Stacey McEwan has been teasing her new series for a while on her TikTok and Instagram—including a quote that we're still thinking about weeks later—and now the big reveal is finally here! The fantasy author is kicking off her new series starting with A Forbidden Alchemy and it's definitely kicking off with a spark as we finally get to know more about Nina Harrow and Patrick Colson's relationship in this magical new world that she's come up with.
Cosmopolitan has an exclusive look at A Forbidden Alchemy, which is set to be released on July 1, 2025. We're heading off to Belavere City where special magical chosen ones get to become Artisans. But when a revolution sets off two childhood friends to opposite sides, everything quickly starts to blur as hidden truths and first loves are revealed. Here's more info from our friends at Saga Press:
This stunning slow-burn romantasy follows a fated pair who uncover a world-changing secret and are thrust into a violent class war, navigating love, loss, and devastating betrayals.
Nina Harrow and Patrick Colson are twelve years old when they are whisked away from the shadows of their disenfranchised mining towns to dazzling Belavere City to discover their magical potential. Those who pass Belavere’s test will become Artisans, wielders of powerful elemental magic destined to fulfill the city’s grand ambitions. For Nina, the Artisan School symbolizes a dream and an escape from her harsh reality, while Patrick yearns to return to his Craftsman family, whose extraordinary physical strength serves the idium mines keeping the city alive.
And then they uncover a devastating truth: Artisans aren’t born, they’re chosen. They part ways on very different paths, leaving them to carry the burden of this secret alone.
In the years that follow, a Craftsman revolution ignites, thrusting Nina and Patrick into opposing factions of a brewing war. Now an elite Artisan with the very rare talent for charming earth, Nina has turned her back on the fight, haunted by the loss of her found family. But fate intervenes when she is captured by Patrick’s rebel group. Despite the years and conflict that separates them, Patrick hasn’t forgotten Nina. He desperately seeks her help for a mission that could shift the tides against Belavere City. Reluctantly, she agrees, battling the sparks flying between them. But when Nina’s first love reappears, asking her to betray Patrick for the sake of the Artisans, Nina faces an impossible choice that could alter the fate of their world.
We know, you totally cannot wait to dive in. But first, you have to take a look at the stunning cover that you won't be able to stop looking at. The cover design was done by Ella Laytham, while the cover illustration is by Alyssa Winans. The book will also include gorgeous sprayed edges that feature the special bottle spilling down and turning to a mesmerizing starry sky.
Oh, and you know how Stacey mentioned some special surprises in her big announcement video? Well you can officially check out an exclusive excerpt below featuring Nina and Patrick getting sneaky together. Just make sure to pre-order the book and also check out some of Stacey's previous releases while you're at it!
An Excerpt From A Forbidden Alchemy
By Stacey McEwan
Chapter 5
Nina
Patrick pulled me through the courtyard, around the groups of children resorting to schoolyard games in their boredom. I went without protest.
It was hot. I was tired and hungry and sick of waiting. I was fizzling with an anticipation I couldn’t bury. It was a relief to move.
I realized too late where he was leading me. His fingers curled tightly into the back of my hand and pulled me down the side of the building where several children sought shade and the servants of the National House smoked. Th ere was nothing here but more sandstone perimeter, more ivy climbing the limescale walls, more dust and dirt underfoot. Th e lane was fi lled with horses and carts and wagons of all sizes. Drivers bellowed at one another to make way as they came and went, trying to barrel through and around to make their next delivery. Craftsmen, every one of them.
“We’re not s’posed to be down here,” I hissed, pulling back at Patrick’s hand.
He turned, winked one of those startling eyes and smirked. “You’re not scared, are you?”
I gave him the most derisive look I could muster. “What are we doing?”
“Getting something to eat. I’m starving.”
I was, too. “If we’re caught, they’ll throw us out!”
Patrick stopped as a door to our left opened, and we dropped to the ground, protected from view by the crates stacked precariously along the exterior wall. The servant who exited did not look our way. They whistled to the driver. “You next!”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Lord, that was close.”
But Patrick’s eyes were plastered to that open door, the servant with his back turned, the space between. His face took on a frenzied gleam. My eyes widened. “Patrick. Don’t even think it.”
“Chicken,” he whispered on a grin.
“I’m not a chicken.”
“Then get your wits about you, Scurry girl. On the count of three. One—”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Two.”
“You honestly think I’ll follow you, don’t you? Do I look stupid?”
“Three.” Patrick dropped my hand, saluted me, then hurdled the crates and sprinted through the open door, disappearing within.
“Shit,” I breathed. There was absolutely no sense in following. So many people came and went, Patrick was bound to be caught. Boys were truly idiots. He’d likely smacked straight into the chest of a copper when he stepped inside. His wrists were probably in irons. He’d be taken back to the train any moment.
