Tempered: Book Four of The St. Croix Chronicles

by Karina Cooper

  “Josephine, ’tis over,” Ashmore called, cutting over my nonchalance with vicious anger. “It has been over for decades. End it with dignity.”

  She rounded on him, flinging an arm back to halt my father as he took a staggered step forward, a growl locked between his teeth. “Over,” she scoffed, bitterness lacing every sharp word. “Over, you say, with the privilege of the living!”

  I forced myself to take measured steps to the worktable where we had left much of the glass phials and beakers—and the blade, cast aside after it had so greedily drank of my blood.

  “Give it up,” Ashmore snapped. “For all your schemes, you have lost.”

  “I don’t want to hear a demand of surrender from you, whose alchemical bonds deny the encroachment of the death you so gaily bestowed upon me.”

  Pain simmered in my chest. Tears blurred my sight, but I could not allow them to interfere.

  So much death and hatred in the air.

  “Josephine.” My father’s frail whisper did not cause so much as a dent in my mother’s spiteful focus.

  I glanced to St. Croix’s huddled shape, his emaciated arms wrapped around bony knees as he rocked back and forth, back and forth. His eyes remained focused upon my mother’s radiant light; a stray dog desperate for a word of love.

  He would find none here.

  That truth, inalienable and cruel, did more to damage my composure than the accusations of murder and betrayal behind me.

  For all I’d claimed myself my father’s child, taking after his interests and pursuits, what few meetings I’d ever had with the man left me feeling little enough by way of kinship—until now.

  What terrible things abandonment does to a body and mind. That was a pain I shared; the first of such empathy. We had both been abandoned by the woman who was to love us.

  Biting my lip until blood flowed was all the recourse I had. I could not get caught up in pity or sorrow; I could not join the fray of words behind me. The small pain cleared my thoughts enough that I could force myself to transfer the shimmering pink contents from the clay pot to the small glass globe I chose. My hands shook, causing a fine layer of pink to scatter across the table.

  Being near the stuff that had caused me so much suffering terrified me. Without it, I might never have known the pleasures, and the subsequent heartache, found in Micajah Hawke’s bed. I might never have seen my father again—might have spared myself the agony of knowing without a doubt how little I meant to the parents who sired me.

  Without it, I might have never fallen in debt to the Karakash Veil, and so doing, saved myself the turmoil I felt from the ringmaster’s brutal handling.

  One wrong move, and I’d find myself at the alchemical concoction’s mercies once again.

  “Are you so desperate that you will murder your own child?” Ashmore called, and a cold sweat enveloped me.

  I wanted to turn, to glare at him until he shut his gob, but I could not risk the act. That his accusation was a legitimate concern only made it worse. Distracting her was fine; reminding me of what was at stake increased my nerves.

  I very carefully stoppered the palm-sized globe and lifted the glass to the light above. The dust clung to the sides, leaving an iridescent sheen in its wake.

  “Cherry is the finest daughter I could have asked for,” my mother declared, seizing her ghostly skirts in one hand and marching towards the circle. I caught the glimmer of her luminescence as she passed me, but slanted a look at her back—and over her shoulder, at Ashmore.

  He had no eyes for me. All his focus, all his attention remained fixed on the woman he loved.

  Such sweet pain seemed all the easier to bear, when compared to the churning agony and fury battling for supremacy within me.

  My mother’s words meant a great deal more than I wanted them to.

  “My girl.” St. Croix’s shaken, desperate summons meant nothing to anyone here. He sobbed against his bony knees when Josephine spared him no attention.

  Of the two, my mother was demonstrably the strongest force. He had spoken to me—to her—as though he could see her, hear her, and perhaps he always could.

  It was no wonder Abraham St. Croix had turned into this shell of a creature. She must have driven him beyond all endurance.

  Was it my mother that had fueled his mad scheme in London? Was it she who whispered to him in the night, cajoling him for help? For flesh and blood?

