A Forbidden Alchemy

Patrick marvels at Nina’s power. Having seen what she can do, he tells Briggs to fetch more men and tell Tess that the timeline will be accelerated: In four weeks, they’ll make it to the capitol. He notices that Theo tries to keep Nina close to him, comforting her at difficult times and praising her when she succeeds.

Buzzing after a day of Charming while everyone else stumbles home exhausted, Nina wants to go for a walk. Theo offers to join her, and she rejects his offer but agrees to attend the rally with him later. Patrick appears and walks with her arm in arm. Because he knows how she got her powers, she does not feel ashamed about her Charming abilities with him. She feels the heat between them as he lets his hands linger on hers and drops her at the door to the inn.

Nina attends the Artisan Fellowship Ball, where soon-to-be graduates dine and dance. While Theo dances with other girls, she stands on the side with her friend Polly, who openly talks about the war brewing despite the House of Lords denying its existence. Polly believes that the House of Lords is lying to them.

When Theo retrieves her, she brings up the rising tensions with him. She begs him to leave with her and refuses to become their weapon. He denies her offer, tells her about his faraway post in Thornton for two years after graduation, and breaks up with her.

Theo escorts Nina to the rally and apologizes for leaving her to dance with other girls at the ball. Patrick announces to the town that they’ve intercepted another supply of weapons from the House of Lords. Theo asks Nina to dance and afterward, as Theo leans in to kiss her, Patrick asks Nina for a dance. They dance together for several songs, Patrick proving himself skilled in all dances. They flirt, he tells her she’s beautiful, and they kiss. She agrees to leave with him, ignoring all the stares. She notices Tess looking on pleasantly despite her earlier warnings.

Patrick and Nina walk home and pass children playing. They both comment that they were never as free as those children are now. Nina asks how the union began, and Patrick explains that 13 years ago, the police beat a miner to death for spitting on a policeman’s shoe. After that, it wasn’t difficult to get a group of miners to burn down the jailhouse. When Patrick came home with news of the fake idium, it was the perfect catalyst. When Nina asks why his father blew up the Artisan School, Patrick admits he was the one who did it. He thought they had headed the warnings to evacuate, and the school was the center of the power they were trying to destroy. They both cry, and Patrick holds Nina through her flashbacks to the explosion. When he drops her off at her door, Nina asks him for one more kiss.

When she enters Room 15, she finds a drunk Theo waiting for her. He slurs that he watched them all night and asks her what will happen when he finds out that Nina’s really there to kill Patrick.

After seven years on the run, Nina wakes up, after being knocked out, on a hospital bed in the National Artisan House. Lord Tanner immediately enters the room. She refuses to help him win the war, and he threatens to kill her so that the other side cannot use her either. After she agrees to help him, he brings out her mother, whose dull eyes will not look directly at Nina. He explains that her mother had been working as a server in the House of Lords for years in hopes that one day they would allow her daughter to become an Artisan. When Nina ended up in the school for other reasons, Tanner forced her mother to leave to a brink town called Trent. He found her there seven years later. Tanner explains that Nina needs to make the union trust her because they have something that Tanner wants returned.

Patrick fights the urge to go back upstairs to Nina as he walks into the kitchen, where his brothers and mother. His brothers remind him of their rule against sleeping with the Artisans, and Patrick sends Gunner home after noticing the bluff on his lips. Patrick admits to Tess that they didn’t intercept the weapons; they placed a decoy instead. Tess warns Patrick that the Artisans cannot be trusted. She tells him not to waste time trying to change people like she tried with his father. Patrick still believes his father is alive, but Tess believes his father is dead. She urges him to give up his delusion of winning this war: They have all they could ask for already.

Drunk on whiskey, Theo confronts Nina about her allegiance to Tanner. He explains that his act of treason was a ploy to get the Colsons to accept him. In exchange, Tanner promised he would find Nina and keep her safe. Nina is terrified as he talks and touches her that he will become angry. She tells him she is seducing Patrick to get him to tell her where the Alchemist is. Theo says he will write to Tanner, revealing that Tanner also placed Polly, the scribbler, in Kenton Hill. When Theo leaves, Nina resolves to take action.