It was very well for him. Patrick wanted to be sent back out into the brink. What did he care if the House rejected his right to a siphoning? Perhaps it was what he sought—a way to avoid the gamble altogether.
It occurred to me then that perhaps Patrick was afraid. What if he took to the idium and it revealed him as an Artisan? He did not speak of home with a stiff jaw the way I did. No, he spoke of home as a place he belonged. What if the idium revealed he didn’t?
Perhaps I’d leave him to this poorly hatched plan, to his train and bad fortune. What did I care, after all?
The moments passed, and he did not reemerge. The door hung open, and the servant who’d exited it seemed engaged in a heated argument with a driver. No police officer hauled Patrick back out into the dust.
Go back to the courtyard, I told myself. Before someone sees. But I stayed and I waited. My heart galloped.
Suddenly, his head reappeared. Patrick’s eyes peered around the doorjamb and spied me in the hollows between crates.
The smug bastard raised an eyebrow.
Get back here! I mouthed to him, gesturing frantically. My eyes darted to the servants and drivers, all of whom were so harried that none spared a glance for the children playing cat and mouse by the door.
Hurry! I mouthed.
But Patrick Colson did not budge. Instead, he rolled his eyes, as though he’d never met a girl quite as hysterical as me, then disappeared once more.
The servants and drivers carried on with their scrimmage, and truly it seemed no one took notice of a damn thing besides. I imagined what else Patrick would call me, should I stay safely outside. Wimp. Wuss. Coward. I could already see the smirk on his face.
There was that other niggle, too. The one that longed to see the inside of this building.
Suddenly, there was an earsplitting crash as two drivers ran their wagons into each other. Horses whinnied. Men swore. The rabble intensified.
A switch inside me flipped.
Over the bleating and braying of the traffic, I bolted from my hiding place, bounded over a slew of fallen potatoes, and slipped inside the National Artisan House.
A long hallway stretched ahead, and at its end, I saw the oak desktops stretch within an open hall. Five men with bored faces sat along its length, vials in their hands, queues of children before them.
The siphoning ceremony.
Only it wasn’t so ceremonious. The officials called “Name?” as new children approached them. They ran a focusing glass down long, long lists. They retrieved a tiny vial from the crates stacked haphazardly at their sides and put it down again on the desk in front of them. “Drink,” they said.
The children did. I watched entranced as they uncorked the vial and brought it to their lips with shaky hands. They drank the solution and cinched their eyes closed as it went down. Then the officials pointed to a box of lumpy items that sat on the desk before them. “Hold each one in your hand.”
The children did as they were asked, questions in their eyes, wondering if there was something they should be feeling. They picked up and replaced each item in the box like they were shopping for ripe fruit. When nothing happened, the officials barely looked up from their lists. “Crafter,” they said. And the children’s eyes either fell or widened with relief.
There was only one child who earned a different reaction. A boy, well dressed and well groomed. He stood with his back straight and his chin high. He looked so thoroughly highborn that I couldn’t help but stare. “Theodore Shop,” he told the woman behind the desk. He drank his idium, and when he put his hand toward the box, a drinking glass filled with water quaked threateningly.
Both child and official reared back, eyes wide.
“Easy, boy,” the official told him. “Let it come to you.”
Theodore Shop frowned in concentration. Instead of lifting his hand, he simply stared at that glass.
The water within rippled with increasing intensity, swirling in violent circles, until finally the glass tipped, and water dashed across the tabletop and seeped over its sides.
Quickly, a servant approached with a rag, sopping up the mess before it dampened swaths of lists.
“Artisan. Charmer!” the official said, clapping, smiling—the first smile of any. “Medium: water!”
Theodore Shop merely stared at the mess he’d created with his mind, and a small, rose-cheeked grin emerged.
In the next moment, a hand closed over my mouth and dragged me sideways into a dark room. A door closed and smothered all light. I was pressed abruptly to a wall, and some instinct bid me to bite down.
“Ouch!” Patrick’s breath washed over my face. His fingers disappeared. “Fuck!”
The sound of footsteps in the hall approached, and we both froze. But they didn’t slow or stop, didn’t open the door to inspect. They passed by, the sound softening, and Patrick and I sagged and stifled laughter in our cuffs.
I put a hand against my thundering heart. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” there was a grin in his voice. “Holy shit.”
There was a click. A flicker. A flame spluttered to life in Patrick’s hand, illuminating his face.
For a moment, I gawked at it. It came from a tiny silver tin. “What is that?” I hated how awestruck I sounded.
Patrick watched me curiously. “A lighter. You don’t have none in Scurry?”
