Tempered: Book Four of The St. Croix Chronicles

by Karina Cooper

  It opened before I reached for it.

  My hand froze mid-grasp as Ashmore drew to a halt before me. His hazel eyes, surprised at first, rapidly turned stormy. “There you are,” was his ungentle greeting.

  I laughed, though it came out more a snort.

  His eyebrow climbed.

  “So I am,” I acknowledged, lowering my hand. He entered the room, passing me with ease when I thought the crackling fury surrounding me might cause him to stumble.

  “You vanished.” He did not turn around, shoulders rigid. He was angry with me. Once, I might have thought it out of concern.

  Now I considered it fear that his plans for me would be ruined were I to depart.

  I sneered at his back. “Afraid I might leave?”

  “In the dead of winter?” Ashmore sat behind the desk; a tired motion that did not show grace, but weariness. How long had I been gone? An hour at the most? Had he been searching all this time?

  Or was he simply feeling his age?

  My fingers folded into my wrapper. “Why—” I hesitated; not out of fear, but because I did not know how exactly to frame my jumbled thoughts into an appropriately cutting question. How did one ask if one’s entire relationship with a person was based on a lie?

  His hands covered his face, rubbing as though he might peel the fatigue from his eyes by force. “You cannot simply vanish,” he told me, impatience clear in the way he spoke. “You worried me and upset Miss Halbard.”

  My fists clenched in the soft fabric.

  When he dropped his hands, his gaze slid over my attire. “Did you go exploring in the abandoned rooms again? You’re filthy.”

  I squared my shoulders. “How old are you?”

  He looked at me as though I’d lost my head. “What is this, all of a sudden?”

  “How old?” I demanded. Something in my tone or my appearance must have warned him I was serious, for he sat back and studied me with his ageless eyes.

  I had often thought him to exhibit a worldliness that seemed beyond his apparent years. I had never imagined that I would be so correct.

  He lifted a hand to rub at his smooth chin. “I am a few years past thirty,” he finally said.

  The pain this lie caused me was unbearable. I turned my face away, though too late to keep the admission of this hurt from my expression.

  He half-rose, hands going to the desk to brace his weight. “What on earth—”

  ”No.” The denial tore from me. I threw out a hand as though I might force him to freeze by sheer will. “Stay back.”

  He did, though I suspect surprise held him, not I.

  “Cherry,” he began, reproach and concern.

  “Lies.” I dragged my forearm over my eyes, though it did nothing to dry my tear-dampened lashes. I could not bear to look at him, to watch him pull a mask of falsehood over his features again. “Why are you lying to me?”

  He was silent, leaving only the pounding of my heart to give voice to the desperate yearning I clung to. I wanted to hold my breath, but it hurt too much to try.

  He sat back into his chair. “How did you learn?”

  So calm. Gone was the concern I’d heard—or hoped to hear. He was serene, stern Ashmore once more.

  I looked up, my breath shuddering in. “You aren’t as clever as you assume yourself to be,” I said. My voice trembled. “Did you think that you could seduce me as you did my mother?”

  His lips thinned into a hard, white line. “Mind your tone, Miss St. Croix.”

  “I will not.” My voice shook with rage. I took a step toward the desk, my fingers hurting with how tightly I clenched them. “All of my life—” A sob welled in my throat. “All of my life, I have been compared to her and I have been found wanting. All who knew her loved her best.”

  Ashmore’s eyes banked, his expression lined in unreadable severity. “’Tis not what you think it is.”

  “Then enlighten me!”

  He stepped from around his desk, but did not come close. Whether it was my stance, poised to flee or fight, or his own reasoning, he hesitated far enough away that he could not easily reach me. His hands hung by his sides. “I am three hundred and forty-six years old,” he said quietly. “Through study and no small sacrifice, I have found one part of a key to the perfection of life.”

  “Sacrifice,” I spat, my hands balling on either side of my temples. “You murdered all of them, didn’t you? You sacrificed my lineage for your unnatural life.”

