Page 17 of Alchemy of Souls

“I’m not trying to be pessimistic,” she says in a quiet tone, her hands folded in her lap like she left her wild energy out in the wind. “But I’ve done some reading about the Archive Key. I used to fantasize about calling it when I was little. People have spent lifetimes trying to summon it. We have two weeks.”

I don’t know what to say. Because she’s not wrong.

“That’s why I said thanks. For stopping, I mean. For letting me see something beautiful before it all turns ugly,” she continues in that quiet tone that nips at my defenses. It’s much easier to hate her when she’s calling me an asshole.

“You could tell me what you did to the spell,” I say, only this timeI leave out the accusatory tone. “And how you think you called the Key?”

She nods without looking at me, lifting her chin ever so slightly, and the scent of her embarrassment billows between us—floral and vulnerable like a petal that’s easily crushed.

“Here’s the absolute truth,” she says. “I told the discernment spell I was good enough.” She cringes, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I demanded it admit me and I promised to be worthy of the chance. But no one was more shocked than I was when it paused. I didn’t cast. I swear. I just… talked to it.”

“You talked to it,” I repeat like I must have heard her wrong.

She nods.

I groan, rubbing my hand down my face. Her big omission—the guilt my uncle and I both read as a lie—turns out to be nothing more than politely bargaining with the discernment spell? You’ve got to be kidding me. Ninety percent of our class definitely did the same.

She looks out the window. “The second time I cast, I lost control and the Key suddenly appeared. I didn’t ask it to come; I wasn’t even thinking about it.” She sighs. “I’d tell you more if there was more. Your life is on the line here, too.”

I stare at her for a long moment before returning my gaze to the road. I can scent that she’s not lying. And that’s a problem. Because if she knew how she summoned the Key, we might be able to find our way out of this mess.

CHAPTER 12Eloise

Grayson’s driving matches his personality. He whips around tight curves and glides through impossible spaces without flinching, all the while giving other drivers a disarming smile.

I try to ignore it, but when the Guardians’ SUV slows and turns directly into what looks like a giant rock, I gasp.

Which apparently, Grayson finds amusing, because he smirks. He flicks his wrist, muttering a spell under his breath, and the large rock flickers like an illusion.

I wince and close my eyes, and when I open them again we’re in a lush valley, where moss tumbles over everything and wildflowers cover the grass. Grayson drives down the curvy mountain road and both cars stop.

My eyebrows push together. “Are we making a pit stop?”

“More like a final one,” Grayson says, as a high, arching wooden gate suddenly appears in the road.

“What would have happened if we didn’t know to stop right here?” I ask, since the gate is obviously illusioned to blend into the landscape.

Grayson only shrugs. “We’d have crashed into the wards.”

I frown at the massive gate, considering the rock where weturned off the road—two barriers to entry that my family would never get through, wouldn’t even know how. Not that we could afford the flight here in the first place.

As Grayson drives us across the threshold, a bustling town appears in the gloom, one that’s fashioned entirely from trees. Wood grain walls and tree bark shingles. The ground floors of the cottages are carved out of enormous trunks, whose branches hold round rooms decorated with twinkling lights.

I immediately put my window down despite the drizzle.

Grayson’s lips quirk up and I have no idea why.

We drive on the wooden road past fanciful bark porches and window boxes made of handwoven vines. Some of the shop owners wave at Grayson as we pass.

By the fourth one I ask, “Doeseveryoneknow you?”

“I didn’t spend much time at home when I was a kid,” is all he says.

Before I can think how to respond, we clear the town buildings and the University becomes visible. I swallow.

Its walls are an entire forest of trees grown together five stories high. Branches the size of sycamore trunks hold gorgeously curved balconies all uniquely shaped, like the trees themselves decided their flow—an incredible feat of Botany and Alchemy.

Grayson stops his Porsche by the entrance and two Laborers open our car doors.