“If we did, would I bother asking about it?”
Patrick smirked. “This particular one is me father’s invention. Here,” and he held it up for closer inspection. “This wheel here, it sparks the flint. The oil in the canister keeps the flame burning.”
I eyed it warily. “Your dad, you say?”
Patrick winked at her. The flame danced in his irises. “Not all genius belongs to the swanks.”
My eyes fell to his lips as he spoke. He was quite a bit taller than me but as close as he’d yet been, and my stomach came alive, networks of sputtering bursts erupting from my gut up into my chest. I felt suddenly shy. My cheeks heated. “We should leave,” I whispered to him. “Now.”
He was far from panicked. In fact, his smile widened. “You followed me in,” he stated. “Didn’t think you would.”
“What?” I spluttered, the reverie broken. “You gave me no choice.”
“Nah,” he shook his head. “There were plenty of choices.” The lighter flickered as he held it higher, as though to see me better. “You chose to come in with me.”
My stomach twisted once more, and he seemed to see it.
His eyes glinted. “You like me, don’t you?”
Heat flooded my face. “What?” I blustered. “Ugh! You’re disgust—”
Patrick threw something at me then. I only just saw it before it hit my stomach. Something round and heavy.
A little cake sat cradled in my hands.
“Eat up,” Patrick said. “Then we’d better go. You’re a bad influence on me, Nina Harrow.”
I hesitated, but the rumble of my stomach soon silenced any other thought.
I said nothing as I ate, but I found myself smiling around the pieces of cake in my mouth and wondered whether the pounding of blood behind my eyes was fear or furious excitement. The two seemed tightly braided.
Patrick paced around the shelves that lined the walls, illuminating small patches as he went with his lighter. It appeared we were in a storage space of some kind. It stunk of moisture and fouling vegetables. There was movement in the corners: Patrick’s light sending rats back into the walls. Stack after stack of crates were organized in aisles. All were identical except for the brands burned into the wood, marking their contents: BRUNDLE'S CANNERY; TIMPTON AND SONS CO.; LIPSHORE LINENS.
He almost didn’t see where the floor fell away. His lighter caught on the edges of the hole before his feet did.
“Stop!” I hissed, my hands outstretched, and I pointed down. His foot hovered over the abyss.
He held the lighter into its depths. Shallow steps led to a cellar’s hatch. An open cellar hatch.
“What do you s’pose they keep in here?” he asked, and I saw that manic stupidity in his eyes return.
“Don’t even think of it.”
But Patrick had already begun to descend the steps. He lowered himself carefully onto the ladder. “We’ve come this far,” he said. “Might as well look around.”
I dithered for a moment, then followed him in.
The cellar was cold, with a floor of compacted dirt. But as for what it contained, I couldn’t tell. Patrick stood with his lighter held high, blocking all else from view. I had to shunt him aside to see.
Shelves and shelves of shallow crates stacked against one wall. The very same crates I’d seen discarded by the siphoning officials’ feet.
“Fuck me,” Patrick intoned. He held his lighter to the brand singed into the wood grain of one of the crates. PROPERTY OF BELAVERE TRENCE, it said. “You don’t think—?”
“Of course I bloody think,” I rasped, my throat suddenly closing. “Don’t touch it!”
Patrick lifted the lid of one of the crates immediately. He pulled a small vial from its insides, dark viscous liquid sloshing within. “Holy shit,” Patrick said. Then louder. “Holy shit!”
I’d clapped my hand firmly over his mouth in an instant. “Shut up, you idiot!”
Patrick slipped my grasp. “It’s fucking ink.”
“We’re in a storage room next to a siphoning ceremony, half-wit. What did you think you’d find?”
A clatter above announced the arrival of another, and my blood turned cold.
Yellow light descended into the cellar through the open hatch. “In here” ordered a bodiless voice.
In the space between breaths, Patrick extinguished his lighter. His fingers made a fist in the front of my blouse and he pulled me sideways. We tucked into a far, dark corner, where damp-smelling linens hung out of overflowing boxes and concealed the top halves of our bodies. I prayed the shadows would obscure our legs.
Sounds of movement and harsh breathing came, though I saw nothing beyond the browning cloth. Deliverymen, I assumed, carrying supplies overhead and dumping it where directed. An assertive voice instructed them. “Not there! Over there.”
The interminable thumping of my heart. The shuffle of Patrick’s feet. The feel of his breaths on the crown of my head. My fingers shaking in his. Surely, I thought. If they come down here, we’ll be heard. We’ll be found.
Patrick squeezed my fingers. Hush.
“Idium, sir?” a gruff voice asked.
“In the cellar” came the answer.
My heart seized.
