Caris steeled herself before reaching for the knob, opening the door wide enough for her to slip back inside the main laboratory. Ksenia followed on her heels, making a show of rifling through a stack of folios before grabbing one and leaving for the hallway.
Nathaniel hadn’t moved from his spot inside his cell. It was more a cage than anything else, the metal bars of equal length and height, bolted to the floor and laboratory walls in the corner. Caris could see a tray with empty dishes on the floor near a locked pass-through space.
She swallowed, crossing the laboratory on slow feet. “Hello, Nathaniel.”
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” he said, sounding so much like himself that she ached. “The wardens won’t let me out of this cage. I don’t know why I’m being kept down here.”
“It’s to keepyousafe.”
Nathaniel curled his fingers around the iron bars that separated them, staring at her with an intensity that made her skin crawl. It wasn’thimin that moment, there and gone in a flash. Nathaniel’s expression softened, as if he’d seen her hesitation. “I’d never hurt you.”
She had the ghost of bruises on her throat still from when he had. Caris swallowed against the memory of that horror and managed a tremulous smile. “I know. But the wardens are adamant you must stay down here. They’re trying to help you.”
“Why? What do they think I’ve done?”
Caris stepped closer to the cage, fiddling with the signet ring hanging from around her throat. “It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what was done to you.”
“Nothing has been done to me. I don’t know why the wardens have imprisoned me here, why you’ve let them.” His voice became cajoling, all wounded eyes and a painful grimace on his lips. “You know what I’ve worked for, what my family has worked for. We’re cogs. We believe in the Clockwork Brigade and what it stands for. Caris, I believe inyou.”
Andoh, his words sounded so much like Nathaniel. So much like the man who’d encouraged her curiosity and called on her and never once tried to cage her. Caris found herself drifting closer, swaying toward him, wanting to believe the words he spoke were his own.
He moved so quickly, thisrionetkahe’d become. He thrust his arm through two of the bars, reaching for her, fingers skimming the air where her throat had been before Caris jerked back. She called starfire instinctively, the hot sparks of the aether flaring at her fingertips. Nathaniel never flinched from the heat, arm outstretched, grasping for her on orders of someone else. He stared at her and didn’t know her, and Caris had to turn away, hand over her mouth to stifle the sound of a sob that wanted to leave her throat.
The laboratory door was flung open, and Blaine hurried through, racing to her side. “Caris! Are you all right?”
She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around Blaine and burying her face against his chest. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that wanted to fall, gritting her teeth. “I hate Eimarille for doing this to him. What if she’s done the same thing to my parents?”
She’d had nightmares of that last night, getting little sleep, still worried about her parents left behind in Amari. Thinking about what Eimarille had done to the people she cared about hurt in a way not even a broken bone could, because at least a bone could mend.
Blaine hugged her close, stroking a hand over her hair. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be down here.”
Caris stopped herself from wiping her nose on his shirt and sniffed hard before pulling back. “No, I needed to be. Ksenia needed my help.”
Blaine frowned at her as he put her at arm’s length and gripped her shoulders, looking her in the eye. “They’re the experts here, not you. It’s okay to walk away.”
She wiped at her eyes, clearing her vision. “Walking away wouldn’t solve anything. I’m needed here.”
Ksenia had entered the laboratory again, along with another warden, both of them looking at the thin clarion crystal sliced a half centimeter thick, held between two padded clasps on the work counter. The delicate circles embedded in the crystal reminded Caris of tree rings. Cutting through all of those lines were fractal-like designs that rang, distantly, like a broken song to her ears.
It sounded like Nathaniel had—still did—ever since he’d come to Veran, she realized. Caris glanced behind her, seeing only worry in Nathaniel’s eyes, no recognition of what he’d tried to do just now. Blaine made a wordless sound before guiding her away from the cage and over to where the wardens stood.
“Are you done with her?” Blaine asked.
“For now,” Ksenia said, not looking away from the clarion crystal.
“What is that for?” Caris asked, digging in her heels when Blaine would’ve guided her out of the laboratory.
“The crystals on the collar he wears were cut from this one to be spell seekers. They are connected. They mapped the mind magic in his head and relayed the pattern to this one. This”—Ksenia tapped a fingernail against the flat clarion crystal—“is what the compulsion spell looks like in his mind.”
“It’s a mess,” the other warden said with an irritated sigh. “It will take weeks to try to unravel, and there’s no guarantee we can replicate the undoing in his mind. One wrong notation and he’ll be made catatonic or dead.”
Caris could admit that none of what they spoke about made sense to her, but the only way through ignorance was by asking questions. “How will you map the pattern?”
“On the crystal?” Ksenia shrugged. “We have instruments that can measure the pitch of the song the fractal cuts give off. The discordant notes will be where the compulsion anchors sit, but we can’t distinguish those until we’ve the whole of it marked off. Knowing where they are here means we could possibly find and undo them in his mind.”
“But see here and here?” The other warden touched where the fractals branched off the crystal slate in patterned flares. “These areas have a different spell tied to it. You can tell by the pattern. Most likely, it’s the one that keeps the clockwork metal heart beating. There’s a chance undoing the mind magic will undo that spell, and the self-destruct portion of it will activate.”
“So the status quo remains,” Blaine said.
