A Forbidden Alchemy (The Artisan Trilogy)

by Stacey McEwan

And I wondered if he’d somehow found the lock to my chest and was bleeding it of every good and terrible thing I’d ever done.

I could see how quickly he would fall in love with me. It seemed almost as though he were predisposed to it. That his mind was already made. What I could not fathom was how I was not to fall in love with him. I was failing already. Tumbling into it.

“I stood on that bank until sunset. Then I went back out the next morning, and the next. 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.”

I hardly remember what we had.” Blood pulsed in my ears. “But I bet you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to forget.”