He inclined his head, but again, he focused upon the pages I’d written.
“In regards to the human form, immortality is the perfection of the body.” I hesitated. “Am I right?”
Another inclination. “Longevity is considered a step towards perfection, thus alchemy’s contribution to modern medicine.”
A fair thought. I tucked my hands behind my back, though I caught myself picking at my thumb with the nails of the same hand—a habit I was having difficulty breaking. “Yet as I was going over the Trumps, I thought that some might actually speak of perfection of a different sort.”
“What sort?” Papers rustled as he tucked one beneath the pile. He read quickly, even as he listened. A good skill to have, I supposed.
“It seemed to me,” I said thoughtfully, rocking back on my heels, “that they speak of perfection of the soul.”
His eyes flicked up to me, as though to gauge my reaction to my own theory.
I shrugged. “Perhaps that seems a melodramatic way to phrase it, but I speak of spiritual growth and harmony.”
He did not mock me. Lowering his hand, he let the papers fall to the floor at his feet, then braced both elbows against his knees and clasped his fingers. He regarded me intently. “What do you think of that?”
Again, I peeled at the skin of my thumb. The force of his stare lacked Hawke’s lashing scrutiny, but I had trouble meeting it nonetheless. That ageless strength of will shining in Ashmore’s green-tinted gaze made it difficult to concentrate.
Was it his alchemical knowledge that gave him such depth of passion?
Could I ever achieve the same?
I thought of the way he’d taken me so violently in the rain, and then again of the interminable patience he’d displayed as he coaxed my body to unimaginable pleasures. It was almost as if he’d been different people.
No. That was unfair to say. I had seen that sort of difference in Hawke, and Ashmore’s was not the mold. It was more like he’d forgotten himself the first time.
Perhaps I’d goaded him to it. Or perhaps he had his own demons to feed.
“Cherry?”
I startled again to hear my name upon his lips, meeting his gaze directly. “What?” was all I managed.
“What do you think of this revelation?” he asked me, patiently and more than a little stern about the eyes and mouth.
I pursed my lips. Then, with a sigh, I admitted, “I would like to hope ’tis true.”
“Why?”
“Because I think perfection of the body might be impossible without perfection of the heart and soul,” I said, blurting it out. “Without a heart and mind to drive it, the body will rot.”
Silence filled the chamber. Only the wind whispered, not so loud as to wail but not soft enough to go unnoticed through the drafty halls. Even the fire, little but glowing embers casting a deep orange heat, remained still.
Ashmore’s head drooped, his clasped fingers coming to rest against his lips.
For a moment, I thought him terribly disappointed. My heart clutched. Had I gotten it wrong? Was I so far off track that he would cast me from his sight?
His shoulders shook.
I realized he was laughing. I took a step towards him, my fists coming out to plant on my hips. “What is so funny?” I demanded. “Did I unwittingly make a jest?”
“No,” he chortled, but could not ease his amusement enough to speak normally for it. “No, no. Not at all.” He cleared his throat, lifting his head. Amusement filled his eyes, shaped the contours of his face as he openly smiled at me. “You surprise me, Miss St. Croix.”
I hovered on the brink between relief and indignation. “How?”
He stood, the chair creaking as he did, and approached me. “You have often been a staunch supporter of reason and intellect over such matters you can not see.”
Obviously, Fanny had been thorough in her detailings to my guardian. I thrust my jaw out. “Inner harmony is no different than sharpened intellect.”
“That is what surprises me,” he confessed. When I did not back away, he came to a stop before me, so close that I was forced to look up.
I felt myself bathed in the approval radiating from his eyes, more brown than green in the orange firelight. I shivered—warmth, accomplishment, delight.
Anticipation.
More. I wanted more. More of this feeling, more of the warmth I felt in Ashmore’s presence.
“To sharpen one’s skill, one must sharpen one’s mind,” he said softly, reaching up to cup my face in both of his long hands. I took a deep breath. “This is not only common sense, but for alchemical theory, it is imperative. One can not shape the cosmos without the strength of will to do so. Do you understand?”
I nodded within his grasp, my eyes wide.
“Bear this in mind,” he said, lowering his head slowly. “You will need to remember this truth in the coming days.” My sight turned soft and hazy as his gaze captured mine; it was as if I fell into a soft sea of mossy brown. Such warmth cradled me, such delight and comfort, that I did not fight it.
It was almost as sweet as the bliss I’d fought so hard to hold.
As if the memory was all it took to trigger it, a fierce knot of need cramped within my belly. I flinched, but Ashmore’s grip was too strong, and my face remained turned to his.
I think I said something—a protest or a warning.
Those eyes did not blink. “Eon,” he whispered, his breath mingling with mine.
“Quintessence,” I replied, my own voice a throaty sound. The words came from someplace deep within me; a confidence I did not know I’d retained. “Corresponding with the fifth element.”
Ashmore let me go, but only so that he could walk around me. Though I was released from the hold of his stare, my body felt heavy as marble, yet soft as air. My heart thumped in my chest as his hands came to rest upon my shoulders. “What else?” he asked me, his voice low in my ear.
