If the Mistletoe Machine stops, Christmas in Arcvale might never begin…
In the steam-powered city of Arcvale, Christmas officially starts with the Turning of the Green—the moment when the great Holly Maker and the legendary Mistletoe Machine fill every level with twining garlands of red and white.
But this year, the ancient Mistletoe Machine has fallen silent.
Lady Dorothea Renslow has always had a talent her ambitious parents dismiss—a “knack” for gears, cogs, and clockwork. After one restriction too many, she flees the marble halls of Upper Arcvale, vanishes down to the lowest levels and into the smoky Undercroft, determined to build a life where no one can tell her what a lady must or must not be.
Silas Gray, Forge Marshal of Arcvale Foundry & Clockworks, prefers boilers to ballrooms and machines to manners. In the Undercroft he’s simply Silas, a man who works beside his people with soot on his sleeves and a mechanical cat in his kitchen. And he’s happy to keep it that way.