A Forbidden Alchemy (The Artisan Trilogy)

by Stacey McEwan

I took the name of a dead canary.

The solemnness would turn to anger. Anger meant whiskey.

The high-society swanks with their magic.

Tell your ma to heat some supper. I won’t be far behind.” Ma wouldn’t be at home. Hadn’t been home in several years now. But whiskey was a magic all its own. Nothing to do but nod.

In late September, I boarded a train. The smokestack left plumes in our wake, dirtying the carriage windows, and I wondered if the smoke hadn’t followed us from home.

then saluted the town with my middle finger and turned away from it forever.

There were only dreams of brilliant crimson blood that turned inky blue.

He needed to be there if (God have mercy) none came back up at all.

“Girls like us,” she’d say. “We’re made for bigger places, you hear me?”

He read from it in a voice adults use when they believe what they’re saying is gravely important.

Too evangelized to chat.

but the pig ploughed on.

I could only assert that his face was hugely annoying, that his tone was superior, and that I very much wanted to prove him wrong.

He shook himself from his reverie. “Well,” he said. “That fuckin’ showed me, didn’t it?”

Alchemy was most important, of course. Only an Alchemist could crack open a lump of terranium. Without them, there was no idium. No siphoning ceremonies. No Artisans. There was only one other order that might match the class of an Alchemist.

She had blond curls spiraling in every direction, flushed skin, a thousand freckles, and widely spaced teeth.

Her hazel eyes seemed to see everything.

“Then get your wits about you, Scurry girl. On the count of three. One—”

Boys were truly idiots.

Earth Charmer.

I felt as though his eyes were peeling back my skin.

“To sharpen the knives, Miss Clarke.”

The sun broke through and kissed his tanned skin, the two of them old friends.

He clicked his tongue, then said, “Well, shall I throw you over my shoulder and drag you back? I’ll confess, it’s what I fantasized doing on the way over here.”

“And did you ever think of me?”

All of it reminded Patrick of that courtyard girl—the one whose hand he’d held in Belavere City. The one whose cheek he’d kissed. The one he’d thought of every day since.

I wanted my wits about me, and they were quick to scramble in his presence.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

What else to say to the man you once loved?

“You might just be the most infuriating man I’ve ever met.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” he said, low and exact, “I’m inclined to make it my business.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re a paranoid man, Patrick. I don’t intend to run away.”

“Will you be offended if I smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Godd...

“You might be the dea...

I stared at the earth beneath his feet as he spoke and wondered why I could so easily move it, but I couldn’t move him.

“You left me behind well before,”

I couldn’t tell if his pulse sprinted as violently as mine. Was he a drug for all the women he touched?

“You’re jealous,”

“Why should you be jealous?”

“I can’t say, Nina. But th...

“You can’...

Can you say why your heart’s beating out ...

“I intend to put the rest of these boys to shame and spoil you for anyone else.”

After a time, I found my head had come to rest against his shoulder, though I didn’t remember putting it there. I felt restful, pleasingly drunk—on what, I could not say.

“You’re too beautiful to be real,”

“There’s your com...

“I never had a hope in the world of forgetting you, Scurry girl.”

And then he kissed me.