I shuddered. “Eternal to the impermanence of the other four elements. The very personification of aether.”
His fingers stroked down my arms, causing me to shudder beneath the drag. The thin lace of the tea gown’s sleeves was little enough protection, yet as he found the bare skin of my forearms, I sucked in a breath that ached.
When he found my wrists, he grasped the back of my hand, raising it up. As his other arm curved gently about my waist, he pulled my hand through the air, sketching a shape I did not recognize until his lips brushed against my ear. “Say it.”
The sensation of it, the warmth of his breath and the husky command in his voice, shot through my body like a sweet drug. I shuddered, eyes fluttering closed.
“Say the name,” he ordered.
The word shook as it left my lips. “Eon.”
It was as if the air turned to fire and lightning around us. My skin prickled, the fine hairs upon my body lifting as though a charge raced through me.
Ashmore let go of my hand, but he did not set me free. With his chest snug against my back, holding me close enough that I felt his every breath, he cupped my chin and ordered, “Open your eyes, Cherry.”
I did.
The last vestiges of a symbol shaped in brilliant blue light faded, leaving aftershocks of an E turned upon its side carved into my sight. The world banked white, blinding me.
I cried out, reaching back to grasp a fist full of Ashmore’s shirt, but he held me upright, easily withstanding my attempt to tear free.
When my sight returned, as swiftly as it had burned away, my mouth dropped open.
To my shock, the world had turned to fire.
Chapter Seventeen
“Look.” Ashmore cupped my throat in a way that allowed me to turn my head without separating from him, and I stared wide-eyed at the ripples of light now studding the room.
It was as though an artist had taken brilliant light and overlaid it atop the world. The room was there, I could see the bed and the vanity, the mantel and the floorboards. I could even see the ceiling, the wi
ndows, the gloaming beyond.
Yet what stood out more brilliantly than the rest was the blue fire that traced it all.
I reached out with my free hand, uncertain whether I meant to catch it or ward it away. Strands of energy floated through the air, as ephemeral as a cobweb. It dissolved when my fingers touched it, and I gasped again when I noted that my own body had turned to a wild cacophony of color. Blue, orange, violet and green. Skeined through the heart of my hand—as though a single thread held it all together—a crimson line glowed softly.
“What is this?” I asked, whispering in case a loud noise might disturb it all.
Ashmore did not let me go, but his voice lacked the surprise or awe filling me. “Aether. You are viewing the cosmos.”
“What?” Though I tried to turn to look at him, his arm only tightened at my waist.
“Look there,” he said, grasping my jaw to turn my head towards the window. His breath stirred the fine hair just by my ear. “Can you look beyond?”
I frowned at the wash of blue, trying to see beyond the subtly shifting shades painting my sight.
As I did, a streak of violet flashed once and was gone.
“Why are there so many colors?” I asked. “Is this all ambient aether?”
“Very good. Close your eyes.”
I did, and his palm came to rest over them, ensuring that I no longer saw anything at all.
“This represents your initiation into the exoteric paths of alchemy,” he said, his voice a low, determined note that filled my senses. Without my sight, with my mind still reeling from what I’d seen, his voice overwhelmed me. “From this, you will develop your skills, your mind and soul, and seek perfection. There is no turning back. Do you understand?”
My throat dry, it was all I could do to nod.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he told me. The arm about my waist loosened, then left me altogether, leaving me standing alone in what I imagined was that sea of blue.
Aether. I’d seen it. Without use of Mr. Finch’s aether engine, without any sort of tool, I’d seen it. I’d touched it.
It filled me.
Did it fill Ashmore too?
I wanted to turn, to look at him, but a gentle hand upon my back kept me still. Then, soft as silk, a cloth banded my eyes. “You cannot call upon the crystal sphere to return your sight to normal,” he said, even as he tied the cloth tight. “As with all skills, one must master each step before moving to the next. The Trumps are the pinnacle of alchemical understanding.”
“Was it your doing that allowed me to see this?” I asked, tilting my head a fraction. With all the light denied me, my balance suffered. I splayed out my arms.
“Just so. You will not be able to call upon them by yourself yet.”
“When?”
“When you are appropriately prepared. Even then,” he continued with such stern warning that I could not hide a smile, “utilizing the Trumps will drain you of energy and will. Master the scientific process first.”
I licked my dry lips, tottering some as I reached out blindly. “Why show me this now?”
“Your mind needs goals.”
A fair enough assumption, and one I could not argue with. To be able to see raw aether, to draw from it as one might distill it from the ambient air in the manner of Mr. Finch’s aether engines, seemed too incredible for words.
As ambitions came, I had never expected mine to fall in line with what I would have called parlor tricks even some few months past.
I touched the blindfold with one hand. “Until then? Am I doomed to remain blindfolded forever?”
“No.” Warm fingers brushed my neck. “This will wear off in time. Until then, your eyes will be unused to a world gilded in quintessence. This is for your protection.”
I shuddered, tilting my head to allow him better access. He did not disappoint me, easing his fingers into the hair just beyond my ear. I sighed. “I cannot study like this.”
“No, you can’t, can you?”
