“I know what to listen for now,” Caris cut in. “I know what arionetkasounds like. And if it can be undone, why wouldn’t I try to help you?”
“Will itstayundone?” He dragged his gaze away from Caris, focusing on Ksenia, who didn’t bother lying to him how anyone else would have. For that, he was grateful.
“We don’t know. The framework of the compulsion spell is etched into your clockwork heart, along with the self-destruct one. There is always a risk you can again become what they made you,” Ksenia said.
He licked his lips, dry skin catching on his tongue. “A puppet.”
“Yes.” He couldn’t hear pity in her voice or see it in her eyes. The warden looked at him from the precipice of a life lived in the poison fields and all the uncertainty and danger that road offered. No, there was no pity in her gaze, only a tired sort of understanding that made bile crawl up his throat.
He swallowed it down.
From one puppet to another—rionetkaor tithe, the syllables meant the same thing—they both had their roles to play, a road to walk.
A life to live, if one could call it that.
Caris picked at the leather strap of the cuff holding his left wrist in place. “Let’s get you out of here. You’ve been down here for almost two weeks and haven’t seen the sun.”
“I shouldn’t be around you,” he protested.
Her gaze snapped up to his, gray eyes wide in her face and filled with a steely sort of determination that he’d never had cause to doubt. “None of this was you.”
She ducked her head, working on the restraints that kept him bound to the table. Both Caris and Ksenia were there to help him off once they were undone. His legs didn’t want to hold him up, shaky and weak from days of experimentation. The clockwork metal heart in his chest steadily beat as he went down to his knees, cradled in Caris’ arms. She kept him upright, her grip tight, and Nathaniel found himself curling into her touch.
“You need to be careful.” She ran her fingers through his dirty, sweaty hair and pressed a chaste kiss to his forehead. “The wardens don’t know how long their magic and chemicals can keep your heart going. The self-destruct spell was rerouted and contained within the clarion crystals but not eradicated. It was too dangerous to try. Nathaniel…”
Her words came out in a whisper, the fear in them louder than if she’d screamed. Nathaniel curled one arm around her waist, fingers scraping over the cool leather of her corset belt. Yes, the wardens had given back his mind and control of his body, but the specter of death lingered in what passed as his heart.
If he wanted to save himself—to saveher—he’d walk away from Caris, from the Clockwork Brigade, to find some distant corner of Maricol where perhaps the tangled strings of a puppet master’s control could never find him. He didn’t think anyone would blame him if he did, but that wasn’t how his parents had raised him.
Nathaniel lifted his head and touched his fingers to Caris’ jaw, urging her to look at him. He brushed aside some of her dark hair to better see her eyes, managing to dredge up a smile somehow. It cracked the edges of his mouth, dry lips bleeding a little.
“I will love you until my heart breaks,” Nathaniel promised.
Caris’ expression crumpled, and when she kissed him, there on the laboratory floor deep below ground, he could taste the salt of an ocean on her lips, and it drowned him.
Eight
CARIS
Caris wiped her clammy hands on her trousers beneath the table where no one in the room could see. Blaine sat on her right and Honovi beside him. Nathaniel was elsewhere, Delani
having been adamant he wasn’t allowed to be present during their meeting because of what had happened to him. She didn’t trust him, even if Caris wanted to. It wasn’t his fault, after all, but she could understand why the wardens wanted to keep him ignorant of their plans.
Delani had a spot at the head of the table, and every seat left was filled by wardens, with yet more standing against the wall. She recognized a few. The intensity of everyone’s attention was not unlike when she’d presented her graduation project for final approval.
Laid out in the center of the table were the broken pieces of what had once been the clockwork cat belonging to Petra. The warden in question was seated at the table, her face an eerie emotionless mask. Whatever her feelings on the destruction of the clockwork device that had been by her side for years, apparently, it wasn’t enough to make her leave.
“Therionetkasare based on our alchemy, our science twisted for someone else’s gain. The same spell that powered Tock and gave it life is the framework for the one keeping Nathaniel breathing,” Delani said.
“Olet died in the poison fields,” Petra said.
“How do you know if a warden is truly dead rather than run off?” Blaine asked. Caris winced at the rude looks thrown his way. It was a tactless question to ask, but it had to be voiced.
“Wardens have a duty, and we are trained never to abandon it,” Delani said.
“Surely some must have in the past? Your dead who never return?”
The archivist—a warden in her eighth decade whose sole job was to record the names given to tithes, their time as a warden, and their deaths—had her finger on a line in a massive tome with yellowed pages. “Olet was recorded as dead fifteen years ago. He’d been assigned the northern border of Daijal at the time. The way station in his section never received his border reports.”
