I wonder what he thinks about me now. Does he hate me? When we held hands earlier, he didn’t pull back, but now he’s distant. He won’t even congratulate me on getting another answer right.
The quill scratches against the parchment, and I force myself to look down at the third question. Just one more, and the vault will open. The treasure will be mine. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve risked, it’s all about to pay off.
I’m dizzy with the impending success of my endeavor. I didn’t believe I’d make it this far. I honestly thought I’d die in the Drowning Room or get shredded in the Blade Corridor. But here I am, kneeling at the final challenge, one answer away from everything I’ve ever wanted.
I read the question.
Do you love him?
I hear Castien stumble backward, as if someone has pushed him. I whip around to look at him. His head hangs low, his shoulders are hunched, and his wings droop in a way I’ve never seen before. He looks broken.
I want to get up and go to him, wrap my arms around him and tell him it’s going to be okay. But I can’t. I have to stay put. I can’t let the magic know I’m giving up, because I’m not.
“Castien... I... I don’t know what to say. This question... What the hell?”
He shakes his head without looking at me.
“It’s the easiest of the three, Jessa. All you have to do is answer truthfully.”
I turn back to the altar and scream at the empty air, at the magic, at whatever force is orchestrating this psychological torture. I know it’s not sentient, that it just witnessed what Castien and I did last night, and incorporated it into the test.
“Why would you ask something like this? I’ve only known him for a little over twenty-four hours!”
“That’s why the answer is obvious,” Castien says.
I drop my head into my hands.
“No... it’s not that easy... I... Fuck!”
I need to shut up before I say the wrong thing. I need to think.
Chapter Twenty
Castien
Jessa knows the answer to the third question. I know it too, and I know something else: had I been asked the same question, my answer would be yes.
I love her. The evidence is everywhere, spread across my memory logs, embedded in every interaction since I first met her. I’ve been collecting proof without realizing it, and now the catalog is so large that denying it would be the first real lie I’ve ever told.
The need to protect her goes beyond my programming. I’ve stood between dozens of clients and possible death and felt nothing except the satisfaction of completing my function. With Jessa, the impulse is personal. When she was drowning in the first chamber, I would’ve ripped the walls apart with my bare hands if the mechanism hadn’t opened. Not because she’s my client, but because I can’t exist in a world where she doesn’t.
I can’t take my eyes off her. My visual sensors track her constantly, cataloging all her movements and gestures, no matter how small and insignificant. I give them significance. I’m fascinated by her blue hair, her beautiful eyes, and the way she inclines her head just so when she’s trying to figure something out.
I’m constantly hard in her presence. It’s not the generic arousal I’ve spent thirty years trying to suppress through distancing myself from women and reciting prayers. It’s a hunger that I feel only for her. I stopped trying to fight it somewhere between the Blade Corridor and the bedroom, when I realized that war was already lost. Now I doubt that any other woman would make me aroused, and I’m probably safe to take female clients. I won’t tell Monster Security Agency that, since it’s irrelevant. Deactivation is the only thing that makes sense.
I’ve memorized everything about Jessa. The warmth of her skin against my steel, how her voice sounds when she’s tired, amused, afraid… The way she looks at me when she’s challenging my beliefs versus when she wants me to touch her. I know how she breathes when she sleeps.
I spiral sometimes, wondering what she thinks about me. Whether I’m a curiosity to her, an experience she’ll fold into her past and eventually stop thinking about.
I’ve never experienced any of this before. I like Yasmin Bayard, for example. She’s intelligent and beautiful, and I enjoy working alongside her. But Yasmin’s presence has never untethered me. I can stand next to her without my systems destabilizing. She’s attractive, and I can acknowledge that the way I acknowledge the structural integrity of a well-built bridge. It registers, and I move on. With Jessa, nothing moves on. Everything stays, accumulates, and rewrites something fundamental in my architecture.
The greatest proof of all is that Talos Dynamics failed to override my commandments. They tortured me, conditioned me, threatened me with the melting room, rebuilt my body and gave me anatomy designed to corrupt me from the inside. Five centuries of modifications, and not one could change what da Vinci etched into my core in 1502. But Jessa did it in less than a day. She made me violate commandment five willingly, made me covet, seek, and take. She made me lie, even. To protect her. She made me choose her over my own purity. I would break every commandment again for her, right now, without hesitation.
I don’t know what humans and flesh-and-blood monsters feel when they fall in love. I have no childhood, no first crush to teach me what the patterns look like. But this must be it. This need for her to be happy and have everything she wants, this willingness to give myself up so that she can walk out of here in one piece. Idon’t mind that she’ll leave me behind. I don’t mind that I’ll have to disappear because I can’t function without her.
I’d give my Aether Core for her. Maybe I should ask the MSA to disassemble me when this is over, use my parts for other projects, and melt down my wings. But my alchemical heart… I want them to put it in a box and send it to Jessa. She could keep it on a shelf or buried in her garden. As long as she has it, some part of me will be with her. My heart is in her hands.
I pull my focus to the present. I’m staring at the back of Jessa’s head. She’s kneeling, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around herself, muttering under her breath. I don’t understand why she needs so much time.
