“The body should be examined,” Blaine said.
“We need to take Honovi to the hospital first,” Karla snapped.
Honovi turned his head, catching Blaine’s eye. “TheComhairle nan Cinnidheanneeds to be informed of what happened.”
Blaine nodded jerkily. “I’ll make sure they know. Karla, I need you here.”
“I need to see Honovi safely to the hospital,” she said.
“And we need Siv’s memories.”
“Stay,” Honovi ordered, his rough voice cutting through their argument.
Karla shook her head hard before sighing harshly. “Very well.”
Blaine leaned over Honovi and pressed their foreheads together, their breath mingling. “I’ll see you when I can. Whatever is happening, I need to warn the others.”
“Take a televox from the diplomatic stores and anything else you want. If you need a way out, ring me. I won’t leave you behind,” Honovi said.
He didn’t want Blaine to be without a way for Honovi to reach him. Whatever was going on, it felt as if their roads were diverging, and he’d be damned if he let Blaine walk away from him without a way back.
Honovi gripped Blaine’s jacket, keeping him close, staring into hazel eyes he’d woken up to countless times over the years and wanted to again. “Be careful.”
Blaine smiled, a quick, fragile thing, and kissed him with all the careful tenderness that came with loving someone, no matter what. Then Honovi was hauled carefully to his feet, pain whiting out everything, the throbbing ache in his side all he could focus on as his people saw to it he got the medical care he needed while under guard.
Honovi looked back to catch one last glimpse of his husband, finding Blaine staring right at him, Siv at his feet, duty pulling both of them in opposite directions.
Seven
CARIS
Caris carefully maneuvered the cutting tool in her hand, gently carving out the shape of a decagon from the piece of clarion crystal held in the clamp. The buzz of the rotary tool at the head of the mechanized handset gently ground away at the pale blue crystal. Even with her goggles on, she could see the glow suffusing the crystal, a soft light she knew few others in the clarion crystal industry were capable of seeing.
She felt the hum it produced more in her bones than her ears, a quiet song whose notes warned her if the shape she intended was wrong. This piece was meant to channel the aether as part of a set to power a filtration machine. The order was so large and intricate that her father had brought part of it with him to Amari for him and Caris to work on.
Crystal cutting for more delicate jobs was routinely relegated to them. They should have already been back in Cosian, but the patents her father had intended to file had been repeatedly rejected. None of them could figure out why, and he was back at Ashion’s Bureau of Patents today to try and get them accepted once again.
It was left to Caris to finish some of their company’s work, and she didn’t mind the hours spent in their makeshift lab in their small home at Sixteen Rose Court Garden. Concentrating on cutting clarion crystal helped take her mind off things.
Things like people she had considered friends, and maybe more, lying to her for reasons she couldn’t understand.
She huffed out a sigh, attention on the clarion crystal as she carefully adjusted her wrist to sharpen the point between two sides. She hummed along with the melody coming from the crystal, the tune solid and happy, not discordant notes indicating cracks in the crystal.
Someone cleared their throat behind her. “Caris.”
She pulled the cutting tool away from the edge of the clarion crystal, switching it off. The buzz of it faded to nothing as she set the handheld vise down on the worktable along with the tool so she could turn and face her mother.
“I’m almost finished,” Caris said.
Portia nodded. “I can see that. You have a caller. They’re in the parlor, waiting to see you. I’ll bring them to you if you are agreeable.”
Caris groaned and flexed her fingers, easing some of the tight muscles there. She’d been working for hours, and while a break would be nice, she wasn’t in the mood to chat with anyone. “I decline.”
“Nathaniel made a compelling argument for the right to apologize. I thought you might wish to hear him out.”
Caris stiffened at Nathaniel’s name, that swoop in her stomach not entirely tied to anger. Her hand drifted toward her pocket where she carried his ring before she aborted the motion. “He’s here? And you let him stay?”
Portia’s gaze softened. “Hear what he has to say. For all that you’re angry, we can’t excise our knowing of the Clockwork Brigade, and they cannot let us go.”
