Chapter 24 Zaria
ZARIA
THE NEXT DAY, ZARIA WAS IN A FOUL MOOD.
She’d slept well, which was confounding given the altogether-too-Kane scent of the room.
It made it impossible to forget where she was.
Emerging in the morning had felt strangely embarrassing, though there was no reason for it.
At first, Kane and Fletcher had been nowhere to be seen—which wasn’t surprising given it was midmorning when she finally awoke—but the moment Zaria tried to slink out of the house, she found herself face-to-face with a moody, freshly bathed Kane.
“And just where do you think you’re going?”
She paused, lingering on the threshold, and blinked.
The door was already open. In front of her stood Kane in a partial state of undress, which was to say he wore only trousers and a thin linen shirt he’d neglected to button fully.
The arrow tattoo at his throat shifted when he tilted his head.
Zaria forced her gaze to meet his, tearing it away from the triangle of his exposed sternum. “Home.”
“No, you’re not.”
Her brows shot up. “Are you going to stop me?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize I was a prisoner here.”
Kane drew a hand over his chin. He looked like he hadn’t slept, and there was an uneasiness about him, as though his thoughts were elsewhere. “You’re not. But I have something to show you.”
“I need to get back to the pawnshop.” After a decent night’s sleep, her frustration with Jules was dissipating.
“I told you I’d get a message there, and I did,” Kane said dismissively. “Trust me. You’ll like this.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Humor me.”
Zaria glanced past him into the street. The air was humid today, threatening rain, and the stench of the river carried over on the breeze. She bit down on the inside of her cheek as fury and curiosity warred within her.
“Fine,” she conceded. “But if I’m not impressed, you’re escorting me home.”
“Deal.”
Kane led her around the side of the factory to what appeared to be some kind of shed.
The exterior was nondescript gray stone, the slanted roof visibly cracked in a few places.
Zaria narrowed her eyes. “Is this where you’re planning to kill me?
Did you send Fletcher away so there wouldn’t be any witnesses? ”
One side of his face slipped up in a reluctant grin. “Fletcher’s at work. And besides, he’d cover for me.”
“Work?”
“He’s a copper now, in case you forgot.”
“Ah.” Zaria gathered her loose hair into a knot, trying to lessen the heat. “I take it last night turned up nothing of interest.”
Kane shrugged jerkily. “I’m afraid not.”
She frowned in suspicion, intent on asking after his discomfort, but the next moment, he had shouldered the shed door open. All other thoughts fled. “What’s this?”
He moved aside to grant her entry. “Cecile worked out of here for a while, back when she was in Ward’s employ. I don’t think it’s been used since, but I tried to get everything you might need.”
Zaria didn’t quite know what to say as she looked around.
In the middle of the space was a waist-high worktable covered with an organized assortment of alchemology supplies.
On the wall farthest from the door were cabinets, some of them hanging off their hinges, but they had been stocked with vials and various tools.
Zaria walked over to the table, dragging a finger across its surface until she found a jar of silvery powder. “This is soulsteel.”
“It is.” Kane sounded pleased with himself.
It was the most soulsteel Zaria had ever seen in her life. She turned away from it, her throat tightening. “This must have cost a fortune.”
“This is what it’s like to work for the kingpin.
” Kane shut the shop door, coming around to stand on the other side of the table.
There were no windows, and he struck a match, using it to light a candle.
It flared brilliantly to life, an orange glow climbing the column of his neck.
He looked rather monstrous lit from beneath. “Can you get started today?”
“I’m already working on the aleuite explosives,” she reminded him. “They’re back at the pawnshop.”
“I can have everything brought here.”
She wanted to argue, but she had to admit that this place was… perfect. An alchemologist’s dream. “All right then.”
Kane rested his elbows on the table. “Can I watch you work for a bit?”
Zaria swallowed hard. She hadn’t counted on being monitored.
But it wasn’t as though she was planning anything unsavory—not yet, at least. She could take this for what it was: the perfect opportunity to convince Kane he could trust her.
When they finally carried out the heist, she would need his guard down as much as possible.
“I suppose.” She opened the jar of soulsteel and let the glittering powder sift through her fingers. Kane remained quiet, his eyes tracking her movements as she added the soulsteel to the flame, trying not to let her hands shake. When she took her knife out, he stilled.
