Page 85 of Adam, Mine

Perhaps instead . . . if he survived this and went back to normal, he could go to Alain. Stay with him and learn the mysteries of blood. Clean that horrible room and tend the garden to pay for his upkeep. Get buried under the peach tree in a few years.

Unless Victor’s request required him to live in Germany . . .

He did have plans to return to Jaan and that one student—if he hadn’t already fled Ingelstad. Jaan and Reiner did seem pretty happy with their current arrangement. But perhaps Jaan, who started weeping at the idea that Elias didn’t know how to read, would take to the challenge long enough for Elias to find placement elsewhere.

Elias wasn’t exactly enjoying Brogan’s implications regarding him, but they did bring forth a question he hadn’t had before meeting her.

An alchemist, from his previous understanding, was someone who went to school, got a degree, was placed with an apprenticeship, chose what element to craft in, then embedded themselves in a community and built out the ability to make dynamic impact on people. There appeared to be some kind of magic involved, but it wasn’t a lot, and it seemed to be immaterial or literally just very advanced science.

Brogan, with her suspicions about Victor, had implied that Elias had something that Victor didn’t.

But where did that leave him? The illiterate son of a tavern keeper, yes. But Elias had never needed anything but the force of his will to be strong. Victor had money and status, but he was a coward and an opportunist. Elias himself might be able to do more with less, as sad as that was to imagine.

Elias brushed his fingertips across the new thick cable between them and felt more echoes of despair. He strained his heart toward mercy for a minute, then passed the softest vibration of patience Victor’s way.

Confusion and greater despair came back to him.

Elias sighed and released it. Tried to get some sleep.

Sort

If he had not been sailing for four days, Elias would have thought the boat had come to rest on the same shore. This place was green and foggy, cold as Scotland but wet like Ireland.

There was something in the ground, though, something in the silt of the dirt that made Elias know he was closer to home.

Willem lived far from the coast like Brogan did, and he wondered how else they may be similar.

Elias’s pony was shaggy haired and dark, snorting impatiently to be released from the stables. Elias looked at the sky and knew how wetness in the air turned to droplets on the skin. He purchased a brand-new waxed cloak for the long ride.

Willem was the alchemist of currents, Brogan had told him. Waves. Wind streams, electricity, motion. Flexibility given flesh; no storm could uproot him so far could he bend.

And she’d sounded so wistful.

Elias liked how the alchemists were like a scattered family. They didn’t all like each other, but there were respect and recognition. Even far from each other, they managed to keep in touch with the generalities.

He rode and stopped and rode again, giving his borrowed horse time to catch his breath, so thick was the air.

The sky was so gray he could not tell the time of day; suffice as to say, it was not night.

He could see Willem’s house from a distance and, to his surprise, Willem outside it. He was a brushstroke of darkness against endless green, halfway up a hill. When Elias was meters away, he stopped walking and waited for him.

Elias tied his horse to Willem’s fence and went up to meet him.

Willem lived in a round house with dark wood outside, several pens, and a garden. The geese gathered to greet Elias, honking loudly.

Willem stayed halfway up the hill as Elias climbed looking down at him. Elias was surprised to see that Willem was young, maybe only two or three years older than himself, not yet twenty-five. He was very tall and not beautiful, but he had long, dark hair that the wind was blowing around his face, and that . . . that was beautiful enough.

Willem smiled when Elias got close enough to speak.

“Brogan sent me,” Elias said in German.

“You are different than Victor described,” Willem replied, also in German. His accent was closer than Brogan’s, and it made something stir in Elias’s chest.

Willem blinked at him, owlishly. “My sheep have run. They need to be brought back.”

“How many?” Elias asked, rolling up his sleeves.

Willem began climbing the hill again. “Just the four. But it is in their nature.”