  A part of me yearned to reach out a hand to this pathetic scrap of humanity—to find a glimmer of sanity, of my father, in him—but I could no longer bring myself to think of him as anything more than the man who had tried so often to murder me.

  To replace me.

  I had never had parents. There was no call to start now. My empathies could not halt my hand.

  “Does she know?” Ashmore demanded. A crack of violet light behind me said he tested the barriers again. “Does she know how you used her when she slept unguarded?”

  I suspected.

  “She’s a good girl,” Josephine replied, all too satisfied with my compliance. “Utilizing her body allowed me the means to set this trap. You certainly fell into it easily enough. Did you think your apprentice would be so strong on her own?”

  I winced, my fingers jerking.

  Another pop of purple light, and Josephine’s laughter tinkled like silver bells. “Struggle all you like. You haven’t been harvesting the power within my portrait, have you?”

  My hand closed on the blade.

  Ashmore growled, accompaniment to three such flares in a row. “Had I known you clung as a ghost, I would have.”

  “Still the fool,” Josephine said behind me. “Because of your moronic sentiment, your power dwindles. Could you not at least have fed from your own apprentice?” Before he could answer, her amused tone deepened to something biting and cruel. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t, can you? You’re bound to protect any child of the direct lineage until such a time as there are no more.”

  Ashmore said nothing, but what was there to be said? The truth of it was so obvious. Once my mother’s spirit overtook my body, there would no longer be a line for him to feed upon.

  Such was the nature of her revenge. Her reasons to have a child became clear. By having me, he thought his line assured, while she had planned to save her own life and watch his dwindle at the same time. Overtaking my body would end the cycle.

  It made a poetic sort of sense.

  “Torn between your vow and the last vestiges of your bond with me, tsk. How you must have looked at my portrait with such desire. Rest assured,” my mother purred, a sultry sound I remembered from the series of images I had been forced to witness. “I shall take excellent care of her without you.”

  If I were my mother, I would destroy him first. After all, to live in immortality, ’tis best to remove one’s rivals immediately.

  I turned, a smile pasted upon my face. The knife I held behind my back seemed heavier than it should.

  That fatigue demanded my attention did not help my clarity of thought or vision.

  “Mother, this—”

  “One moment, sweet girl.” Josephine thrust a hand against the circle, the faint translucence of her flesh colliding with the barrier carved into the stone and sealed with noble metal. Yet where I expected resistance, I saw a colorless ripple.

  Behind me, joints popped and creaked as St. Croix lurched to his feet, in a manner uncannily reminiscent of the house we occupied.

  I watched in mesmerized fascination as my mother’s arm shot through the barrier, the whole swirling about her pale limb, and seized Ashmore by the throat. His chin snapped up. Though he stepped back, his heel drove into Maddie Ruth’s prostrate figure, and so snared, had nowhere left to evade Josephine’s grasp.

  The lines of his throat were a blurred contrast through her ghostly hand.

  What little color anger had put there now leached from his face. “Jo—” A rasp, strangled into silence.

  She smiled. “Think of all that you will
miss when I drain the life from you.” Her head rose, and in shock, I saw that she floated before him, dragging him closer to the barrier.

  Violet sparks gathered where his skin came too close.

  Angry red welts appeared beneath my mother’s fingers. Still, he did not resist as she dragged his face to hers and claimed his mouth for a kiss.

  When last my mother had touched me, I remembered the burning sensation of her frozen grasp. I could not imagine what it must be to kiss those lips.

  The already painful grip upon my stolen knife tightened.

  Ashmore’s lips turned blue. His eyes widened, but she did not let go, bestowing upon him the sort of kiss reserved for the most intimate of lovers.

  Damn him. His mouth parted for hers. His eyes closed.

  “No, no…” St. Croix pushed past me, driving me to my knees as my exhausted body failed to adapt. I retained hold of knife and phial both, biting back a startled uncivility, but it cost me the ability to soften my landing.

  My father did not stop. He did not see me. His lanky body sprinted towards the barrier, murder in his roar. “Don’t touch her!”

