Heat surges up my arm, searing, consuming, boiling water racing through my veins, something ancient and insatiable awakening in my blood. The hair on my arms rises, my pulse hammering as if it’s trying to match the machine’s frantic, climbing rhythm.
A force slams into my chest—a heartbeat, but not mine. It pushes, pulls, demands. My knees weaken beneath the weight of it, as if the machine itself is reaching inside me, recognizing me, tethering me to its power.
And then, I hear it. Not the grinding of metal, not the crumbling of stone—but something deeper. A whisper, a crash of waves, the exhale of the ocean against the shore.
The Tower is speaking.
The machine is fully awake.
Alder emerges from the fray and barrels toward us. Guards and rebel women fall like dominoes as he tears through them, wild, unhinged. His face is twisted with fury, lips curled back, nostrils flaring, teeth bared.
“You’re not the one!” he roars, voice cracking at the edges, ragged with disbelief. “It was never supposed to be you!”
He grabs a noblewoman by the front of her gown, rips a dagger from her belt, and tosses her aside like she weighs nothing. The blade gleams in his hand as he advances, steps erratic, like gravity can no longer keep him bound to the earth.
“It can’t be you!” he spits, each word laced with venom. “It won’t be!”
His entire body trembles as he glares at me like I’ve broken the universe in half. Like I’ve stolen his destiny. Like I was never meant to matter—and now, suddenly, I do. And he can’t bear it.
He curses, his fury unraveling, his composure gone. “It’s me!Iwas chosen! You’re nothing—a body meant for sacrifice, to do with as I wish—”
A growl rips from his throat as he lunges. The point of the dagger flashes. His grip on the hilt is white-knuckled, his movements frenzied, driven by something beyond rage, beyond desperation. His entire world is collapsing around him, and if he cannot control the machine or the Tower, if he cannot control this fight and these people, then he will control the one thing he’s always thought was his.
Me.
Alder swings the blade.
I don’t think. I don’t hesitate. I step forward. Use his own fury, his own arrogance, his own unstoppable momentum against him. I plant my feet—and shove.
His body lurches backward, eyes wide as he realizes he’s lost, arms flailing as he stumbles into the machine. The instant his back hits the cold steel, the gears snatch him. They come alive and bite into his limbs like mechanical teeth. The metal jaws clamp onto his shoulders, his legs, his chest.
Alder’s scream is bloodcurdling and broken and echoes off the Tower. He thrashes, jerking, twisting, fighting, but the machine tightens its hold.
The cogs spin, grinding into his flesh and splintering bone. Blood gushes in thick, pulsing rivers, drenching the ancient steel. It seeps into the hollow grooves, into the carved, wave-like veins of the machine.
Alder howls. He scrambles for purchase, fingers breaking against metal as he claws for escape.
But there is none.
The machine grinds, groans, devours. It drinks deep of his blood, what’s left of his body twitching as the last of him is swallowed by the churning core.
And then, he’s gone.
The Tower trembles.
The machine hums, then roars—a thunderous sound that splits through the stone, through the walls, through my bones. The ground lurches, a deep, shuddering quake that sends dust raining from the high ceiling.
A low, keening whine builds in the air, rising higher, sharper, until it claws at my eardrums and shakes my lungs.
The roots of the machine—twisted, rusted tendrilsof metal that have slumbered beneath the earth for decades—begin to move.
A shudder. A shift. Then, the ancient steel roots tear from the stone, lifting from the ground in jagged, groaning movements, shaking loose debris, snapping through the foundation, a giant uprooting itself.
A crack splits the floor, then another, and another. Stone buckles. The entire Tower moans as if alive, as if breathing.
The machine has power, and the Tower is coming apart.
Thirty-Five
