Caris ran her tongue against the back of her teeth, nerves tingling from a crystalline hum that only got louder the closer Nathaniel got to her worktable. She wrenched her attention away from the sound, focusing on him. “A particular problem that needs to be solved.”
“I’m sure you’re the one who will solve it.”
She grimaced, glancing over at the blueprints taking up half her worktable. “We’ll see. I’d rather this hadn’t been invented at all.”
Nathaniel came around to stand beside Caris, attention on her rather than the tools and machine parts and clarion crystals scattered around her workspace. “I just got out of a meeting with the duchess.”
Caris nodded stiffly. She’d known that meeting had been scheduled, and she’d opted instead to bring Wyatt out to the laboratory. He wasn’t allowed to work unsupervised, and Caris was still too angry over the situation with her parents and herself to sit across a table from Meleri and pretend politeness.
“Anything of note being discussed?” she asked.
Nathaniel leaned his hip against the worktable, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked down at her. His expression was troubled, and Caris knew she wouldn’t like what he had to say. “Could we go somewhere private?”
Caris glanced down at the half-finished clarion crystal and shook her head. “I’m not allowed off the estate. Not without a veil, at least, and Lore has been keeping those locked up. Perhaps the garden?”
“I don’t mind taking a meal break,” Wyatt said from his worktable, agreeable as always to anything the Clockwork Brigade needed. Caris didn’t know if it was out of guilt or not, but she supposed it didn’t matter.
Nathaniel nodded at that suggestion, and Caris waved off the guard who would have stayed behind. She didn’t need attending to, and besides, her mother had left her alone with Nathaniel once upon a time. If Portia allowed it, then Meleri would have to accept it as well. Besides, who would their privacy be reported to? It wasn’t as if they were at a ball during the season. Her reputation was already in tatters if one was to go by certain broadsheets. Others exalted her in a way she was uncomfortable with.
Nathaniel only ever saw her as herself.
The door closed behind the last guard, leaving them in the heat of the garage, with the mechanical fans spinning at their highest settings. Caris clasped her hands together over her bent knee, booted foot resting on the rung of the stool. The faint hum in her ears was persistent, and she did her best to ignore it.
“You look better,” Caris said, smiling softly.
Nathaniel reached up to run a hand through his blond hair, fingers catching at the leather tie that held his queue in place. He’d seemed exhausted from the ordeal of escaping Amari, funneled out through cogs that passed him forward along the chains of the Clockwork Brigade. Escape was never sure, but it was made easier by the fact he hadn’t yet been tattooed with bank numbers.
But he was the only one of his family to escape. Caris knew that heartache well, for she still wished desperately she could save her parents from the accusations that would see them dead if Eimarille had anything to say about it.
Sighing, Nathaniel let both arms drop to his sides, hands braced against the worktable. “Lore received a coded message earlier this morning. Paradis was raided by the Collector’s Guild. Scarlette didn’t make it out alive.”
Caris flinched at that news. Despite her anger with the secrets kept from her, Caris wasn’t willing to walk away from her duty as a cog. The cogs in Paradis hadn’t been in her chain, but since her arrival to Veran, Caris had been neck-deep with the others in determining what to do with cogs left behind in Amari. She’d been privy to cogs and chains previously kept separate from her own out of necessity. Losing the burlesque club that doubled as a place where debt slaves were funneled out of Ashion was a critical hit. They’d taken too many of those since the riot.
“Did you know anyone there?”
“They were part of my chain. Scarlette, the woman who owned it, was one of my cogs.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She knew the risks. We all did.” He managed a wan smile for her as he straightened up. “Have you eaten yet? I doubt the duchess would allow me to escort you out, but perhaps a meal in the garden will suffice.”
“I’d like that.” Her hand drifted up to the necklace hanging from her throat. “I have something for you.”
She pulled the chain from beneath her work blouse, the ring the only thing hanging from it. Caris undid the clasp of the chain and pulled it free, letting the ring slide off into her palm. It was warm from resting against her skin, the gold glinting in the light.
Caris offered it back to Nathaniel, biting the inside of her lip. “I never wanted any of what’s happened to occur. To you or your family. If this is all you may have of them, I want you to have it back.”
Nathaniel touched her fingers and gently curled them over the ring. “Keep it. Please. As a token of my affections, if you must.”
Caris’ breath hitched in her throat, a flush coming to her cheeks when Nathaniel lifted her hand and turned it so he could brush a light kiss over her knuckles. “I’ll keep it safe.”
“I know you will. Here, let me put it back on you.”
Nathaniel took the ring and the chain from her, threading them together. Caris slipped off the stool and turned around, putting her back to him. She gathered up her shoulder-length hair as best she could, lifting it off her nape. Nathaniel stepped in close behind her, his warmth bleeding through her clothes, making her pulse quicken. Caris had never felt this way about anyone else through the years, unable to understand the ease with which other ladies her age could fall in and out of love.
She’d come to only want Nathaniel, an incremental realization that took four years for her to comprehend, and only then, at the moment he was torn from her. But Nathaniel was back, and his arms went around her how she thought a lover’s might, brushing against her body ever so gently.
He looped the necklace around her throat, the ring falling down between her breasts for just a moment. Caris closed her eyes, listening to the sound of him breathing and the distant, discordant hum of clarion crystal cut wrong. The chain dragged upward, pulling against her throat. Caris opened her eyes when Nathaniel’s fingers ghosted over her skin, tracing the fluttering line of her pulse.
