This was not the work of a man who tinkered. This was something much, much more powerful.
The cool, filtered air of the lab brushed her suddenly clammy skin. Pieces came together. She glanced around the workshop area, took in the metal parts. She thought of his terrifying skill. She remembered their negotiation in her office, when he made his demands.
He wanted access to the m-generator.
He needs my bond.
She watched those sigils move until her eyes blurred and they became insects skittering across the screen, threatening to burst out and spray across the floor.
He needs power.
So many pieces. So many new connections. She could almost hear them clicking together in her mind. It was the sound of a gun being disassembled, cleaned, and put back together again — the music she used to go to sleep to whenever her father was home.
Petra’s fingers went limp in his hold. “What are you making?”
Silas watched her closely, but it was impossible to say whether he picked up on her distress or not. “I could make almost anything with the right amount of time, equipment, and power,” he answered. “And I have.”
Petra could feel the skin around her eyes and mouth going tight as the first sparks of panic made it through her shock.“But you have agoal.You have a plan. All of this has been for something. You needmefor something. Tell me what it is.”
The only thing she could equate her sudden, acute dread to was what it might feel like to walk into a friend’s house to discover they spent all their spare time learning how to make poison. It was like opening up their kitchen cabinets, their dressers, and their linen closets to discover that every single one of them was full of deadly chemicals.
No, it didn’t necessarilymeanthey were planning on killing scores of people, but they could. They had the stuff for it. The know-how. The opportunity.
It was one thing to sit down and tinker with sigils, to even be a genius with them. People and governments did it all the time. The gods knew what went on in the shady R&D labs of the EVP and other territories. She imagined it was a bit like this.
However, this wasSilas,the terrifying free agent criminal known as Shade, and there was a reason behind everything he did.
The possibilities were as endless as they were nauseating. Was he making weapons? Bombs? Something powerful enough to destabilize an entire territory, if not the UTA as a whole? If so, was he acting on his own or was he doing it for someone, something,else? The territories had been at peace for only a little over a century. It would take so little to destabilize that — money, an opportunity, and fire power. All things that could be manufactured with relative ease, given just a dash of luck.
And if one territory fell…
Gods, it’d be war all over again.
“Bodies.”
Petra fought to get enough air in her lungs to ask, “What?”
Using her limp hand to drag her to his chest, he repeated, “Bodies. That’s what I’m making. That’s what I need power for.Bodies.”
She had to brace her hands on his chest to steady herself. “For— Bodies for who? Forwhat?”
“I made a promise to a friend,” he answered, molten eyes so intense his gaze threatened to burn her. “I’ve only made two real promises in my life, Petra. First to him, and then to you. You asked me to be honest with you, so this is it. This is what I do, and this is how far I’ll go for the people who belong to me.”
Her dread turned into cold, sickly anger. “That doesn’t explain shit and you know it.”
His lips quirked. Gods, even now she loved the way that little smirk highlighted the beauty mark above his lip.
“I’ve adapted and improved experimental m-droid technology to make mechanical bodies for wraiths. The only part I’m missing is enough power to bind them to the machinery. A fuckin’ shit-load of raw, unfiltered magical power. The kind of power only a gloriana has.”
Wraiths?Petra mouthed the word, but it didn’t make any more sense than when he said it.
Wraiths were an urban legend. They were the boogeymen in the dark parents used to keep their children from wandering the house past bedtime. They were the stars of ghost stories told around bonfires and the harbingers of doom in tales of the gods. They weremyth.And even if they weren’t, nothing else about what he said made any damn sense.
Well, almost nothing.
She understood the part about needing magic. She understood that part very, very well.
“You need me, my bond, to make… bodies. For wraiths.”
