Chapter 25 #2
“Wroth,” I murmured, tapping the terminal’s door shut and turning to face him.
“I have an idea…an idea that might utterly destroy Liuridar, and anything that lives here. If it works, all the Fae of this place would be gone for good, sleeping or not. Nobody would ever be able to come here again. The Artifice of this city would be lost forever.”
He gazed at me, expressionless but for the fire burning in his eyes.
I reached up to cup his face, bringing his forehead down to mine.
“Do you trust me?” I whispered.
He exhaled silently, his shoulders slumping. I blinked away the tears that stung the backs of my eyes, unwilling to give him a reason to say no.
Finally, slowly, he nodded. “Without reservation.”
His voice echoed through my bones. I clung to that sensation, wanting to preserve it for however long I had left.
And if things didn’t go according to plan…at least I’d die knowing I had been truly happy, had felt genuine love, even if for a brief time. That was far better than never having had it at all.
“Then do as I ask.” I closed my eyes, my throat tightening. “Go after Alvar. Find him and bring him to the surface for justice. Make sure everyone gets out.”
“Just what do you think you’ll be doing during all this?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft.
“I’ll be here, with Talos and Líadan.” I tried to smile at him, but it wavered and fell. “I’m going to do what you wanted to do, and in such a way that no one will ever find a way through again.”
He stared at me, feral rage and denial in his gaze.
“This place is not for us,” I breathed. “This place, and the species who made it, are poison. And you know as well as I do that no amount of black powder is going to keep out someone who really wants in…or out. It must be ruined so thoroughly that coming here is a true impossibility, and I am the only one who can make that happen.”
“You ask too much of me,” he growled.
My heart ached, squeezing in my chest like he’d gripped it in his fist. “No, I’m asking you to have faith in me. If you’ve ever trusted in me, even a little…now is the time to put that faith to the test.”
Wroth’s lips pulled back, those jagged fangs nearly trembling. “Alvar’s punishment is not worth your life!” he roared, my eardrums ringing with the force of it.
“I will do everything in my power to achieve what I have in mind and make it out alive.” I eyed the shimmering crystcore, calculating rapidly.
“I can do it, Wroth. I’m the only one who can do it.
But only if you do as I ask, and leave me with nothing to worry about but this.
Please. I’m asking you to trust me. That’s all. ”
“I can’t leave you here,” he said, almost plaintively, raw and uncertain. “I love you too much to give you what you ask.”
The gears I had always imagined inside my chest, broken and rusted, suddenly began to spin again in perfect harmony.
Everything within me came into alignment in light of the truth.
“And I love you too much to let this threat remain to you.” I ran my fingers through his mane, amazed at how he fit into my pieces like he’d been machined to align with me perfectly.
“I have worked toward this moment my whole life. Let me do what I was made for. The best thing you can do now is make sure everyone escapes. As long as I know you’re waiting with my people in safety, I’ll have a reason to make it out. ”
He stared into my soul, and I felt those gears spinning faster, smooth and flawless, everything I’d once considered broken and useless giving way before this perfect creation.
“I…”
I rose on my toes, kissing his bloodied mouth. “Trust me,” I whispered. “You never trusted before, but you must do it now. It’s time for your leap of faith. I will always, always catch you. And I will come back to you.”
He pulled me to his chest, sudden and crushing, as though trying to meld us together. His claws pricked at my back, right through my shredded waistcoat.
“I trust you,” he said roughly. “Do what you’re best at, then. Come back to me. And…and anything that comes after, we’ll go through together.”
I looked at him, smiling sadly, but he cupped the back of my head and stared into my eyes.
“I will always be yours,” he said, not without a sense of wonder. “You’ve brought me back to life. No matter what happens, you will always belong to me, and I to you.”
Not even the knowledge that he would not be able to keep this promise could diminish the sense of perfect alignment inside me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, kissing him deeply and desperately, heedless of blood or the miasma or the eyes of Líadan and Talos upon us.
There was only Wroth, the one I knew would always come if I needed him, and the man who put utmost faith in me. The one who believed in me fully.
His warm lips covered mine, his fingers stroking over the crown of my head and through my hair, and I put all my love, all my desperation into this final kiss. I could do this, only if he was safe. Only if he was above, with the sun shining on him.
His fangs pierced my lips, filling my mouth with the taste of iron, and when his hands tightened, threatening to drag me out with him, I broke the kiss and pulled back. It was the hardest motion I had ever made in my life.
“Go now,” I said, afraid that another minute in his arms would break my determination. “Save them and wait for me above. I love you, and I will come back.”
“All my love stays here with you,” he said, his hand lingering on my cheek. Bit by bit, he drew away, his eyes on me as he backed up. I saw the strain in him, the primal protectiveness in his fiendish mind fighting against every footstep.
But he went, the trust that he’d placed in me blazing in his eyes.
His footsteps finally faded into silence. My feet were rooted in place, my ears straining to hear one last sound. Even Talos’s whirring quieted to a low hum, leaving nothing to echo in my ears but my own heartbeat.
He was truly gone. He’d left me.
My shoulders slumped with abject relief. I exhaled, a sense of great purpose rising in my bones. Wroth would be safe, soon to be out of the zone of destruction I intended to create.
Líadan watched me with her obsidian-dark eyes as I dropped to my knees, practically tearing my pack open. Tools clattered loud enough to make my ears ring as I dumped them out, clearing every pocket and compartment. She squatted beside me, picking up a wrench and frowning at it.
I made my preparations rapidly, hands trembling with nerves as I selected several soldering irons and my smallest set of pliers. “Talos.”
My golem peered through the doorway, clicking to himself, and his fulmen sparked into a thin beam that illuminated the mess I’d made.
I glanced at him, running through my plan again, debating the timeline I’d calculated. I would need to allot several minutes for his protocol shift… ”Please keep the fulmen running.”
He made a gronking sound, his head rotating backwards to keep an eye on the empty hall while his chest remained aimed at my workspace.
I set up a portable lamp and filled the reservoir with oil, setting my soldering irons aside to heat as I withdrew the velvet packet containing the Thing from my waistcoat, and the chthonium coin from the pocket of my breeches.
I unfolded the velvet and laid them beside each other.
In the ethereal light, the Thing was a creation of pure beauty, glimmering gold and silver, the diamonds in its core like stars.
Almost like a pocket-watch, and yet there was a void in its heart, awaiting its final, and most important, component.
Líadan watched as I unscrewed the frame and crystal dome and set it aside. I tried not to notice her, tried not to think about her presence at all.
If I was mistaken by even the slimmest margin, I would be sentencing her to a rapid, and likely horrible, death. The fact that I would be dying just as quickly and horribly right alongside her would probably not be a comfort.
And it seemed a shame to awaken her, to experience nothing but a brief interlude of fear and violence, before forcing her to risk her life alongside me, but I needed someone else here to operate the fulmen orbs.
I pushed my own hard-hearted cruelty to the back of my mind, examining the interior of the Thing. A person who excelled at making machina of death should probably be less sentimental, particularly when designing the first, final, and only prototype of such a weapon.
I had spent so long fiddling with these flawless gears, adjusting the diamonds just so, and never getting any closer to the end.
Now, in that quiet space in my mind where I looked into the Artifice and honestly assessed what it needed, I understood it was because I had been trying for so long to force it to be something it was not.
If I had kept going as it was, it would have been a lovely, if pointless, machina. The gears would rotate, the diamonds would flash, and absolutely nothing would happen.
But the chthonium…my mind twisted the blueprint, pulled it, turned it over, and understood on that fundamental bone-deep level that this was it. The element required to turn this from machina into something more.
Now I was ready to create ruin.