Chapter 17
VIENNE's POV
The northern mines breathed like dying giants.
I felt their exhale the moment we crested the ridge—warm, metallic, tasting of sulfur and rust and something else. Something that didn't belong in this world. The sharp, acrid sting of gunpowder. Modern propellant. A smell I'd know in my sleep, in my grave, in whatever hell came after this one.
"Down," I hissed, flattening against the snow-dusted rock.
Cassian dropped beside me, his black cloak blending with the shadow of the ridge. Behind us, Kael and Jinx did the same, four shadows in a landscape of white and grey and industrial smoke.
The valley below was a scar. Where there should have been wooden mining camps and Aether-lanterns, there were steel structures.
Prefabricated, angular, wrong. Smokestacks belched black clouds into a sky that had never seen pollution of this kind.
And winding through the facility like metal veins were conveyor belts, carrying ore from the mountain's guts into a central processing plant that looked like a cathedral built by a madman.
"That's not a mine," Cassian murmured, his breath fogging. "That's a factory."
"It's a forge," I corrected, my eyes tracking the layout. "Rafe always said the future belonged to whoever controlled manufacturing. In New Carthage, he ran twelve front companies just to keep the syndicate's munitions off the books."
I pointed to the central tower, where a red light pulsed like a heartbeat. "That's the foundry. That's where he's making the guns. The explosives. Whatever else he's planning."
Jinx crawled up beside me, her spyglass clicking as she extended it. "Guards on the perimeter. Fifty, maybe sixty. But they're not wearing house colors. They're wearing black. All black." She passed me the glass.
I looked. She was right. The guards moved in pairs, carrying rifles that caught the pale light. Not Aether-guns—modern firearms. AR-platform weapons, modified with Aether-crystal power cells where the magazines should be. Hybrid tech. The worst of both worlds.
"They're syndicate soldiers," I said quietly. "Or the closest thing this world has to them. See the way they walk? Shoulder to shoulder, scanning in overlapping arcs. That's not kingdom training. That's urban pacification doctrine. Rafe wrote the manual on it."
"Can you take them?" Kael asked. His hand rested on his sword, but his eyes were on the rifles. He'd seen what those weapons could do at the Siege. He'd watched Morgana's guards cut down royal soldiers before they could close to sword-range.
"Not head-on. Not sixty of them, not with those weapons." I handed the spyglass back to Jinx. "We need to get inside. Find the blueprints. Find Rafe. And then burn it all down."
"Simple," Cassian said dryly. "I do love simple."
I looked at him. At the frost gathering in his dark hair, at the way his jaw tightened against the cold.
He wasn't built for this—crawling through snow, planning illegal infiltrations, playing ghost instead of king.
But here he was. No crown. No guards. Just a man in black with a sword and a stubborn refusal to let me do this alone.
"There's a drainage culvert," I said, pointing to where the conveyor belts disappeared into the mountain's base. "See the steam? That's runoff from the foundry. It'll be hot. Toxic. And probably unguarded, because Rafe never thinks anyone's crazy enough to walk through boiling chemical waste."
"Is anyone crazy enough?" Jinx asked.
I smiled. "I am."
The culvert was worse than I'd imagined.
It was a tunnel of riveted steel, big enough to walk upright, filled with ankle-deep sludge that bubbled and hissed where it touched our boot leather.
The heat was suffocating—like walking through the lungs of a dragon.
Steam rose in thick curtains, reducing visibility to arm's length.
Somewhere ahead, machinery hammered a rhythm that vibrated in my teeth.
Cassian walked behind me, one hand on my waist, the other holding a damp cloth over his mouth. His breathing was shallow. The leg brace creaked with every step.
"You should have stayed at the ridge," I said for the third time.
"And you should have been born a princess in a tower," he replied, his voice muffled. "We both make poor decisions."
"This isn't a joke. If that sludge eats through your boot—"
"Then you'll carry me." He squeezed my hip.
"Partners, remember? Through boiling waste and back."
I wanted to argue. But I could feel his stubbornness like a physical force, matching my own. So I shut up and kept moving.
The tunnel ended at a grate. Beyond it, the foundry opened up—a cathedral of steel and fire that made my heart stutter with a strange, sick nostalgia.
It looked like home.
Not Aethelgard. Not the palace. This was pure New Carthage industrial chic—exposed beams, hanging chains, assembly lines where workers in black coveralls fitted metal components together with the efficiency of a syndicate operation.
