He snapped his eyes open, the order one he was sure came from him, blurred vision taking in an unfamiliar ceiling. He tracked his gaze from one corner to the other, giddy in a way that left him light-headed even while prone—this was him.
This was his body.
He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth, swallowing convulsively. The taste was horrendous, all chemical traces that would not wash away. Nathaniel gagged and tried to roll over but found that he couldn’t. Panic gripped him, made him gasp and pull against the restraints holding him down.
A cool hand touched his forehead, and a face bent over his, blocking out the light. “Shh, shh. It’s all right. Calm down. You’re still recovering.”
Nathaniel forced his vision to focus, eyes watering as he stared up into Caris’ beloved face and—couldn’t stop the wordless, guilty moan that slipped past his lips. He tried to move away from her touch, but Caris never lifted her hand. The tremulous smile on her face wasn’t one of joy but of exhausted worry. It widened once she realized he was tracking, that he was awake.
“Sorry,” Nathaniel finally got out in a scraped-raw voice. “I’m sorry.”
She stroked her fingers over his forehead, trailing down to his temple. “It wasn’t you.”
But it had been, and he’d have to live with that for the rest of his life.
However long it was.
“What do you remember?” Caris asked.
He closed his eyes, unable to meet her gaze. Most of the blank spots in his mind were gone, impossibly filled up again with moments he’d rather forget. “What I did to you…”
“It wasn’t you,” Caris repeated. “I know it wasn’t you.”
Nathaniel opened his eyes when something cool and wet dropped onto his cheek. Caris’ eyes were watery, the skin beneath them bruised dark from little sleep. He wanted so very much to hold her, to wipe her tears away, but all he could do was lie there, weak and in pain and riven with guilt.
“It was my hands,” he managed to say.
“It wasn’t your intent.”
As if that mattered. As if the insidious control that had suffused his entire being had cared aboutintent.
“Ah, he’s awake,” a new voice said. “Let’s sit him up.”
Caris smoothed his hair back away from his eyes one last time before stepping back, out of sight. The clanking grind of gears filled the room, and the table he was lying on moved. His head rose up as his feet sank down, the table tilting to an angle that let him better see the room they had him in.
It was a laboratory, he realized, different from the one he’d been caged in. Those memories were flashes in his mind, like bits of shattered glass, glimpses of a fractured whole. But he remembered enough to know that Caris shouldn’t be around him. He tried to think back further than that, but much of it was difficult to grasp. The more he prodded at the memories, the more gaps he became aware of.
Movement caught his eyes, and he stared forward. The warden who planted herself in front of him had been there from the beginning of his stay here below. She studied him with the distant, exacting attention of an alchemist running experiments, with himself the puzzle at her fingertips. He certainly felt like one.
“What do you remember?” Ksenia asked.
It seemed to be the question of the hour, and while his recent memory felt like a sieve, there was one that cut through it all like the sharpest blade. He doubted he’d ever forget it; the healing burns on his arm and torso would never let him. “Caris shouldn’t be here.”
“So you remember that. What else?”
“Ksenia,” Caris said tiredly.
The warden held up her hand, and Caris lapsed into silence. “The compulsion set upon your mind was extremely intricate. It was chemical-based and aether-made, powered by the clockwork metal heart in your chest.”
“Did you take it out?” Nathaniel rasped.
Ksenia’s mouth thinned into a hard line. “The compulsion? It’s been unraveled from your mind, but I couldn’t remove it completely. It’s tied too closely to the other spells that keep you alive. Your mind is your own again, for now, but not without some damage to some of your recent memories, though I was able to recover others. As to your clockwork heart? No. It remains inside you.”
Nathaniel closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the slanted table, breathing in through his mouth. He held it in his lungs, stoppered up, listening as the pulse in his ears pounded overloud like drums through every inch of his skin. He’d not been able to focus before, but now he couldhearthe difference, subtle as it was. He could feel it as well, had been able to sense that cold weight in his chest since leaving Amari. “Why aren’t I dead?”
Caris’ cool fingers wrapped around his clenched hand, and when he opened his eyes, she was looking right at him, bottom lip bitten raw between her teeth. “Because I couldn’t live with myself if I left you as you were.”
“I’m a danger. To you, to the Clockwork Brigade—”
