This Rogue Will Be Oh So Charmed

Jan 15, 2026 2:06 pm

Lovely readers!

In one of my last letters, I asked you what your favorite art style was. Most people said the image with Diana and Temple in front of the window, but the second most popular style was the one of Nico and Jane (wearing the green gown) because it is, to quote one of you, like a warm hug.

So as I plan to get character art for book 2 of Alchemy of Desire--Charming the Rogue--I'll keep this in mind!

Oh yes, Charming the Rogue... it's with my copy editor! And I thought I'd give you guys a first taste of it below:

***

Sybil circled the table and the unformed lump of metal at its middle. She’d thought of many possibilities over the last few weeks she’d carried it in her pocket. A weapon, jewelry, something practical for the kitchen or forge. None of it felt quite right. She could alloy it. She was particularly good at that. Combine it with nickel or carbon.

She was tired of thinking. The clock ticked down.

She plucked the iron off the table and strode to the fire. She’d figure it out as she worked.

The flames danced, calling to her, spiraling into beautiful, violent ribbons of rage. Clutching the iron lump in her fist, she held her hand near the heat, closed her eyes. Her first time with iron. She must keep it simple. No alloys. The metal must teach her how it moved, what its strengths and weaknesses were, how it could be shaped. At what point of abuse it would be broken. She must learn its rhythm and its song, must learn to coax it, play with it. There would be no domination—her will over its needs.

Sybil and the iron would work together.

Her hand was warming, flames licking skin and bone until it burned bright. She thrust it farther into the flames.

Ice and sunlight. That’s what it felt like. Cold and hot at the same time. And perfect. Always perfect. She breathed low and steady until the iron melted, pouring across her flame-hardened skin.

“What do you wish to be, lovely?” she whispered through the wavering heat. The iron buzzed and bubbled. She felt that way often—buzzing and bubbling, trapped and trying to find the right shape. A key. She’d take the shape of a key to attack the lock that kept her trapped.

The iron found its purpose, and she laughed, knowing now how to shape it. She pulled her hand from the forge and strode for the worktable, letting the air cool the iron just a bit, enough to begin shaping. Her arm glowed bright orange, and her fingernails were bright white pinpricks of light. When she had the basic shape, she threw her arm into a nearby bucket of water and grinned at the sizzle, the steam. It tickled.

A drop of sweat rolled down her temple, another down the slope of her neck, and beneath her stays and man’s shirt, she was sopping. Breast sweat was horrid, and not something her brothers must deal with. Lucky bastards, all of them.

She shaped and hollowed. She poked through odds and ends in the shop as the metal cooled. She plunged it once more into the flames and splashed it again into the bucket. She assembled tiny bits and tested little mechanisms.

Outside her window, the shadows of the little wood behind Nickleby House shifted with the sun’s position in the sky. She noted the change. She must always note the time in these stolen hours. Her parents were less traditional than many of the alchemist set, but they would still drop stone dead if they knew what she was doing when they were away.

And what exactly was that?

She could not make a career out of metal as her brothers could.

Not this way. Not with her hands in the fire and metal beneath her nails.

But her inventions, the work of her mind—that would be her purpose. Her self-apprenticeship in the forge would help her better understand the metals so that her designs weren’t merely theoretical. She needed a working knowledge of her materials for her inventions to surpass the current boundaries of impossibility.

None of that mattered, though. She would have to wed, and a transcendent husband would barely tolerate her sketched fancies, and she’d be stealing fewer secret hours in the forge than ever before. Perhaps none.

Sybil stood, stretching her back and blowing a lock of hair out of her eyes. She’d tried the marriage path. It hadn’t worked out. And now that only the transcendents would have her...

Ew.

Preening, narcissistic nodcocks, the lot of them.

She picked up the old rag and found the tub of setting liquid. She used the tongs to plunge the lock into it the bucket, rubbed it clean, set it to dry. Now no one could mess with the metal, reshape it to their whims. She poised above the setting liquid to immerse the key.

The clatter of carriage wheels on the road out front made her jump.

“Vulcan,” she swore, slipping the unset key into her pocket and snapping up the lock. They were home too soon. She was out of time. She pocketed the lock, too, and snatched her gown off its hook. She was one leg into it as she peeked out the front window of the forge. Only one carriage out front. A black coach that seemed a part of the gathering dark, a harbinger of the coming night.

She didn’t recognize it.

She pulled the gown up her arms but didn’t tighten it. It stayed loosely in place as she left the forge and stood in the shadows between it and Nickleby House.

The coach shook. Then three hulking men stepped out and onto the lawn. They spoke amongst themselves, their voices too low to hear.

She crept forward. “Can I help you?” Her hands were still hot from the forge. Not hot enough to glow, but hot enough to hurt a man if necessary. And Martha, the housekeeper was likely in the kitchen. If she screamed, Martha would hear.

But surely these men weren’t here to hurt her. No reason for that. Still… worry crept along her pulse. They could be here for her father, her brothers. They could be men with grudges, angry that the Grants had risen in society after being exiled from alchemist circles.

The men’s attention snapped to her. One reached into his greatcoat pocket.

And pulled out a pistol. “Evening, miss. You’ll be coming with us if you don’t mind.”

Sybil’s blood froze. She found herself, inexplicably, giggling, hilarity born of terror. “I think, gentlemen, that I do indeed mind.”

“I’ll shoot.”

No more laughter. “Do your worst.”

She didn’t mean it. Not one bit. She’d been held hostage last summer, a knife to her neck, by her sister-in-law’s cousin—Apollo Chester, former marquess of Fordham, irredeemable villain, and charmingly gorgeous when he wasn’t foxed or worse. He’d held her fast with bruising fingers, relieved a drop of blood from her pulse like a ruby.

It had not been enjoyable, and she had no desire to repeat the experience.

“Won’t get our money if we do our worst,” the man with the pistol said. “Hired to deliver you alive.”

Another of the men shoved his elbow into Pistol’s ribs. “We could shoot her arm. Make her docile as a lamb.”

“Yeah,” the third man said. “Still alive, like. But bleedin’.”

Oh God.

Sybil ran. And screamed. “Martha!” Her gown fell down one shoulder. Then the other. One foot tangled in the long skirts. She yanked, still running—more like pushing through a field of vines—but the other foot caught. Oh God. The men were so close. She let the gown fall. Free. Finally, thank Hestia, free. “Mar—”

A hand wrapped around her mouth, silencing her, and big, beefy arms lifted her off the ground.

She kicked and threw her elbows, became a wild cat, hissing and scratching. But six arms were too much. Her gown was ripped and falling. Her body lifted and strangled. By the time, the coach swallowed her whole, her gown was gone entirely. Still she kicked, trying to bite the palm across her lips.

“Got the potion?” Pistol said.

Fumbling, then the hand on her face was moving, squeezing her cheeks, forcing her mouth open.

“No!” she gasped.

Too late. Cold liquid burned its way between her lips and down her gullet. She tried to spit it out, but the beefy palm closed over her once more. She was crying. She was thrashing.

Then she couldn’t thrash any more. Limbs too heavy. Eyelids, too.

Trying to resist the unrelenting waves of lethargy, and failing, Sybil drowned.

***

This one is going to be a wild ride! Charming the Rogue releases in March but is up for pre-order everywhere now!

Pre-Order Charming the Rogue