I stared at him, every muscle locked. I tried to grasp the implications of his words- to find what secret angle he was working, some hidden threat- to see past the absurdity. I found nothing. I shook my head once, slowly, silently refusing the words.

“You’re lying.” It was all I could manage.

“I’m not.” He shrugged, as if he could understand exactly how I felt. He wasn’t smiling any more, no trace of the previous smugness on his face- not even any sense of triumph that he’d rendered me nearly speechless. Ian looked haggard, instead, as if he’d waited for this moment for centuries… and it had turned out worse than he imagined. “Why would I lie about this to you? It’s not as if you could refuse- I could force you in any number of ways. I bought you in chains, Christopher.”

I flinched at the unpleasant reminder, one hand rubbing at the opposite wrist where my skin had been chafed raw by the shackles in the auction house. “Why?” The question eked out of my tight throat. “If you hate him so much, why not kill him yourself?”

His jaw twitched, his lips finally curving upward again- but this smile was bitter and haunted. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he said, his voice flat. “You of all people should know what alchemists are capable of, what kind of nightmares they can bring about. The Hedquists stand at the top of the pile. My grandfather is capable of cruelties even you can not begin to imagine. After surviving this long, I have no desire to throw years of work away on a fool’s attempt at justice.”

I couldn’t say anything, simply letting the silence stretch, daring him to flinch away from the weight of my stare. As we sat in the quiet tension, Ian’s pale gaze never leaving mine, it drained away some of my doubt. My thoughts danced with half-wild hopes and dreads: worries that this was a trick, and the fleeting chance that maybe it was real, and I might finally see the world rid of one of the worst of his kind. My chest burned with the racing of my pulse, a hundred memories of my peoples’ slow imprisonment and erasure by men exactly like Ian’s grandfather.

If I focused, I could almost taste it- the razor edge of possibility, giving me the harsh clarity of a cornered animal finally allowed an opportunity to bite the hand that lashed it.

“Why would you trust me?” I tried to swallow, but the words were too thick. Ian raised an eyebrow, and I clarified, “You’re right- you could force me to do it. I’m chained to you, purchased and bound.” It was bitter, my fingers brushing the links of the chain extending between us; it was less of a physical touch and more the uncanny feeling of unclean magic, sliding over my skin like oil. “So why give me a choice in the matter?”

Some of the hardness melted from Ian’s expression, leaving behind simply a pained weariness. “My grandfather has taken things from me I can never get back. He has kept me alive only because my talent is worth something to him.” He bit off the words, something snapping to life in his eyes: rage. “I know what it’s like to live like a trapped beast, fearing for your life. And I know what it’s like to want to avenge what was stolen. I told you we have more in common than you might like. We desire the same things- freedom, and revenge.”

Every muscle in my body was stiff and still, eyes narrowed as I stared at him. “How much do you know about me?”

He raised his face like he’d been waiting for me to ask that question. “I know you were born in an alchemist’s basement, to loving parents who did their best to protect you- but couldn’t keep you out of the experiments completely. After all, who could quell a scientist’s interest in a spiritseer like you? You’re so rare that we’re lucky to find one a decade.”

A cold chill raked down my spine. It wasn’t something I liked to think about- what the alchemists called me, the kind of power it came with. Power I had been desperately sealing away since I was a child, one that came with such extreme drawbacks that it wasn’t worth trying to train or use. Especially since-”

“I know they tried to run away with you,” Ian continued, his recounting of my past lining up with my own thoughts. “There’s a group that helps arcanists escape their masters. They could get you and your parents out, but they couldn’t keep the alchemists from hunting your family down.” He stood, stepping across the room toward me.

“Shut your mouth.” I flinched back, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to escape as Ian stopped just in front of me.

“And they couldn’t keep the alchemists from injuring you. There was poison on the blade that was meant for your mother, the one that was driven into your shoulder,” he jabbed a finger against my chest, where a nasty scar hid under my borrowed shirt. “It’s designed to stay in your system, to disable you forever; a quaint little mechanism they often use for the breeders.”

“Stop it, now,” I repeated, my voice growing in volume and becoming more frantic.

“It’s a poison that follows you to this day, making your powers difficult to control… among other things,” he smirked at me, a whole other, dirtier truth under his words. “But that’s not the worst part, is it? It’s not the only ghost chasing you from your past. The thing that haunts you the most is the sight of your parents, dragged out into the street- forced down on their knees. The looks on their faces as they begged for mercy for their precious little boy-”

“I said stop it!” I screamed the words at him, my hands smacking into his chest. The leash returned the slight impact a thousandfold, an electric arc of agony sparking from my neck through the rest of my body.

A choked sound left me as my knees finally buckled. Tears sprang into my eyes, a mixture of pain and fury as Ian’s arms caught me; unnervingly strong for an alchemist, and his hold was gentler than I expected. He went down with me, kneeling on the floor as I shuddered and tried to find my composure. It was impossible, my teeth bared in righteous anger as I glared up at him.

There was something close to regret in his eyes as he met my burning gaze. His voice was quieter, less brutal- but he didn’t stop. “I know you barely remember your parents’ faces, much less the faces of the people that killed them. That’s why you’ve been hunting alchemists- one of them, eventually, will be the one who was responsible for your parents’ death. And I know that you’re more likely to end up dead before you find who you’re looking for.”

My hands curled into fists, and every cell in my body burned to slam them into his face- but I’d already been shown the hard way what would happen if I attacked my new master. “Why are you saying all this?” I spat between my clenched teeth, ashamed of how weak and shaky the words were despite the venom.

He gave a long, low sigh, his expression almost exasperated. “I told you our goals are similar,” he reminded me, his long fingers gentle where they still held my arms. “You might not know who killed your parents, or how to stop the poison that’s been eating away at you since you were a child, limiting your magic… but I do.”

Even my breath stilled, my very thoughts frozen. He had laid out my entire history in that cold voice, only to lay the very thing I wanted at my feet. It seemed impossible, but… everything snapped together with a startling, painful clarity.

My heart began to beat again, understanding dawning as I looked up at Ian’s frosty gaze. And in those periwinkle eyes, I saw the same deep hatred and rage that had followed me for years- the first time I had shared something in common with an alchemist in my entire life. I knew now why he had chased me down, why he had been so convinced that I would help him.

And he didn’t have to finish, because I already knew we had a common enemy. If he was right, if he knew who was responsible for my parents’ death and the hell I had experienced since then… then he was also right in thinking that I’d do anything to see his grandfather dead.