A Forbidden Alchemy (The Artisan Trilogy)

by Stacey McEwan

There were only two kinds of people in the world, and I’d known it before I could talk. There were the people like my father, who worked honestly. Craftsmen who were paid far too little for their long days in the mines, the factories, the farms. And then there were Artisans: the fortunate. The high-society swanks with their magic.

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

He shook himself from his reverie. “Well,” he said. “That fuckin’ showed me, didn’t it?” Patrick Colson liked to say fuck a lot.

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.

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

I’d never thought of desire that way—that it was the wanting that consumed a person, not the object they sought.

“We only know of history what is recorded. And records are easily lost or rewritten. I can’t know for sure. But the fact remains that at some point, our leaders thought it better that power be meted out only to those who could be trusted with it.”

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

“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 think I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said gruffly. “So you’d better fuckin’ come out, Nina. Promise me. Now.”