  His mouth flattened. “Not all of them.”

  It was as much an admission of guilt as I could expect. I laughed, though it was so pitiable that I could not bear the shame. “You monster. You…You murderer. How often did you lie to me?” I squeezed my eyes shut, heel of my hands digging into my head. “This was my family.”

  “A family who would rather see you dead,” he returned sharply, with such fierce heat that my eyes snapped open. “Or do you not recall that what your father attempted only months ago?”

  I froze, staring at him as the meaning of his words sank like a stone within me. “You…You knew?”

  “Not until recently, but I did gather enough information to fill in the gaps left by your accounting.” His cheeks flushed, he reached up to his throat to loosen the highest button at his collar. “My name has changed over the centuries, but I was baptized Nicholin Folsham in the year 1542.”

  I shook my head. “That can’t be.”

  When his eyes met mine, they were bleak. “What is the true purpose of alchemy, Miss St. Croix?”

  Perfection.

  And what was immortality but the perfection of a flawed human existence?

  The collar of his shirt came undone. Another tug loosened the second, and he dropped his hand to the desk beside him. “Don’t look so horrified,” he said with grim humor. “You were all too keen to learn such things not a day earlier.”

  Again, I shook my head, but no amount of denial would take back his words. “I don’t…I don’t understand.” Only I did, didn’t I? I understood exactly. It was as my mother said. The cost of his immortality came from me and mine. “You claimed to sacrifice, but what did you truly surrender? Not your life.” I laughed bitterly, though tears spilled over my lashes. “Certainly you have suffered nothing but time. All of this, all the effort to mend and teach me, all the hours—” I broke upon that one, unable to give voice to the time we had shared. “What was the lure, Ashmore?” I demanded.

  “Lure?”

  “Tell me true. Did you simply miss my mother? Did you think to have another taste of her whom you so bitterly betrayed? Did you see me and think of her?” Again, I dragged my arm across my eyes, stealing the tears I did not wish him to see. Not him, who had so sweetly coaxed me to cry and allowed me the use of his shoulder do it.

  I stepped back again, my sight turned blurry.

  “I hate you,” I said brokenly, barely able to form the words. “I hate you, Oliver Ashmore, Nicholin Folsham, whoever you are, I hate you. I wish you’d never found me.”

  “Cherry!”

  I turned and fled through the open door, but he was quick on my heels. I made it only to the foyer before hard fingers snapped around my wrist and I spun forcefully.

  Ashmore had not been present to watch me learn the skills I had required to survive as a collector below London’s drift. I turned, and with sharp perversity that listened to no reason, I treated his grip as though it were a dancer’s hand. I spun once under it, forcing his fingers to bend awkwardly, then wrested my wrist from his grip.

  Attempting to compensate forced him to snatch at thin air while I danced just out of reach.

  Panting, breathless with only that effort, I clutched at my waist and stared at him as he drew himself to his full height. His eyes did not leave mine. “Listen to me,” he demanded, in that low manner he had when we spoke of more intimate matters.

  I blanched, shook my head until my hair tumbled over both shoulders. “You have nothing—”

  “There is a greater tale to be
told,” he said over me. “It isn’t what you think!”

  “How could it not be?” I flung a hand behind me, as though to indicate the stairs and the family wing beyond. “’Tis your fault my family sickens, will you deny that?”

  I watched as his jaw tightened, pulling his features into stark relief. “I will not deny it.”

  Hearing it hurt more than I thought it might. I laughed bitterly. “As my mother sought to undo the cause, you seduced her.” I turned my back, unwilling to watch his face any more—whether truth or lie, neither was bearable. “You earned her trust as you earned mine, and then you betrayed her—”

  “No,” he cut in.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Cherry?” Maddie Ruth’s voice called uncertainly from the stair she stood upon, her hands gripping the bannister as she watched us. A furrow marred her brow. “What is the matter?”

