Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles by Karina Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

in polite greeting, but his eyes did not lower as they should in deference to a marquis’ son.
    The name did not appear to matter, for Lord Piers sniffed once and rose to his feet. “I am done here.”
    I leapt to mine, arms spread as though I might keep his attention for longer than he chose. “Please, Piers, you have access—”
    “’Tis Earl bloody Compton, do you not understand that?”
    The viciousness of that correction was as a knife to the heart. I could not bear to close my eyes. To do so would allow him too much of a victory when I needed his help.
    “Please, Earl Compton.” I softened my voice with deliberate care. “You have access to the private Menagerie, places I cannot go.”
    His lip curled. “You seem to have had no troubles last season.”
    “I was not there of my free will,” I replied, a bit of a lash in kind.
    He snorted, rude regardless of location, and thrust the saucer he held, untouched, to me. I took it before he let go, but the jarring motion sloshed more of the bitter brew over the rim. It splattered over my bodice, dark drops soaked quickly by the pale green fabric.
    Piers swore once, a harsh uncivility the likes of which he’d no doubt learned in the stews. With a sharp gesture, he plucked a handkerchief and passed it over to me—with more patience than he had the tea. “It seems that there are circumstances which will never change. We are done, dear sister.” Again, the bite that scored deeper than I wondered if he knew. “Pray that we do not meet again.”
    Ashmore rose, his features set into unreadable lines, and escorted the earl out of the shoddy residence that was nothing like the Chelsea home I had once claimed. That domicile belonged to the earl now. Or his father. Regardless, all that I had stood to inherit had passed to my husband upon our wedding day, and then to his family upon his death.
    Masculine voices murmured excruciatingly polite farewells and the door closed heavily in the lord’s wake.
    Ashmore returned to find me seated once more, clutching the saucer and given handkerchief in white-knuckled fingers.
    He did not return to his seat, but came to crouch before me. The stern planes of his aristocratic face softened. “Are you all right?”
    For him, I worked to smile. “I knew it would be difficult to convince him to help. I just thought...” My aching fingers tightened over the bit of monogrammed cloth.
    Ashmore’s larger hand covered mine. “What will you do?”
    My smile twisted. “Perhaps concoct an alchemical serum that would force him to comply with my every wish?”
    “I think not,” he replied, lightly enough that he knew it a jest, but only just barely.
    I looked down into the rippling surface of the untouched tea. It had stopped steaming. “Is there no alchemical tool to use? Perhaps
Kronos
to alter the course of—”
    “Don’t, Cherry.” The hand he’d left over mine lifted to my cheek briefly. It did not linger. He rose, leaving a cold draft where his heat had once been.
    As though aware of how much I shook on the inside, trapped beneath my skin, he stoked the fire into a high blaze. “This is the risk of learning of such things,” he said into the hearth. The room brightened, and glints of his true copper color gleamed through his darkened hair.
    “What risk?” I asked wearily, setting the saucer down with an ungentle clatter. “That those who know it might dare to use it?”
    “No, Miss St. Croix.” Ashmore frowned at me, once more the stern tutor. “Once one is saturated in the truth of alchemy, sorcery, or other beliefs thought little more than fireside tales, one begins to forget that the rest of this world is not so learned. Alchemy is not a tool to be used as openly as a blade or as freely as a painter’s brush. It is a secret unlocked by very few, and must remain that way.”
    I had heard variants of this lecture before, but that was in a time when I had not thought to use so freely what I had been taught.
    I was not