A Forbidden Alchemy (The Artisan Trilogy)

by Stacey McEwan

Ma used to say that my mind was big and it made the outside small. “Girls like us,” she’d say. “We’re made for bigger places, you hear me?”

It wasn’t that I disagreed. I was just tired of hearing it said and seeing nothing done. I found it difficult to sympathize with those who seemed to take twisted pleasure in their own misery. Ma used to say it was one thing to be down, and quite another to dig yourself a grave.

perhaps Patrick was afraid. What if he took to the idium and it revealed him as an Artisan? He did not speak of home with a stiff jaw the way I did. No, he spoke of home as a place he belonged. What if the idium revealed he didn’t?

“We could help. We could change things. What Belavere needs is progressive thinking,” he said, touching my cheek gently, hesitantly, with the very tips of his fingers. A current traveled from his skin to mine. “Ministers who work with the Craftsmen. Ministers who aren’t one hundred years old.” I laughed through my nose, allowed my face to surrender to his cradle. “We could do it, Nina,” he said. “We could change things.”

She didn’t move an inch, didn’t avoid his stare the way others did. Her glare burrowed deep and clung on, and Patrick was glad. It gave him permission to stare back. So he stared for as long as he liked.

She still spoke like bullets were loaded on her tongue, even if she’d learned to speak like a proper swank.

We held that gaze for an interminable time, trying to peel back the layers of each other and find something recognizable beneath. Trying to make sense of our paths that had diverted so wildly and yet somehow rejoined.

“You offered false promises of freedom, and then locked me in a room. We knew each other once. Why not just ask me for whatever you needed? I might’ve said yes.”

“You know exactly why we started this fight,” Patrick said now. “You’re just too scared to join it.”

“I’m making it my mission to change your mind about us Crafter scum, and about the union as well. Because I know you, Nina Harrow,” he said. “Better than you think I do. And I know you’ll pick the side worth fightin’ for.”

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.

“Bloody hell. She’s a beauty, ain’t she? I can tell. Guess I’ve already blown me chances.” Patrick nodded, upending yet another glass of amber liquor to his lips. “Aye,” he rasped, not looking my way. “I’m afraid she is.”

“Safety?” she echoed. “You think safety is all we want? No,” she said, picking a loose thread from my sleeve. “If that was it, we’d not have started a revolution, now, would we? What we want is a fair fuckin’ chance.”

“Just don’t break any hearts along the way, miss. Keep your pretty eyes where they ought to be—on those far-off lands.”

You’ve got a mind of your own, the boy said. Don’t let those fuckers take it.

Looking at him became difficult. “I thought you didn’t dance?” “I don’t,” he said. “But evidently, you do.”

“We all turn back into boys when it comes to girls,” he said again, though I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or to himself. “Perhaps we can let it just be that.”

“You’re too beautiful to be real,” he said suddenly, softly. With my ear pressed to his chest, I could feel the words, too. “There’s your compliment.”

“I drew pictures of you,” I told him, giving him this one small piece of myself. “In school.” He didn’t speak. Just pulled me round and round in a small orbit. I swallowed. “I was scared to forget you.” The sound of his heart beating made me think of caves under leagues of sea. “I never had a hope in the world of forgetting you, Scurry girl.”

“Always mouthing things under your breath. Like you’re having an argument with yourself.” I exhaled in a gust, sparks of floating light igniting. “Sometimes I am.” “Hmm. Don’t imagine anyone wins.” The

“I wondered… if I could prove to you that I could protect you… if you’d ever consider this place, here with me, as somewhere safe.” He didn’t rise from the chair. Didn’t adjust his position. And yet it felt as though he had just grabbed me by the rib cage and squeezed. “You want me to stay in Kenton Hill?” He nodded slowly, and in the following seconds I felt completely translucent, as though a mere bob of my throat or the flicker of an eyelid would be too telling. But he had cast his own veneer aside. Behind those simple words was a deep wanting, and I saw it plainly. It mimicked my own.

In truth, he had never considered a wife. No one had ever enticed the idea for him. His devotion was spent on his family, his town, his people. He’d imagined his life would dwindle on that way, him expending himself on their behalf. On and on the fighting would go. Deals and tunnels and problems, and he would die eventually, somewhere amid all the noise with no great love to leave behind. Just the pub, the stacks, the mills, the mines. Kenton and the rest of the world churning on without him.

There was no room for a wife in all that. But if he could find his father and end this war, perhaps room could be made. No more blood or interminable problems to solve. No need to worry that someone he loved might be tangled up in the mess. Lately, he really thought it might be possible. He held on to more hope than he’d admit to Nina, who still hadn’t answered the fucking question.

He pressed his tongue to the seam of her lips, and they parted on a gasp. Gold bloomed behind his eyelids. She tasted like victory. The sum of all he’d ever craved.

He ripped the strange lighted hat from his head and put it on my own. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said gruffly. “So you’d better fuckin’ come out, Nina. Promise me. Now.” I blustered. “I… I promise.”

“He will,” Tess told me. “You ought to start preparin’ your response now. Once that boy sets his sights on somethin’, mountains won’t move him.”

A thousand brilliant bursts of light ruptured in me when he looked at me this way, like I was crafted precisely for him. Like I was the only woman who had ever existed. I whispered, “What have you done to me?” He shook his head once, jaw flexing. “No,” he groaned. “What have you done to me?”

For the longest time, I was sure she would come back. That’s the cruelest part of childhood, I think. You don’t know how to stop hoping.”

“And last, we toast Nina Harrow, who lifted an entire hill off our backs.”

“There might be things I can’t tell you,” he said. “There might be secrets. But I’ll never lie to you, Nina. And I promise I’ll love you as well as I can.”

“Tanner is the reason she came here,” he said earnestly. “But she wanted to stay for you.”