The Red Lily Crown Read Online Free Page B

alchemist.”
    â€œSurely you have heard of Magister Nicolas Flamel of Paris.” Magister Ruanno picked up a flask of wine and refilled her cup for her. His hands were long-fingered and finely shaped, but the palms were badly scarred, as if by hard labor. “You, an alchemist’s daughter.”
    Chiara drank more of the wine. It made her feel as if she was alone inside her head for the first time since the horse had kicked her and cracked her skull. She hadn’t heard of Magister Nicolas whoever-he-was but she’d die before she’d admit it.
    â€œMagister Nicolas Flamel,” she repeated, parrotlike. “What about him?”
    â€œHe is said to have achieved the
Lapis Philosophorum
, and with it the elixir of life, almost two hundred years ago. He and his wife Perenelle.”
    â€œHis wife assisted him?”
    â€œShe did.” The prince rose to his feet, assuming command of the little room. “The female principle is necessary to create the
Lapis Philosophorum
, just as it is necessary to create life in the flesh. The woman who supplies that principle is called the alchemist’s
soror mystica
.”
    â€œAnd you want me to be that—that woman,” Chiara said. Babbo had never told her that a woman could be an alchemist in her own right. “You don’t want to buy my father’s equipment, you want to buy me.”
    â€œOh, I do want to buy your father’s equipment.” The prince reached out and pulled on the frame of one of the paintings. She thought he was going to pull it off the wall entirely, but to her surprise it swung open and revealed a secret niche. Something glinted inside, but she couldn’t see what it was. “I will pay you generously for it, and put it here—I keep my particular curiosities hidden from any eyes but my own.”
    â€œYou can’t hide me away in a niche behind a painting.”
    He looked at her rather as if he wished he could. “No,” he said in his cold voice. “I cannot. As for you becoming my
soror
, it is not quite as simple as buying you.”
    â€œSo what is it?”
    â€œFirst it must be proven that you are a virgin.”
    â€œThat I’m a
what
?”
    The prince laughed. It always seemed wrong when he smiled or laughed—unnatural. It didn’t fit his face. He spoke over her shoulder, as if she wasn’t even in the room. “There, Magister Ruanno, see? I told you a street girl would not be pure.”
    â€œI’m as pure as any lady of the court,” Chiara said. “Purer, probably.”
    â€œWell said, Monella Chiara.” The foreigner smiled at her. “And probably true. Nevertheless, to be the prince’s
soror mystica
, you must prove your virginity.”
    Whatever pit he had originally climbed out of, his Italian was good enough to play with words—
mona
was a perfectly polite form of address for a guildswoman of Florence, but
monella
, however much it might sound like a diminutive for a young woman, actually just meant a street urchin.
    She’d show him street urchin. She thrust out her chin at him. “Prove it how?”
    â€œThere is an initiation,” the prince said. Magister Ruanno frowned and seemed about to speak but the prince silenced him with a single sharp gesture. “Incorporated within the ritual there are four tests of virginity—the black water, the blood-red ribbon, the silver sieve and the golden fire. If you complete the ritual and pass through the tests successfully, you will be initiated as my
soror
and allowed to vow yourself to my service.”
    Black water? Blood? Fire?
    â€œThat sounds like something out of a dream or an old story, not something real.”
    Magister Ruanno said, “It is—”
    â€œOh, it is real.” The prince overrode him. “It is a ritual I myself have created, unique in the history of the world. If you pass through it successfully, you will gain more