Chapter 32
Chapter 32
I struggle to take it all in at once.
Immediately in front of me is a large courtyard with a fountain in its center. All around it are circular rows of plants that teem with all sorts of fruits and vegetables.
People are quietly tending to the plants. Pumping water from the fountain. Pruning. Picking food. But not all of them are working.
A group of children sits off the right, circled around a woman who’s reading to them from a book.
None of them gives me anything more than a casual glance, although an older woman pruning what looks like a tomato bush arches her eyebrows at me in a way I can’t interpret.
But it isn’t the idyllic scene that has caused me to catch my breath.
Every person has a metallic limb.
The little boy who runs up to Thaden has a metal foot that clacks on the cobbled stone. The older woman who arched her eyebrows at me has a metal hand. The man pumping water from the fountain has a metallic arm. The woman reading from the book has a metallic knee—startling, given that much of the rest of her leg is flesh and blood and I can’t imagine how everything was knitted together in a functional way.
Each limb is an intricate series of cogs and pieces that are so complex and detailed that I can’t possibly identify them all—or understand how they fit together to function like living limbs.
“Welcome to Myrkur Fjall .” Tamra’s voice sounds from behind me where she leans up against the wall of the cottage beside the door I stepped through. “A sanctuary in the shadows.”
I’m speechless. If I weren’t seeing it, I wouldn’t believe it. “What…? How…?”
I turn to Thaden, my focus dropping to the young boy with the metal foot who ran up to him. He tugs on Thaden’s hand, and Thaden leans down to him, listening to his whispered speech for a moment.
“I hope so,” is all Thaden says before the boy runs back to the group of children.
He doesn’t elaborate on what the child said, and I don’t ask. If the boy had wanted me to know, he wouldn’t have whispered.
“What happened to these people?” I ask.
Thaden keeps his distance from me as he replies. “Life happened,” he says. “Accidents. Attacks. War.”
“They heard about what Thaden can do, and they came here for help,” Tamra says. “Or their families brought them if they couldn’t bring themselves. Many of them ended up staying—mostly because it isn’t safe out there for them.”
I struggle with my competing feelings of suspicion and wonder. “So they came to you, Thaden, and you created…”
Arms. Hands. Legs. Feet. Joints. All perfectly fitted to the person and completely functional.
This is what Blacksmith magic was meant to do.
This is what our people once did.
But I can’t reconcile what I know about him with what I’m now seeing. “How is this possible?”
His lips press together into a grim line. “You mean, how could Malak’s son help anyone?”
I grimace.
I, too, was judged by the actions of my parents.
But it hasn’t been his parentage that bothered me so much as what he’s been accused of doing—and the fact that he masqueraded as a human.
“You lied to me, Thaden,” I say. “ Convincingly . For all I know, you could have imprisoned these people, experimented on them, and then brought them out here into the sunlight to make it look as if you’re helping them. None of this could be true.”
Even as I speak my fears, they don’t really hold up. These people are tan. Their eyes are bright. None of them appears to be wasting away from malnutrition or mistreatment. My gaze lands on a group of teenagers who are tending to the plants in the farthest row back from us. It looks like they’re spending more time chatting than anything else. One of them nudges another, who scoffs, while a third rolls their eyes at whatever was said.
They look normal. Happy. Comfortable. Far more comfortable, in fact, than the humans back in the city.
“In almost any place, I could pull off such a deception,” Thaden says, drawing my attention back to him. “But not here. Here, lies can’t flourish. We fight for our existence with every breath we take. Every hour is another hour of life not to be wasted. All you have to do is look up to be reminded of how close to death we are.”
I consider the wispy clouds in the sky, the way they’re blackening at the edges.
The sun continues to shine, but I’m suddenly unsettled.
There’s a scent in the air, something dank and wrong , and I’m not sure what to make of it.
“Asha.” My sister’s voice is quieter now. “I need to ask you to leave your hammer behind. It’s important that you don’t stay in contact with your power. Nobody will mess with your hammer. Or with you. I promise you.”
Like Thaden, Tamra isn’t carrying her tools.
But putting away my hammer will leave me vulnerable.
It requires trust I don’t feel.
“If you don’t trust me, then trust your instincts,” Tamra says. “You can sense it, can’t you? That feeling of foreboding. A scent like death in the air. That wasteland out there is filled with uncontrolled energy. It’s only because of this mountain of rock that the darkness hasn’t spread to this village, but your power jeopardizes that.”
Carefully, I allow my hammer’s handle to slide through my hand until it rests on the ground, testing her claim.
The moment I unclasp my fingers from around my hammer, the dread lifts from my stomach.
“You can leave it right there,” Thaden says. “Nobody who lives here touches anyone else’s metal.”
“Because that would be extremely rude,” Tamra says with a smile.
The nearest humans snort but continue with their work.
I give my hammer another glance.
My reluctance is only because of trust—or the absence of it.