Under Margarite’s, they find water pooling in the trench they dug the previous day. Theo tells Patrick he’ll need two days to fix it, and the rest of the men head back up the shaft. Patrick takes Nina to a shack on a hill where his brothers used to play. She asks him to take her with him to visit his friend. At first, he refuses, but after losing a bet, he agrees. They set off with Polly, Otto, and Donny.

In the tunnel, Nina finds herself at the back of the group with Polly. Polly confirms that she was sent by the same person as Nina. She says she’s here because of a threat, not because of honor. She tells Nina to meet her at the pub to talk about it later.

Once they arrive at the beachside town of Dorser, three men approach and drop a package of weapons in front of Patrick. Patrick interrogates the one in front, Lionel, about why there are so few weapons even after his payment of bluff. After Patrick threatens him, he admits he took some for himself. After admonishing him, Patrick turns to leave, but Lionel asks for what he was owed: a vial of idium. He then tells Patrick he’ll call it even if they leave one of the women with them. After Lionel’s men shoot at him, Patrick shoots Lionel in the head. They leave, and Nina shakes as Patrick comforts her.

After confirming that the Colsons have bluff, Nina is certain that they have the Alchemist. That night, she goes downstairs to the pub to meet Polly, who tearfully explains how she got there.

Polly received her assignment to a brink town, one of the worst, before graduation. Tanner promised the graduates they would be rewarded with better placements if they provided information. Polly almost died of the flu, and when bluff was stolen to save them, she told Tanner where it came from. She was transferred to a new town within a week. She kept gathering information and getting transferred and eventually ended up in Kenton Hill; Patrick had saved her from two men ripping her clothes off at the dock. She’s been there three years now.

She tells Nina that she’s found a community here, as she stares at Otto from across the room. She warns Nina that the men will do anything to keep Kenton Hill hidden, including kill them. She asks Nina to tell her before she buries the town so that she can either look away or be buried with them. Nina asks if she could do it, and she asks the same question in return. Polly gets up and moves toward Otto.

Patrick enters and buys Nina a drink. They sit around a table with Otto, Donny, Gunner, and Polly. Gunner teases Nina, and she recites a poem making fun of him. They laugh until Theo enters, caked in mud from his day underground. He corners Nina at the bar, saying he can’t keep creating fake delays for her. Patrick intervenes, stopping the conversation short. Nina drinks several drinks, and she and Patrick spend the rest of the night talking and dancing. She revels in the feeling of being drunk.

Nina has dreams about guns, smoke, and a train barreling forward as she struggles to decide when to get off. Awaking hungover in her room, Nina quickly realizes that Isaiah is there, Patrick is asleep in the armchair across from her, and she has slept until noon. Patrick explains that she asked him to stay last night. Nina reveals that she knows he took the idium when they were 12—she noticed him rig coin tosses and control bullets. She asks him if the Alchemist is alive. Before answering, he asks her if she’d consider staying in Kenton Hill after her work is done instead of leaving the trench.

Patrick waits desperately for her answer, thinking about the hope that he feels. Nina anxiously tells him that Tanner is keeping her mother hostage. She asks him to trade the Alchemist in exchange for the hostages, for both of their parents. He says that he can’t and that the war will only be won through idium. He swears he will rescue their parents, and she promises that she will stay in Kenton Hill with him. He kisses her deeply and wonders what he would do if she left.

Patrick leaves her room to let her bathe and change, and Nina tries to make a plan. She has chosen Patrick’s side. She will retrieve the hostages, remove Tanner’s leverage, and live her life in Kenton Hill in peace. She decides that she can tell Polly the truth, but Theo must not know. She hopes that Theo will leave safely when the time comes without ruining the plan.

She speaks to Sam, who is still guarding her door. She feels happy, but when she finally makes it downstairs, she hears an alarm and the word “collapse!” before Patrick sprints out the door.