Caris stepped away from the sofa, needing to move. Tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them back. Part of her knew Meleri was right, but most of her wanted to risk the warrant on her head to save her parents. “This is my fault for leaving them behind.”
“It is no one’s fault save Eimarille’s and Daijal’s,” Blaine said.
She made a cutting motion with her hand before crossing her arms over her chest. “If they use mind magic against my parents, then none of us are safe. Eimarille will know about all of us.”
“That was a risk we always knew was inevitable,” Meleri said, sounding weary. “The only way to subvert that has been to offer up a different road.”
Caris’ lip curled upward as she turned to glare at the duchess. “Me.”
“You were always meant to rule.”
Caris had been trained to run a business, to create inventions that would make living on Maricol easier. What she’d learned at Meleri’s side over the last few years wasn’t even close to the skills Caris knew she’d need to rule a country—something she didn’t want to do.
Or even knew if she could.
“I am not your queen,” Caris said, clutching at her elbows.
“As you say.”
Caris opened her mouth, not sure what she would have said to that—something her mother would’ve been disappointed in hearing, she was sure—when the piercing sound of a warning siren echoing through the walls nearly made her jump.
Lore cocked her head to the side, pursing her lips. “That tone is for revenants, not a storm. They’ll be closing the gates.”
“A second attack so soon is not normal. I’m on wall duty when the sirens sound, so I will take my leave,” Hyacinth said brusquely.
The captain left, closing the door to the library behind her. Caris huffed out a breath before heading for the door as well.
“Where are you going?” Lore asked sharply.
“Anywhere but here,” she tossed over her shoulder.
Caris walked out, the thought of her mother’s ire about her manners the only thing keeping her from slamming the door shut behind her. She quickly made her way through the estate until she reached the ground floor and the door that led to the small courtyard set between the main house and the detached garage.
The garage doors—both for the motor carriages and for people—were guarded day and night by military personnel, with at least one being a magician. Though the soldiers weren’t dressed in the typical military uniforms, they carried military-issued pistols and wands. Caris saw their hands twitch in aborted motions of a salute at her approach. It was yet another reminder of the position everyone had placed her in, whether she agreed to it or not.
Caris shouldered open the side door with a soft grunt, stepping inside what felt like an oven. Someone had winched open the high windows lining the garage and set up portable mechanical fans in the corners to move the heavy air about. It was still hot enough that Caris found herself shrugging out of the day jacket she wore and rolling up the sleeves of her linen blouse.
Dureau looked up from the stack of blueprints spread out over the worktable on the left, blinking at her through the dust motes dancing through the sunbeams. “Did the meeting finish already?”
“No,” Caris said shortly.
Dureau arched an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. She appreciated him not needling her, but mostly, she knew his silence was due to the company he kept there in the garage. Caris sidled up to the table Dureau was at rather than the worktable Wyatt had taken up. She looked at where the inventor sat hunched over shards of clarion crystal scattered around his workspace, with a crate of them situated off to the side.
Blueprints were all well and good, but they were aplan, not an actual machine with moving parts. They needed to see how the energy of the aether flowed through the death-defying machine if they were going to at all understand what Eimarille had created. The gaseous and spore components were purposefully missing from the build, but the energy output was something they needed records of and which Caris was determined to study.
Despite the horrific transmutation process that occurred, the underlying technology could hopefully be parlayed into something better, something that could give aid rather than do harm. Caris was a fierce proponent of technology and inventing. While she knew they wouldn’t be able to undo the effects of the death-defying machine, she hoped something better could be built out of the tragedy Eimarille was overseeing.
Wyatt’s knowledge of the death-defying machine was helpful, but no one trusted the Daijalan inventor. Even with mind magic to prove he’d had no choice in aiding the Fletcher bloodline with this endeavor, indebted as he was to Samuel Fletcher for his schooling, it didn’t absolve him of all the deaths he’d been a party to.
Caris could see it in his eyes whenever he managed to meet her gaze, could hear it in the sick regret that came through his voice whenever he spoke about what he had done, what he had seen. She’d pity him if she didn’t know that some of those revenants he’d helped create were quite possibly clawing at Veran’s walls right now.
She skimmed her gaze around the space Meleri had allowed them to take over. She noted the pair of soldiers sitting at a different table near one of the fans, their attention never leaving Wyatt. Caris shifted on the stool, picking at the corner of a blueprint. “My parents have been arrested.”
“I’m sorry,” Dureau said.
She didn’t want platitudes or sympathy—she wanted a plan to free her parents. But with the breach of the western border and the occupation of Haighmoor by Daijalan forces, Caris knew everyone’s attention would be on the threat aimed at the country, not the one aimed at Caris’ heart.
She flattened her hand over the blueprint, studying the precise lines marked there that delineated a layer of the death-defying machine’s inner workings. “I need something to do.”