  My knees cracked against the stone floor.

  This time, it was no shimmer of violet light, no pop and sizzle, but a crack of thunderous noise and a blinding flash. I flinched, crying out.

  A frail tangle of limbs sailed through the air like the most awkward of birds. It collided with a bookshelf, caused the items upon the shelves to tumble and fall. The astrolabe toppled over, plummeted to the stone floor and cracked.

  Amidst the blinding spots left behind, I barely made out the still figure of my father, listless and awkwardly bent.

  I could not help myself. I cried out, surging to my feet. Josephine watched me as I flew past the circle.

  “Don’t fret, sweet girl,” she called after me, once more completely outside the barrier and looking rather unruffled—and somewhat more pink than I recalled her ghostly skin being.

  Ashmore had fallen to the ground, one hand wrapped around his throat, his lips still too blue. He choked on the air he struggled to breathe.

  I could not save him if I did not focus.

  St. Croix did not move, even when I staggered to my knees beside him. His thin chest rose and fell, as fluttery as that of the bird he’d so willingly beheaded. His eyelids blinked rapidly, but his skeletal fingers scrabbled on the ground, skated over the books and bowls that had fallen around him.

  “Father.” I hunched over him, the hand with the knife flattening over his chest and pinning the blade flat between us. “Father, can you hear me?”

  His lips, cracked and bleeding, moved. No sound escaped.

  Josephine sighed. “Look well, Cherry. This is what comes of strong men succumbing to love.” I jerked, but I did not dare look around at her. If I did, I was afraid she’d see in my stare all the vile things I wanted to say to her.

  Whoever this woman was, she was no angel of mine.

  Ashmore coughed hard, but managed, “He was just a puppet.”

  “At least he was useful,” she replied, utterly at ease. “Your father worked hard to make this moment happen, sweeting. Forgive him his lapse.”

  I fought back tears as one of his scrabbling hands found my knee. His breath wheezed from him, whistling in a manner that suggested his bones had broken about his lungs. Perhaps even a puncture, though I was not so gifted in anatomy that I knew how to fix it.

  Leaving the fragile glass phial by my side, I gripped his struggling hand. I bent over, until my ear was on level with his mouth. “What is it?” I whispered. “What are you saying?”

  It was not to my credit that I hoped for words of affection. Perhaps even a murmur of regret.

  How damaged a wretch was I that I hoped for some small token for all that had been done at my own father’s hands?

  His breath was barely a whisper. I needed no more than the faintest stirring of it to hear him. “I love you, my girl.”

  I was not so foolish to misunderstand. I had never been his girl.

  A sob built in my chest. No, not a sob—a scream. Even now, despite the evidence before him—the words of his own wife—Abraham St. Croix loved her.

  As Ashmore loved her.

  As Society loved her—or at least that perfect façade she’d portrayed.

  As I had wanted to be loved.

  If I had any heart left unbroken, it crumbled.

  “He’s served his purpose, Cherry.” My mother’s voice, closer now. “It was his foolish pride that forced this. Leave him. We have important work to continue.”

  Foolish pride. That was what she called a love so deep-seated that he could not stand the sight of his wife—the woman he had sacrificed his life and his sanity for—embracing another man.

  It seemed that love would forever be the undoing of my bloodline.

  I straightened, and though the tears ran unchecked down my cheeks, I forced my flagging shoulders to go rigid. “Right,” I said, tight with effort. Using my body to mask my actions, I lifted my father’s bony hand and turned it palm-up. “I have one question, mother, if I may?”

  “You may.”

  “Cherry,” Ashmore croaked.

  “You be silent,” Josephine ordered, and if she did anything, I did not turn to see it. I only heard the crackle of the barrier, saw the reflected shadow of violet light.

  Ashmore’s sound of pain locked between his clenched teeth.

  Foolish pride, was it? Certainly there was no shortage of that in this pedigree. I was about to risk everything on the precept that Ashmore was as strong as I thought him to be; much stronger than he was loyal.