Taking my hands off my hammer feels like leaving Erik behind. When I blanked out in the wasteland—right as Thaden brought me here—I felt the disconnect like a blade through my heart.
It isn’t quite as sharp this time, but it worries me.
With great difficulty, I step away from my hammer.
Thaden gestures to the path running around the side of the clearing. “Will you walk with me? I’ll tell you everything. No lies. No stories. Some of it will make me look good. Most of it won’t. You can make up your own mind.”
“Okay,” I say cautiously. “I’ll listen.”
“Thank you.”
He leads me around the garden while Tamra follows behind us.
“I came out here when I turned sixteen,” he says. “Until then, Milena had me making weapons for the humans in the west. It was a task I relished, figuring out the mechanisms needed for warriors to manipulate the form of metal without magic. I saw it as a challenge.
“What’s more, I could prove my loyalty. I was not my father. I would not turn to darkness like he did. I would help humans, not hurt them. But I came to regret it.”
“What happened?”
“I saw my weapons in action,” he says. “There was a fight on the border. It was one of the first fae attacks after they fled their homes in the east. Lysander was my dragon. We were patrolling nearby, and what I saw?—”
He clears his throat, and I let him take his time.
“I had created blades that could kill cleanly,” he says, his voice now rasping a little. “You wear them as gloves. With a punch to the heart, the blade will extend for a near-instant death. But that wasn’t how the human army was using them.”
He falls silent again for a long moment and again, I let him take his time as we continue toward the edge of the garden.
“I understand that there’s chaos in battle,” he says. “It’s a fight for survival. There are no perfect strikes. But the humans had somehow figured out that if they cut off a fae’s arms, they could stop them from using their power. Very similar to Blacksmiths. It was horrifying.” He shakes his head, his lips twisting. “I will never forget their screams as long as I live.”
We reach the edge of the garden, where the path continues, and I catch a glimpse of a much larger village beyond it. It seems that the clearing we’re standing within is more elevated than the rest because the path slopes downward.
But Thaden gestures to the side of the rock instead.
As I step closer, I make out a platform wide enough for several people to stand on, which is positioned hard up against the side of the rock, and a length of metal extends all the way up the cliff face next to it.
“What did you do?” I ask. “After that fight?”
“I refused to make another weapon,” he says. “Milena was angry with me, but I was old enough by then to stand up to her, so I did. I convinced Lysander that there had to be a better way, and I came out here. I wanted to know what was causing the fae to flee their home.”
“We’re in the east?” I ask, taking an educated guess.
Tamra nods. “You need to see it. This pulley system will take you up, but you can’t stay up there for long. Even without your hammer, the darkness will seek you out.”
I can’t stop my shiver. I haven’t even seen what she wants me to see, but the scent I caught earlier has put me on edge.
“Tamra will show you,” Thaden says.
“You don’t want to go up with her?” Tamra asks him quietly.
He gives her a wry smile. “I don’t think Asha would appreciate being in a confined space with me.”
“True.” My sister reaches for me before she steps onto the platform, and I step on it beside her, uncertain what to expect.
Thaden pulls up a section at the front of the platform, multiple flat pieces that click into place to form a railing on all three exposed sides. Then he reaches for a winch set into the rock and begins winding the handle.
The platform rises rapidly into the air.
The higher we go, the heavier the air feels. Somehow, the light seems to fade until the platform stops several feet from the top of a rock ledge, high enough for me to see over it but low enough that I can’t step out.
The landscape beyond this mountain is a garish mix of blood red, black, and white.
Dark clouds fill the sky for as far into the east as I can see.
An ash-filled plain spreads across the distance, dust storms swirling across it. Tornados, just like the ones that whipped snow across the mountain in the east.
Within the storm down on the plain, shapes form, crashing against each other, countless beasts tearing each other apart.
My hand has flown over my mouth. “Tamra…”
“Creation magic did this,” she says. “ Our magic did this.”
“We have to stop it,” I say. “It has to be stopped.”
But she’s shaking her head. “Our magic—even our presence here—only makes it worse.” Then she twists away from me to call down to Thaden. “Bring us down!”
I can see him turning the winch. He didn’t hesitate, but our descent feels too slow.
There’s a pull . A terrible, horrible pull.
Out on the plains, the dust storms change direction. They are, all of them, suddenly headed in our direction.
Tamra’s speaking, but I can’t hear her because my ears are buzzing with the echo of my own scream.
Wake up, wake up, wake up…
And then, even that echo is drowned out by the cruel impulses that used to assail me when I wore Malak’s tools.
Take control of the light and the dark.
Fight the old and find the new ? —
“Get me down!” I gasp for air, desperate to breathe. “Get me down. Now!”
My vision blurs, and all I can hear, all I can feel, is the darkness pressing in on me until a final whisper sends a chill down my spine.
You will come to me. You won’t have a choice.