“Don’t worry,” she said, bemused. “I’m not going to stab you.”
Kane let that one pass, watching as she pressed the tip into the skin of her arm. Blood welled, immediate and shining. It was only once she had let it drip into the flame that he said, “Why?”
“I don’t have a primateria source, do I?” Zaria wiped the excess blood away with her sleeve. “I use my own life energy.”
“I didn’t realize it required a blood debt.”
“Power demands payment.” She slid her gaze up to his, tracking the minute shifts in his expression from beneath her lashes. “I’m sure you know that.”
Kane tilted his head. A vein strained at his throat. “And that’s why alchemologists die so quickly, is it?”
Zaria recoiled from the blunt question. “The effects are difficult to predict. But yes. It’s an exchange of sorts.”
“What if you used someone else’s blood?”
“It wouldn’t work.”
“And why not?”
“Because,” Zaria said, indignant at his myriad questions, “you don’t just throw blood at a candle and then boom, magic.
There’s work to be done from within. You have to travel inside yourself and make it clear what you’re willing to give up.
You have to know exactly what you want to do.
Then, finally, you have to be able to picture how it happens. ”
“Ah.” He rocked back on his heels. “Does it make you go mad?”
“You’re an idiot.” She did her best to ignore him as she withdrew into herself, casting about for focus. It was harder with Kane there, wondering what he would see in her face as she struggled to find that place where creation thrived.
Perhaps Kane sensed that, because a moment later he had averted his gaze, fixing it instead on a piece of parchment Zaria hadn’t seen him take out. She paused, her thoughts funneling back into the present as she tried to make out the design on the page before him.
“What is that?”
“Copy of the architectural blueprint for the Crystal Palace.”
“Where did you get it?”
Kane shot her a withering look. Zaria took that to imply he had obtained the blueprint through unsavory means.
“There’s no problem you can’t solve with theft, is there?”
He adjusted the collar of his shirt, a hint of humor playing at his lips. “I like to think not. Now, are you going to get started or continue trying to stall?”
“I’m not stalling,” she said. “You’re… distracting.”
“I suppose you’ll just have to ignore me.” Kane’s voice suggested he knew exactly how difficult that would be. “Surely the great Itzal Mendoza taught you the importance of focus.”
“He tried,” Zaria said, though her face burned. How could she explain that in order to do this properly, she needed to latch on to the type of focus that regular people didn’t seem to have?
“What does that mean?”
“I wasn’t always a great student.” The words were clipped. “I was all wrong in too many ways.” She cleared her throat. “Will you at least move aside?”
Instead of retreating from the worktable, though, Kane stepped closer to her. His expression had lost its casual disdain, and there was apprehension in the line of his mouth. “You seem all right to me.”
“You wouldn’t know right from wrong if it were presented to you by God himself.”
“Oh, I know the difference. I just don’t shy away from the latter.”
Zaria swallowed hard. Kane backed away, and for a moment, she thought he had finally decided to leave. But then, from the shadowy corner of the shed, he asked, “Why do you think you’re all wrong?”
There was a strange edge to his voice, as if he desperately needed to know the answer. As if her reply would either tip the world or set it right.
She didn’t care to explain herself to anyone, least of all Kane Durante. Even as she had the thought, however, the words bubbled up in her chest, slipping past her teeth before she could stop them.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m careless, but also very particular.
I’m too easily frustrated. I’m terrible at connecting with people, so everyone assumes I don’t like them, and I don’t bother to change their minds.
I don’t want to change their minds because I’m terrified they’ll decide I’m not good enough, and then I’ll look like a fool.
I’m constantly thinking fifteen thoughts at once, and yet I can’t remember a single one of them.
I say all the wrong things at the wrong times, and my father’s entire business would fall apart if I didn’t have Jules to help me stay organized. I’m a disaster. Are you happy now?”
She said this all very fast, her chest heaving, and didn’t know why she was angrier for having given him the truth.
Unwilling to hold his gaze, she stared into the glittering flame.
By this point, the candle was beginning to burn lower, wax pooling on the table and collecting in the divots in the wood.
Zaria wanted to melt into a puddle of wax herself.
Kane still hadn’t said a word, and she couldn’t decide what would be worse: his pity or his derision.
She was surprised, then, when she didn’t get either one.