Wrenches and bolts, Arianna mentally cursed herself. She sounded like the same idealistic girl who had let herself be swept up in the rhetoric of the last rebellion.
“One more thing, Cvareh.” She didn’t look up from her paper. “Tell Petra to ready the glider for me to return to Loom.”
There was an agonizingly long pause. “Pardon?”
“I’ll need to return to Loom. I’ll need to return to the Rivets personally. I will still have sway there—the Masters will remember me as Oliver’s student. I can teach them how to make the box. I—”
“We have everything you need here.” Cvareh said hastily. “The flowers, the gold, tools…”
Arianna looked out the window. This shouldn’t be so difficult. But here she was, struggling against the truth, fighting for words. “I need factories. I need other Rivets and Alchemists. I need to go home.”
“Can you return?”
“Why would I?” Arianna turned to see him trapped in limbo in the doorway. She wanted to stand and walk over and comfort him. She wanted to pull him into the bed and build blockades out of blankets to keep the world at bay.
“Because Petra needs me here.” The truth was more deadly than a paring knife between her eyes, though the pain may have been equal. “She won’t let me go again. I can’t afford the suspicion.”
“Understandable. Your place is here, mine is on Loom.”
“Arianna, that cold and detached persona will no longer work on me.” Cvareh stood his ground, literally and proverbially. “I know you, and I know that you…”
“That I what?” she pressed, seeing if he would really say the words her mind filled in. Cvareh faltered. “You barely know me, Cvareh.”
“After tonight, I think I do.”
“One day of sex and a small conversation does not give you my mind, all my history, my truths. You will never understand what drives me.”
“I don’t have to.” He smiled soothingly. “I merely have to love it.”
“You’re being a fool.” The man was going to paint color on her gray and dreary dreams, and somehow, she wanted to let him.
“No.” He stepped toward her, rather than hastening away to his sister to report that he had finally secured all that House Xin needed. “I think this is one of the few times where I’m not.”
That smile, sharp canines and all, was more dangerous than it had ever been. She hooked a hand on his neck and brought her mouth to it. Arianna wanted to taste the flavor of hope again.
“I love you, Arianna. And I will not stand in your way, but I will also not let you flee from this. Reject me if you must, and that will be that. Until you do, I will see my future built with space for you in it.”
She searched his face as if she could read the words he wanted her to say off it with ease. But she was tired. There was only so much change that could be expected of a single person in one day.
Cvareh eased away, but there wasn’t disappointment in his motions, merely patience. “I should go to my sister.”
She watched him go, still caught in the same limbo. He loved her.Loved. Arianna placed a hand on her chest, feeling nothing. She remembered what it felt like to have a beating heart, though she hadn’t in years. Eva had cut out the heart Ari had given her, and Arianna had built a new clockwork machine to take its place.
She didn’t remember anything in her designs that would allow her to love again.
37.Petra
Her people, herfamily, were dying in the streets.
By the time word arrived to Petra of the mysterious circumstances under which they were suffering, it was far too late to even attempt to save the majority of them. The organs from a slave squished under her feet as she paced the room. Killing the messenger solved nothing, but the scent of blood made her mind sharp and her senses keen. Killing directed her rage at someone worthless, so it didn’t escape through her at the people she needed to depend on.
The doors at the far end of the hall opened. Claws out, fangs bared, Petra wheeled in place to look at who had traversed into her space at such a time. There were only about five people she wouldn’t kill on sight, and lucky for Cain, he was one of them.
“Cain, tell me news. Tell me something worthwhile.” She felt utterly useless, and it was a feeling Petra both loathed and feared. She was the Xin’Oji, the young warrior, the champion of blue. She knew how to fight her way out of any corner.
“Petra’Oji.” Cain’s bare chest heaved as he fought to catch his breath. “I just arrived from overseeing healers from Napole to Easwin. They began to try to help the living, but their medicines are failing, so they looked to the dead. They suspect poison.”
“Poison?” Petra repeated out of pure shock. A shameful death, poison was only reserved for killing animals without marring their pelt or flesh, or for the ill whose hearts could not be safely consumed seeking relief. Petra tried to think of even one poison, but could not name any. “It was not a rash of sour elk? Or an unhealthy growth upon the yeast?”
