to synth superstardom, but still he insisted on studying the old alchemical ways—and mostly behind his father's back. That was another reason she and Zain explored the old wing of the castle. Zain wanted to see if there were any old books or grimoires hidden around, something that would give him an advantage that had nothing to do with his father.

She'd indulged him. She supposed that's why she'd thought she'd fallen in love with him—because he was her only friend, and she had been desperate not to lose him. Now that she'd met Lyn, of course, she knew that
had been a false assumption. She hadn't loved Zain; she'd feared that getting married to someone else would mean spending a lifetime with someone she couldn't stand. At least she knew she liked Zain.

Up on those turrets, her head leaning against the stone wall—warm still, from the sun—she'd worked up the courage to ask him. “Would you do it if I asked you?”

“Do what?”

“Marry me.”

He'd laughed, and at the time she'd found it cruel. “Some guy's gonna sweep you off your feet and you're going to forget all about me.”

“What if that doesn't happen?”

He must've sensed something in her tone of voice, because he grabbed her hand. “Hey, chill. I just mean it'll never get to that point. You won't ever ask me because you'll have a million guys who want to say yes . . .” He stared at her, his brow furrowed. “And because you know I don't.”

Her heart had stopped at that moment, even though she'd known the answer all along. He already bore the weight of a hundred obligations to his father; she couldn't force him into a marriage he didn't want on top of that. The whole point was that the suitors had a choice.

She didn't.

Marry or be married off. But this was the twenty-first
century, she'd thought angrily. That's why she created the love potion. She'd wanted to take destiny back into her own hands.

It seemed that destiny had other plans.

She stood up from the table and walked to the window. She could see Lyn just there, on the other side of the glass. She beckoned her over, but she simply beckoned back. Eve stomped her foot. She wished the other girl would stop being so stubborn and join her for dinner.

It was then that Renel entered. He was carrying a blanket, her favorite, made of the softest fleece and piped in silk. “Come, Evelyn. You've been in here for hours. You must be cold,” he said.

She was cold. Her fingernails were tinged with blue, and goosebumps flecked her forearms. Maybe this was why Lyn was not responding to her. Maybe she was repulsed by her? “Yes, quick Renel, please bring the blanket. In fact, why have you let me get so cold, you foolish man? Should you not have seen my discomfort before?”

Renel allowed his normal, restrained pose to slip and replaced it with a relieved smile. For some reason, this made Eve even angrier. “Are you sure you gave the invitation to Lyn? Why is she waiting outside?”

“I . . . I don't know, Your Highness.”

“And bring me a salve, man. Look what I have done
to myself.” She held up her hands, which were now bleeding more freely. “I barely have the strength to heal myself. I feel like I've had no food or water for days. Maybe we can entice Lyn in with delicious food. Bring it out now.”

“At once, my lady,” said Renel, resuming his neutral expression. He clicked his fingers, and immediately a carafe of wine and a vast array of glistening fruit appeared on the table. Then he strode forward and made to place the blanket around her shoulders.

And as he did so, he stepped right in front of the window. Eve screamed and threw the blanket back in Renel's face. “How dare you block my view of Lyn! You rude, disgusting man. Have you learned nothing from your time here, you baseless, classless slave? MOVE, you fool!” Still he blocked her precious view, and so she willed a glass to her hand to prove to him she meant business. She directed the glass at his head with all the force she could muster. He ducked and the glass shattered onto the wall behind him. In that moment she caught a glimpse of Lyn again and saw the distress on her face. She rushed toward her, pushing Renel to the ground in her haste. She clutched the window separating her from her precious love, and was relieved that Lyn had finally decided to join her. Eve reached out to touch her through the glass, and Lyn copied her movements, echoing her.

Eve closed her eyes so as not to show Lyn the extent of her sadness. Still, she couldn't help the tears that welled up despite her efforts. “I am so sorry, Lyn, dear. I would never have expected Renel to do such a thing. I thought I could trust him. I will not be making that mistake again. I could never bear to be separated from you.”

Chapter Eighteen

Samantha

ZAIN COULD HEAD TO ONE of the transport links to get to the ZA headquarters, but he opts to take the tram with me. It galls me that I, the poor ordinary one, have to pay for the rich Talented's tram fare because he hasn't the sense to carry any cash with him and he can't buy a single ticket with his fancy credit card.