“What shall I do instead?” I asked, voice catching as he tugged gently upon my hair. I turned with the movement, though I did not know where he stood, or what he expected of me.
“What do you choose to do?”
Everything. I’d seen it with my own eyes—the aether that moved through the world. I’d seen it in my own body, could still see it clear as day in my mind’s eye.
I could do anything I chose.
How arrogant and ignorant I had seemed, declaring such things to be nothing more than superstitious nonsense.
I reached out, found Ashmore’s chest an arm’s length away. My mouth curved up. It was not my imagination that his heart pounded beneath my palm.
“Ashmore.”
“Yes, minx?”
I stepped closer, sliding my hands up his chest, over the warm, strong column of his throat. I felt him swallow beneath my palms. His hair tickled the tips of my fingers as I slid them into the silken strands.
“Will you pass the time with me?” I asked, my face tilted upward. My gaze searched the black behind the blindfold, but whatever he had done to the cloth, no trace of quintessence burned my vision.
I felt the way his jaw muscles moved when he smiled. “Without your sight?” he inquired, but with a wickedly delicious note to his voice I felt as much as heard.
Without any sight at all, it was as though the things he did were sharper, more emphatic.
Delightfully pleasant, even.
The tip of his index finger touched my lower lip. I jumped once, but my fingers tightened in his hair, and he laughed softly.
“If this is what you choose,” he told me, as though it were all the response he needed.
I smiled beneath his caress. “Will you allow me?”
“Cedo maiori,” he said, and replaced his finger with the heat of his mouth.
I yield to a greater person.
As I would yield to the sensations slipping beneath my skin. In so doing, I imagined that I bathed in the blue glow of the aether Ashmore had shown me. It wrapped around me, wrapped around us both as he carried me to the bed and laid me upon it.
Thoroughly, intimately, Ashmore guided me through the black oblivion of my sight. I found release twice in his arms, directed unerringly by his touch, and again when he finally entered me with his own body.
He made no move to remove the blindfold. I reveled in the wicked thrill this granted me.
Later, when I lay in the cradle of Ashmore’s arms, he tugged the blindfold free. I squinted, the dim light all at once too much after hours of darkness, but there was no blue glow, no threads of orange and violet and that skein of red beneath my skin.
Only Ashmore’s face, smiling lazily down at me, his eyes a sated mossy green. “Dare I ask how you feel?”
I wiggled my toes, which I once more wedged beneath his leg. His calf, this time, earning me an aborted chuckle and a clamp upon my feet to still them. “Was that a dream?” I asked.
“I’m flattered, minx, but—”
When I thumped him upon the chest, he laughed without any attempt to muffle it at all.
I thought him terribly handsome, then—even more so than I had before.
He tugged me closer to him, the better to ensure I could not easily maneuver to hit him again. “That was no dream,” he told me, though amusement still colored his warm tenor. I set my cheek upon his shoulder. “You have seen the world as alchemists know it. What will you do now?”
That was an easy question, and an easier test. “Study harder.”
“Why?”
“I have seen the truth,” I replied. “What more evidence do I need that I am on the correct path?”
He stroked my plait, which had managed to hold during our antics. “Then what?”
“Then I get better,” I said, sobering. I was silent for a time, and then asked softly, “You will help me master alchemy, won’t you?”
His heart pounded steadily beneath my ear, counter to my own, which eased at a slower pace. The pleasure I�
��d felt, that bliss I’d hoped to find, remained soft and warm within me.
When no answer came from him but the steady rise and fall of his breathing, I thought perhaps he’d gone to sleep.
I closed my eyes, a small smile tugging my lips.
I had worn him out with my antics. This achievement only added to my contentment.
Just as I felt myself nodding off, Ashmore lifted a hand to cradle my head against his chest. “God help us both,” he whispered, so quiet I was not sure I heard it correctly. “But I will.”
I meant to answer, to indicate that I valued his undertaking, but I could not fight free of the lassitude that filled me.
Satiated, trusting in my contentment, I allowed myself to sleep without apprehension.
Such was my downfall.
* * *
I did not run. Smoke boiled around me, swirling and tossing as though it were a living sea, yet I could not lift my feet from the ground upon which I stood—a ground so black as to be indistinguishable from the hazy air.
I turned my head this way and that, and though I opened my mouth, no sound came from my throat.
This was not the comfortable dark of Ashmore’s blindfold, nor the familiar acrid sting of London’s dreary miasma. This gave nothing to the senses, not sight nor smell, taste or sound. I could not feel the air upon my skin, nor will my body to move from where I stood. I heard nothing.
I dreamt of formless, empty existence, and in that dream, I was trapped.
Fear welled up within me, an icy tide turning my fingers to shuddering fists. I could not lash at what I could not see, and the smoke ghosted playfully about my face as though it knew my dilemma.
Was I alone in this black reverie?
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs so that I might scream my way free of this crushing silence, but the smoke slipped into my mouth and nose did not retain its lack of form. It seared my senses, sliding through my body with the familiar spice and burn of the smoke I had come to forget.
My body throbbed in remembered need.
Tempered: Book Four of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 22