  “’Tis nothing,” I said, summoning frivolity when all I wanted was to be swallowed by the world and allowed to rest in silence. I sniffed back the hurt, forcing it to remain a hard knot of agony in my chest. I approached the stair with measured steps. “I’m tired, I want to—”

  “Cherry, wait,” Ashmore said behind me.

  My shoulders went rigid. “There is nothing you can say that I—”

  “I loved Josephine.”

  I did not think I ccould hurt any worse than I already did. My step faltered, nearly pitched me to the floor but for sheer instinct and a grasp for the newel just in front of me. He loved my mother. He loved her, the true idol that was Josephine St. Croix.

  I was but a dull reminder of all that he had lost. Just as I was for my father.

  Of course. It all made so much sense now.

  I laughed quietly, though there was nothing humorous about the sound.

  It was not love I had given Ashmore, nor love I expected, but I had never wanted to be my mother’s replacement. I’d thought he’d understood.

  I’d thought he at least liked me for my sake.

  What a foolish thing I was.

  “I understand.” I picked up the hem of my wrapper, hiking it high enough that I could take the stairs two by two. “Excuse me.”

  Ashmore’s step fell hard behind me. “Cherry, where do you—”

  “You are relieved of your duty,” I said, still without looking at him. “I no longer need your interference.” With that, I hurried up the stairs, rounding my trajectory that I could pass Maddie Ruth.

  “Catch her,” Ashmore commanded, and she did, seizing me by the waist before I’d made it past.

  “Let me go,” I snarled, just as he thundered, “I forbid it.”

  Maddie Ruth held on, her eyes large and filled with fear. “You don’t need the bliss,” she insisted, in tune as to where my thoughts had gone. Perhaps I bore the same demeanor as that of her father, who had succumbed to the Chinese smoke. “You don’t!”

  All I wanted was to sleep again. Real sleep, the kind that only the laudanum could give me. The need pounded in my chest, raked agonizing fingers over a place that already hurt so much.

  That longing for release consumed me.

  It was for that reason that I lifted an arm and drove my elbow into Maddie Ruth’s cheek. She gritted her teeth, head snapping to the side with the momentum, but she did not let go.

  Not until I stomped on her slippered foot with my heel and caught her by the side of her head. She cried out as I pulled her around me. She let go to catch her balance, allowing me to push her completely from my path so that I could continue up the stairs.

  Maddie Ruth screamed. Ashmore called a warning. There was a terrible sound, a jarring thud, but I did not stop until I reached the top of the stairs.

  Hands tight in my skirts, I turned to view the chaos I left behind me.

  Ashmore crouched far below, his gaze turned up at me with such bleak accusation that it was though he drove a knife into my soul.

  Maddie Ruth lay in his arms, her eyes enormous, all color leached from her face. Her legs were splayed, one ankle gripped in her hands. The pain she suffered was writ large and clear in every line of her body; a twisted foot, or a broken one. I almost laughed, but it was not humor that drove me. I’d pushed Maddie Ruth down the stairs.

  My friend, my companion—a girl no more than sixteen who had admitted to looking up to me. And for what?

  So that I could betray her as all the world betrayed me.

  Yet still, it was she who called to me one last time. “Please, Cherry!”

  Ashmore wrapped an arm about her shoulders. He looked away from me. “Let her go,” he said, his tone flat.

  I truly was a monster.

  So be it.

  “I want you out of this house by nightfall,” I shouted, and fled for Ashmore’s bedroom—and the valise he kept within.

  It did not take long to locate the laudanum. There was a full flask left, and I drank half of the ruby liquid down—even when the now-unfamiliar burn of the bitter draught forced me to choke and cough.

  Neither Ashmore nor Maddie Ruth came to see me. None intruded upon me. As the bliss stole into my belly, easing through the pain in my chest and soothing the wound with its forbidden bond, I waited to hear footsteps in the hall.

  They did not come.

  I drank more.

  Chapter Twenty

  It did not surprise me at all when I found myself dreaming of that black place. The threads that bound me cut into my flesh as I tried to turn, but this time, I felt the pain of it.