I heard the grunts of a man clambering down into the dark, the dull thud of his feet finding the ground. “Pass it down,” he called.
I didn’t dare look. I sealed my eyes shut and prayed. There was the sound of wood against wood and the music of shifting glass. “These ones got wax seals on ’em.” The man heaved on each word as though he’d run several miles. “Never seen ’em bother with wax. What do you—?”
“Be on your way” was the only response. Footsteps sounded on the ladder and then receded, but the yellow light remained. Was the room above empty? Was it safe to emerge?
Another voice suddenly joined the last, and I jumped. I stepped on Patrick’s foot and felt him wince.
This time, the voice was high-pitched and lilting. It bounced off the walls. A woman’s heeled footsteps slapped the tiles above as she spoke. “Thomas, have someone come and collect the clutter out in the hall, the crates are piling up again and we’re not yet halfway through the siphonings. Where on earth are your staff?”
“Bringing in the deliveries, ma’am.”
“Then do it yourself. And bring more vials, if you please.”
The male voice seemed to hesitate. I heard him shift his feet nervously. “Ma’am . . . the, er . . . the wax seals, or?”
“No,” said the woman. “We’ve got just about all the Artisan children needed this year, the water Charmer was one of the last. Only brink towns are left.” A pause, perhaps only half a second. Enough time, though, for my heart to collapse in its cage, for Patrick’s hand to turn limp, for both of our frames to shudder, rocked at the foundation.
“Bring the Crafter-marked vials. With any luck, we’ll be finished ahead of schedule,” said the woman.
The man seemed to start a sentence, then think better. “There’s a girl in the courtyard,” he said. “Small, ginger hair. Thin as a reed. It doesn’t seem like she’s eaten in a good while.”
The woman sighed deeply but not unkindly. “She was fed on the train,” she said. “And she’ll be fed again before she returns to her family.”
“Just seems like one or two of the poorer ones could be spared that life,” the man continued. “It’d be easy enough to swap the vial—”
“Speak wisely,” hissed the woman, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Such thoughts will have you swinging from the gallows, sir. Do you understand me?”
A shuffle. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Only a handful are trusted with this knowledge, and you are paid handsomely for your remit, are you not?”
“Yes, ma’am.” It sounded more defeated this time.
A gentle sigh came, and then, “There have always been those more fortunate than others, Thomas. It is the way of the world, however unkind. Not all can be trusted with power. It must be meted out carefully.”
“Of course, ma’am. I only thought . . . ” His voice trailed off. And whatever Thomas thought was never voiced.
I wished I could see the woman’s face. I wanted to see if it was sympathetic or wretched or uncaring. I wanted to see what flashed in her eyes when she said, “The only thing we may do for those children is pray for them.”
There was the sound of crates shifting, the harsh heeled tap of the woman’s shoes receding. The man named Thomas sighed from somewhere near the hatch. And then his feet came down the ladder again.
I peeked out from behind the musty linens to see him stare forlornly at the crate in his hands, and I realized that he was much older than I’d imagined. He gripped the sides of the box as though he might crush it, but instead he set it down with the others and turned away. He climbed up the ladder and closed the hatch. The yellow light evaporated.
Patrick and I were alone again. Stiff-kneed and limp-tongued.
It took several moments for Patrick to lift the linens and step out. Longer before he remembered to come back for me. He untangled me from sheets in the dark, and I did not have the presence of mind to help him.
The lighter flickered, and a flare appeared in the space between his chin and mine, turning us both blood orange.
“What did she mean?” I asked him, much in the way a child asks an elder.
His lips looked white, even in the glow. “I don’t know.”
“Crafter-marked.” I looked to the crates branded PROPERTY OF BELAVERE TRENCH. “She said ‘Crafter-marked.’ ”
Patrick held aloft the vial he’d plucked earlier. Atop its cork was a red wax seal that barely coated the vial’s neck.
I thought of those children I’d seen in the hall, uncorking their waxless vials of idium and being declared Crafters.
We’ve got just about all the Artisan children needed this year.
“What does it mean?” I asked again, desperation leaking through. My stomach bowled. The lighter sputtered out.
“Patrick . . . what does it mean?”
Somewhere inside me, a screw wound tighter and tighter.
Excerpted from A FORBIDDEN ALCHEMY by Stacey McEwan. Copyright © 2025. Reprinted by permission of Saga Press at Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
A Forbidden Alchemy, by Stacey McEwan will be released on July 1, 2025. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
AMAZON AUDIBLE BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS-A-MILLION BOOKSHOP APPLE BOOKS KOBO LIBRO.FM TARGET WALMART POWELL'S BOOKS HUDSON BOOKSELLERS GOOGLE PLAY EBOOKS.COM