Conveyor belts carried rifle receivers. Crucibles poured molten Aether-steel into molds for what looked suspiciously like mortar shells.
And everywhere, the red pulsing light, mounted on walls in glass housings that made them look like mechanical eyes.
"Rafe's aesthetic," I whispered. "He always did love dramatic lighting."
Cassian peered through the grate, his face grim. "How many workers?"
"Forty. Maybe fifty. But look at their collars."
He looked. I felt him go still.
Every worker wore an iron band around their throat. Thin, light, but unmistakably a control mechanism. Some kind of shock collar, or worse. They moved with the mechanical precision of people who knew that hesitation meant pain.
"Slaves," Kael said from behind us, his voice thick with fury. "He's using slaves."
"Not slaves," I corrected, my stomach turning. "Assets. That's what Rafe called them. In the syndicate, if you owed money, you worked it off in the factories. The collars kept you honest. And if you tried to run..." I didn't finish.
"We're getting them out," Cassian said. It wasn't a question. It was a king's decree.
"Yes. But first, we find the control center. The collars will be on a centralized frequency. If we can kill the signal—"
The grate behind us slammed shut.
I spun. The tunnel we'd come through was sealed by a steel door that hadn't been there thirty seconds ago. A door with a small, reinforced window. And through that window, a face I knew.
Rafael Morales looked exactly as I remembered him.
Early fifties, silver at the temples, a face that could have been handsome if it weren't for the scar that bisected his left eyebrow—a souvenir from a knife fight in the Narrows, back when he was still young enough to do his own killing.
He wore a black suit, perfectly tailored, with a red tie that looked like a wound against his chest.
No armor. No weapons. He didn't need them.
He smiled. And the smile was worse than any gun.
"Hello, Ghost," he said.
His voice came through a speaker mounted above the grate. Clear. Crisp. Modern.
"I was wondering how long it would take you to find me. Marco always said you were the best tracker in the syndicate. Of course, Marco also said you were loyal. And we both know how that ended."
He leaned closer to the glass. "Put the sword down, Vienne. The tunnel is flooding with gas in sixty seconds. Not lethal—just enough to make you sleep. I'd hate to damage the merchandise."
"Merchandise?" Cassian stepped in front of me, his blade drawn. "She is the Lady King of Aethelgard. She is not your merchandise."
Rafe's eyes flicked to Cassian. He looked him up and down with the clinical assessment of a man pricing livestock.
"The prince. Or should I say, the king? How romantic. The underdog and the crown."
He laughed, a sound like gravel in a blender.
"Vienne, you always did let your heart write checks your body couldn't cash. First Marco. Now this one. When are you going to learn that love is just leverage waiting to happen?"
"When you learn that power isn't a spreadsheet," I shot back. "Let these people go, Rafe. The workers. The guards are one thing, but the civilians—"
"Are employees," he corrected. "With contracts. Debts. Obligations. Just like the old days."
He tapped the glass. "You want to save them? Fine. Come work for me. Again. Like you used to. I'll release a collar for every job you complete. Assassinations, mostly. The northern lords are troublesome. The southern merchants are greedy. And that pretty boy behind you..."
Rafe's smile widened. "He's been a thorn in my side since the Siege. Take care of him, and I'll free twenty workers. A fair trade, don't you think?"
The world went red.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The Aether in my veins—the power I'd barely learned to control—surged in response to my rage. My hands glowed. The iron grate in front of me began to melt, droplets of molten metal hissing as they hit the sludge.
Rafe's eyes widened. Just slightly. Just enough to show that I still had the capacity to surprise him.
"Well," he said softly. "That's new."
"Let. Them. Go." My voice didn't sound like mine. It sounded like Iraia's. Like thunder. Like a crown being forged in fire. "Or I bring this mountain down on your head."
"You could try." He reached out, pressing a button on the wall beside him. A screen flickered to life—a display showing the foundry floor. The workers had stopped moving. They stood in perfect, eerie stillness, their hands at their sides, their eyes blank.
"But in ten seconds, those collars will deliver a charge strong enough to cook their brains. Every single one. Forty-three lives, Vienne. Because you couldn't swallow your pride."
Cassian grabbed my arm. "Vienne. Don't. He's baiting you."
"I know he's baiting me," I snarled. But the glow in my hands was fading. The rage was cooling into something harder. Older. The kind of cold that had kept me alive in the syndicate.
"What do you want, Rafe? Really? You didn't build all this just to recreate New Carthage. You hate this world as much as I do. So what's the endgame?"