We change three times to get across town to the heart of the science district. In contrast to the ancient stone buildings on Kingstown Hill, glass and metal sky­scrapers dominate the landscape here, their sharp, shardlike silhouettes glittering in the sunlight. Most of the major synth companies have their laboratories in this district, each competing for the tallest tower or the most impressive architecture, but none of them manage to compare to ZA. If the other buildings are huge, ZA's head­quarters are immense, dominated by a massive
Z
balanced precariously on the roof by magic. The
Z
is said to house Zol's
office, and I wonder briefly what it must be like to have an office bigger than most ordinary people's houses.

Zantium—to reduce ego, maintain normal worldview, for empathy.

Thinking of the cure makes me giggle—the letter
Z
and lack of ego aren't two things that normally go together—and Zain looks over, one eyebrow raised. I shrug and turn back to the view.

The tram takes us straight into the building, and there are a few people in lab coats milling around, maybe on their lunch break. The workers on the tram must be ordinary, or else why would they be taking public transport? I want to ask Zain how many ordinary folk the company hires, but I also don't want to appear too keen.

We step off the tram and onto a platform that is so squeaky clean I almost have to shield my eyes from the brightness. My eyes dart to a man in a dark green jumpsuit, pushing along a machine that is buffing the surface. So there's one source of employment for an ordinary, then.

Zain uses his wand to open the door to the entrance. I wonder if it bothers him that his object is a wand. Wands are the most common object, and known for being unsubtle. Aggressive. A basic object for someone with such high Talented blood. His father's object is a stone ring. In the casts he's always wearing it around his neck rather than on his finger.

I once read about this experiment ZA had done to swap natural wands for synthetic ones, made of some kind of plastic. It hadn't worked—something about the magic only being conducted through organic substances, like wood. The fact still fills me with glee, and a hint of sadness—if only it was the same for potions, then the Kemi family might be as successful as ZA.

“So, is this, like, the son-of-the-CEO's entrance?”

Zain grimaces at me. “It's, like, the unpaid intern entrance.”

My mouth forms an
O
of surprise, but then the door opens and saves me from having to say anything else.

Even for an intern entrance, it's impressive. The ZA logo shines out everywhere in a mix of glass and polished stainless steel. Zain heads straight toward a lift, so I follow him. In the warped reflection I catch a glimpse of myself, hair still up in a ragged bun, scruffy work clothes covered in a layer of grime. My breath catches as it dawns on me that some people would pay a fortune for the privilege of seeing what I'm about to—and I'm waltzing in with the owner's son like it's no big deal.

The lift travels down, not up, and I sense that the lab is bigger—much bigger—than I'd imagined. It beeps at us, thanking Zain by name for traveling, which weirds me out. “This is the R&D level,” he says. “Thought you'd be most interested in this area.”

I am, but I tell myself that's not that hard to guess. If Kemi's Potion Shop had any new customers, I would spend as much time researching new cures as I do mixing prescriptions for existing customers. My diary is as close as I get—my personal grimoire of formulas and mixes—annotated based on my experience with each ingredient.

I glance back at Zain, and he's typing away on the little tablet I saw him using at the store earlier. That's the rich person's version of my tatty journal. I'm not envious at all.

We're on some kind of walkway above the labs, but with full, almost 360-degree views of the workstations. I'm glad I'm wearing jeans. I think if I were one of the scientists down there I'd be a little unnerved to see a bunch of interns looking down on my work, but then the glass is probably glamoured to hide any spectators.

One of the scientists has a series of glass jars lined up in front of him, each one carefully labeled. He places them one at a time into a machine, which I assume is some kind of centrifuge. I squint through the glass, trying to read the tiny writing on the labels and figure out what he is making . . .

Zain's hand on my back makes my muscles freeze.

“Have you thought about applying?”

I scuttle sideways along the walkway, separating his hand from my back. “Applying for what?”

He frowns at me. “For an internship. Here.”

“No,” I scoff. “As if my parents would allow me . . .”

“Have you asked them?”

“What's the point?”

“But you're the real deal.” He pauses for a second. “In fact, you're the best I've ever known at mixing.”

Now it's my turn to frown. “And how would you know? The only time we've ever really talked was during that potions fair in high school. And I intentionally failed that.”

Zain looks up and down the corridor. “I told you, I came by your classroom before the potions fair and saw your study aid cure. But there's something else. I took some of it. To be honest, I don't think I would've got through finals without it.”

The walkway seems to shift beneath my feet. “You took my cure?”

