A Forbidden Alchemy (The Artisan Trilogy)

by Stacey McEwan

Ma used to say it was one thing to be down, and quite another to dig yourself a grave.

“There’s meanin’ in everythin’ if you look hard enough. There’s joy in it, too.

His voice lowered to a whisper. The candle on the desk finally sputtered out. “Were they kind to you?” he asked tentatively, and the tenderness with which he said it did not make it feel like so big an invasion. “Sometimes,” I murmured. “Sometimes they were too wrapped up in their troubles to remember me at all.”

Everyone was harder now. War, I’d learned, sapped gentleness from the core.