  Perhaps it was merely my own, translated to that what my sleeping mind could conjure.

  I floated in silence for an eternity, Ashmore’s face and Maddie Ruth’s fear roiling over and over inside my thoughts.

  I loved Josephine.

  How cruelly he’d spoken the words, yet they had rung of truth. Was he so talented an actor that I would never know his lies?

  I wanted to weep. The laudanum stemmed such needs, and so I remained in silence and lethargy, willing to sleep the whole of my life away once more.

  I did not want to wake again.

  For so many years, I had fought for my place while dancing to the tune of another, and I was tired of it.

  I was tired of this life. I did not want to hurt anymore—neither myself nor others.

  I sagged within crimson bonds.

  A faint shimmer gathered.

  Will you leave me in darkness?

  My chin drooped. My hair hung over my face in a curtain the same color as the threads binding me.

  Josephine stepped into existence before me, her gaze so sad as to force the tears to drop like diamonds from my cheeks. She touched my face, and I flinched, but I felt no cold. I felt nothing at all.

  Have you no will?

  No. I did not. I wanted only to float away forever.

  Though I could not feel her grip, my head lifted in her grasp. With my face so framed, I had no choice but to meet her eyes, cold and green in her ghostly radiance. Her mouth set in a firm line, forcing grooves at the corners with the severity of it.

  I wanted to assure her that she would no longer be alone—that I would keep her company—but no words came to me.

  I drowned in green pools of twin eternity.

  One of her hands left my face, fingertips coming to settle upon my sternum—five needle-like points of frigid cold.

  Then I shall help you, came the haunting whisper, even though her lips did not move.

  The cold at my breast turned to vicious, burning agony. I shuddered, tried to take a breath to scream my pain, yet my lungs seized upon the attempt. The threads at my limbs tightened to unbearable intensity, resisting my efforts to get away.

  Trapped as a fly within a spider’s web.

  I looked down to find my mother’s pale hand vanishing into my chest. The light she radiated pooled within my skin, until she was wrist-deep inside my own flesh.

  A sight not wholly unfamiliar.

  I had dreamed this very thing upon my father’s laboratory table so long ago
. The pain had not been so intense then as it was now.

  This time, I could not scream. My eyes widened until the sockets strained. I opened my mouth, but no sound would come.

  She caught me about the back of the neck with her other hand, her mouth twisting into a grimace of effort as she drove her arm so far into my chest that she must have burst from my back.

  Wrist to forearm. Forearm to elbow. My back bowed beneath the strain of it, blood dripping like rubies to the black ground as the bindings dug into my flesh. The threads at my wrists snapped, a tearing sound that cut through the awful laughter swirling around us.

  She held me as she drove whatever intent she demanded into me.

  Ice filled my chest, my belly. It spread to my shoulders and around my throat.

  It climbed to my head.

  It halted my heart.

  I threw back my head, found my voice to scream with. “Kronos!”

  The eyes of Josephine St. Croix burned brilliantly green. Reflected within was the pale blue glow of a glyph similar to that of a K.

  Kronos. Past, present, and future. With this Trump, the sacred number ten, the aspects of Time tore free.

  The dream shattered. Firelight filled the black void I had been standing within, and I stumbled to find myself no longer supported.

  The rug beneath my feet was bright with color, the very same beneath the sofa I had claimed in the library. I patted my chest to find it all in place, looked down to see no wound or scar.

  Laughter, familiar and sweet, seized me.

  I looked up in surprise.

  Ashmore faced the draperies, green where I recalled them to be a darker blue in color. His shoulders were rigid, his hands braced against the wall behind the fabric. He groaned, a husky sound, and it was then I realized he was not alone.

  A woman’s skirts spilled on either side of his legs. As I watched, horrified to be seeing such a thing, one stockinged leg curled about his waist. Ashmore’s hips drove hard, and the woman gasped.

  Delicate fingers pushed into his hair, its waves longer than how I knew it now. “Yes,” she coaxed, her voice exultant and throaty. “Yes, more, more.”