“Shh—keep your voice down.” He comes closer. “Yes, I did. And I would have kept on taking it if you had continued making it. I need it now more than ever and nothing I try to make for myself works half as well—and I'm the one who's doing my potions degree.” His face goes bright red, but I sense it's not because of me that he's embarrassed. “Come on, Sam, I'm the son of the great Zol! You think he'd expect anything less than perfection? And with that mix I could just about maintain the right levels of focus without looking like I was trying too hard.”

I let out a long breath. “Zain Aster took my cure.”

His forehead wrinkles. “I guess I was desperate. I would have given you the prize, by the way. But you switched your potion.”

“Yeah, because I was worried about people like you.” I want to be disdainful of him—he's basically saying he cheated his way through his exams!—but instead I know exactly how he feels. I've felt that same desperation, that same pressure to perform. Maybe Zain is right. We do have more in common than I think.

“And there I was thinking your life was so easy.”

Zain sighs. “It is easy, compared to most. I just don't want to end up like my dad.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “Forget it.”

We continue walking, and the labs below us start to fill up with more scientists returning to their workstations. We reach the end of the corridor, where a few white coats and goggles are hanging up on the wall.

“Put these on,” he says, handing me a set. I shrug the white coat on over my jumper and put on the goggles.

“Wow, these are attractive,” I say, catching a glimpse of my massive fly-eyes in the reflection of Zain's goggles.

“It's a good look for you.” He smiles, and he doesn't sound as sarcastic as I did. It makes my heart skip a beat. Instead, I pull a face and he laughs.

We head down a spiral staircase, little metal teeth
digging into the soles of my ballet flats. I should probably be wearing boots in a lab like this, in case anyone spills any chemicals. The lab technicians ignore us as we walk through their workstations, one of them holding a vial up to the light and tilting it this way and that.

“Wanna see something cool?” Zain asks.

I nod. He walks over to what looks like a little tube and draws his wand. “Name me an ingredient.”

The first thing that pops into my head is relatively obscure. “Eluvian ivy.”

Eluvian ivy—for truth serums and binding potions.

He stares at me for a moment, his eyes searching my face. He opens his mouth as if he's about to ask a question, then decides against it. He points at the bottom of the tube, says a few words, and a second later is holding a clear glass vial filled with fine green powder. Eluvian ivy is written in neat type on the side. He hands it to me, and I take it.

“Awesome, right?”

Now that's service. But this powder bears no resemblance to the glossy dark green leaf with thin curling tendrils that I know as eluvian ivy. Looking at it makes my throat close up.

“Hey, are you okay?”

I shake my head, backing away from him slowly. “No, this is wrong. I'm a Kemi. I don't belong in a place like this.”

“You're not just a Kemi, you're a great alchemist. You've got a mixer's brain. You could work here, with us, with all these resources at your fingertips. It doesn't have to be one or the other. You could be a mixer and not betray your Kemi heritage.”

“If you think that's true, you know nothing about what it's like to be me.” Heat flares up in my palms, threatening to dance all the way through my body. I need to get out of here.

My eyes dart around the lab until I spot a red sign marked
EXIT
. I make a beeline toward it. I bump into one of the mixers, who yells at me, but I barge past him. My palm slips on the bar of the door, but I push it open and escape into the fresh air.

Alarm bells scream through the building but I ignore them and keep walking, shedding the lab coat and goggles as I go.

“Sam! Wait!” Zain shouts. He runs up behind me and grabs my arm.

I yank my body out of his reach but force myself to turn around; now that I'm out of the coat and out of the lab, my heart rate slows. “I need to go home, I need to . . .” I look down. I hadn't realized I was still holding the vial.

“Hey, it's okay. Don't worry about it. You only set off the emergency alarm . . . and stole one of our ingredients . . . and probably the police are on their
way here now. But it's cool.” He's grinning at me, trying to break the tension.

“I know, I'm sorry . . . I shouldn't have come. Um, thanks for the invite.” Like a reflex I extend my hand, and instantly feel like an idiot. His grin shifts from amused to bemused, but he takes my hand and shakes it. That humiliation over with, I spin on my heels and head toward the tram station. The sooner I can get away from here, the better.

Zain jogs to catch up with me and I almost scream with frustration. “Sam, listen—can we hang out again?”

“Maybe,” I say, but it's a lie. I don't want to see Zain again. I just want to go home, be with my family, and pretend this whole day never happened. He's just a reminder of a life I can never have.

This time when I walk away, he doesn't stop me.