“Now go,” he told her, putting her into the hands of the guard, who held her with a grip there was no gainsaying. “I will see you again in a few days if I am able. Study patience. For there is nothing worthwhile bought with any other coin.”

“Chay—” she begged, but he turned for the private door, taking his assistant’s arm. “Chay!” she called, but she was being pulled out the other exit, guided down the hall, and there was nothing she could say, nothing she could do, nothing that would change anything.

But when she was deposited inside her own quarters, she turned on Nolan in a frenzy. To his casual query of “How’s Chay?” she responded with a frantic, “He’s dying! You must do something.”

“Dying! But two days ago—”

“He’s so sick—he can’t stop coughing—and he looks so exhausted. Nolan, you have to fix him. You have to come up with some better drugs. Something more concentrated, maybe. You know, Chay is very strong. He can withstand dosages that might kill other men. You can mix up a medicine just for him.”

“Kit, I can’t. I only know one formula, and it—”

“But you have to!” she exclaimed. “There must be something else you could try, something you left out because it was too dangerous. Talk to Chay’s doctors! They’ll tell you what he can endure. They’ll help you come up with a new prescription.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and tried to calm her with the persuasion of his touch. “Kit. I have done what I can. There is no magic in me to fix Chay. I have no other cures.”

She wrenched away from him and began pacing the room. “If it was an indigo lying in there dying, you’d be working at your lab books hard enough, trying to come up with answers … If it was Ariana Bayless, you’d try new formulas.”

“I doubt it,” he said dryly.

“If it was your Leesa—oh, the sun wouldn’t set on any day that you hadn’t come up with at least three new drugs to try and save her—”

“I would do for Leesa what I have done for Chay—try my best.”

“It’s because he’s gulden!” she said furiously. “You won’t help him because of his gold skin—”

He looked thunderstruck. “How can you possibly say that to me?”

“You told me! On the train! You said how you despised the gulden, you thought of them as less than human—”

“It is true that I have had to work to overcome my prejudices,” he said, seeming to fight for calm. “And I consider it a great personal flaw that I have at times looked on gulden as—as not quite equal to me. But that doesn’t mean—”