  The blade scored a line down my father’s forearm. So far gone in lunacy, his body only twitched, pale eyes darting from under fluttering lashes. His lips moved, over and over. I love you, my girl.

  “Will you tell me true, mother?” I asked, fisting the hand holding the phial in my own lap. The wound I’d scored in it earlier had already scabbed too thickly to easily bleed now.

  Blood welled from my father’s arm, dripping openly onto my gown.

  “Be quick,” she said sharply. “And for the love of God, put that creature out of his misery.”

  I swallowed hard. “What will you do?” Though I struggled to keep my voice steady as I dragged the sharp point of the knife down my forearm, it cracked. Pain shot sparklers across my sight. Hurriedly, I twined my forearm with the filthy limb of my father’s.

  “To what are you referring?” Josephine asked, and her voice drifted closer.

  Panic seized me. I needed enough time to ensure our blood mingled, and if she saw me now, she’d know what it was I intended.

  This was why I’d needed to draw her out. I needed her out of my head, tangible—or as tangible as a spirit could be.

  The only way to make her fully physical was in this phial. In so doing, would her grasp on the barrier imprisoning Ashmore fade?

  I was hoping for just that.

  I dropped the blade into my lap, gritted my teeth as pain flared along my arm. Blood welled at an alarming rate, and as it pooled into the yellow silk, I feared I’d been too enthusiastic in my cutting. If St. Croix expired before our blood had been shared, it would all be over.

  I picked up the globe of pink dust and lifted it.

  The light caught it, turning its contents into an iridescent gleam. Pink and gold.

  I despised those colors.

  “Don’t come any closer,” I snapped.

  In the corner of my vision, the radiant gleam I associated with my mother halted. “Cherry?” Confusion filled her voice now.

  “I just want him to die peaceably.” Not all the truth, but not wholly a lie. “If he sees you, he might cause a fuss.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right then.” Just as quickly as it arrived, Josephine’s confusion eased. “Hurry it up, won’t you?”

  “I will.” I had no choice. My stomach felt sick, the blood loss and the fatigue all combined to turn everything about me into a dull, he
avy haze.

  The pool of blood thickened between my father and I.

  His eyelids slowed in their frantic flutter.

  “Will you keep Ashmore alive?” I asked. I no longer had the energy to keep the pain from my voice. “Or will you drain him of all his secrets and dispose of him?”

  She was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her tone gentled. “Sweeting, are you in love with him?”

  The word did not sit well upon me. Love might not be a weakness as my mother knew it, but it had not done me any favors.

  I did not look for love; I would not be accused of it.

  Easing my father’s arm away from mine, I bound it quickly with a bit of his own clothing. It would bleed through soon enough. Leaving my own to drip, I stood.

  It took monumental effort not to pitch forward into the already crooked shelves.

  The world tunneled in to a narrow point of light.

  Dragging my un-injured arm across my face, I turned. The laboratory dipped and swayed.

  My mother, radiant and pure, became that single focus of light.

  “No,” I said softly. In that syllable, I did not lie.

  Her smile returned. “Excellent. Then let us waste no more time with these laughable creatures.”

  Behind her—clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw was even whiter than the ashen pallor of his features—Ashmore’s glittering, feverish gaze met mine.

  I could not read what lay within. Apology, perhaps, or anger. Fear for my safety, I had no doubt.

  All that would happen in the next few moments would depend on whether or not my theory was correct.

  “Laughable,” I repeated. My tongue slurred the word, thicker than I felt it should be in my mouth. Lazy. I was tired. So very tired. “Laughable creatures.”

  Josephine drifted closer, her pale white hand reaching for me as a furrow marked her brow. “Sweet girl, none of that blood upon you is yours, is it?”

  Mustn’t scar the merchandise. I giggled. As her eyebrows both shot up, I only laughed more. Without warning, I sobered just as quickly. “They loved you, did you know?” I looked down at the thin glass vial, and the dust within. I nudged at the stopper. It gave easily. “They loved you so much as to risk their lives for you.”