Fragments of Alchemy: The Code Breaker

Chapter Thirteen ~ The Hair of the Dog ~ Part II

In the short minute of walking from the flat to the Great Hall for breakfast, Chadwick noticed that Thea seemed incredibly down in the dumps. She didn't seem to want to eat or talk, and Chadwick realised that Fiona was forcing both of them to put some much-needed nourishment into their bodies, for entirely different reasons.

'Why so glum, Al?' Chadwick asked as they all sat down at a table with their Alchemy Cauldrons brimming with food ready to be cooked.

'Tajana hasn't written me back yet. I miss her so much,' Thea confessed, and Chadwick had to resist the urge to roll his eyes.

'She's my Mentor. What are you all mopey for?'

'She was my very first friend,' Thea said, and then she grew very quiet and stared down at the table with tears welling up in her bright green eyes. 'Well, if you count Todd, then she was my second friend.' Then the tears came, streaming down her face, and Chadwick looked at Fiona. He was completely at a loss.

'Dear heart, you are absolutely right to feel sad,' Fiona said, reaching forward to put her hand on Thea's. 'What happened to Todd is sad, and although Tajana had to leave, it is still sad to see her go.'

Chadwick was glad he hadn't said anything. His first instinct was to point out that it wasn't as if Tajana had died. And his second thought was that what happened to Todd wasn't her fault. But in retrospect, that would have only made things worse, because the second he brought up who was at fault, she would only start to blame herself all the more. Best to just completely avoid that Pandora's Box, and maybe it would stay closed, for the time being anyway.

Thea soaked up the tears with the corner of a napkin and then blew her nose. An odd thought struck him then: that she blew her nose the way he imagined a princess would, all prim and proper. Somehow, she made the act of dislodging snot from her nostrils seem rather adorable.

Chadwick kept his eye on Stella while they ate breakfast. He was worried that he had really done some damage with that alcohol last night. But as he started eating, Stella seemed to recover, slowly but surely, until breakfast was just about over, and she seemed to be back to her old self. Her wings even flattened out nicely, and she started thrumming happily, no longer feeling the effects of his hangover, which he realised was much better now that he'd Extracted all the filth and filled his stomach with real food.

Even still, Chadwick figured it was probably a bad idea to repeat last night ever again. Best to heed his father's orders.

'Do you know what our first class is?' Thea asked suddenly, jarring Chadwick out of his own thoughts.

'Erm, I figured we'd follow my schedule. Why?'

'The Keeper said I'd have a new schedule in the morning, but I don't know where I should get it.' Thea turned to Fiona.

'We'd best go see the Bookkeeper straight away,' Fiona said, and Chadwick groaned. He hated the Bookkeeper with a fiery passion. But he grudgingly agreed to go along with them to the Bookkeeper's desk.

On the way across the grand antechamber toward the Keeper's door, Chadwick nearly got tripped by someone in the crowd. He couldn't be exactly sure who had almost tripped him, so he tried to just shake it off. Maybe it had even been an accident.

'Chadwick, do people do that to you a lot?' Thea asked softly, and he gathered that she had seen the whole thing, and she must have noticed a pattern by now.

Chadwick had always been a social outcast, even back when he was going to school in Prestwick. He thought that he'd make more friends once he started lessons at Blackthorn, but that wasn't the case. When he first started out, he'd been too busy. Then everyone heard about the Trinitas Prophecy, and after that Chadwick hadn't wanted to make any new friends. He just couldn't get past the thought that any of his new friends might be befriending him in the hopes that he would be the next Breaker. He didn't want to get chummy with a crowd of Shadow Chemists, and by then anyone already planning to join the Keeper or Giver had started bullying him.