Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
Antony
The stone platform above the Iron Forge is no longer bright white.
Blood pools around me where I crouch in the shadows, waiting in case my attack was detected and a legion of Hadrian’s followers is about to descend on me.
Three of his men lie dead at my feet.
I’ve taken a risk, attacking in an open location, but I need to see my brother Victor, and of all the entrances into the forge, the alcove behind me was my best choice.
For the last week, I’ve worked my way eastward across the Iron Kingdom.
I started with the Iron Towers nearest to both the bloodlands and the Ember Kingdom.
Not because I was following Maxim.
Not because I was fighting my instincts to protect my mother…
My reasons were far more rational. Or so I told myself.
The Iron Fae guarding the towers near Ember wear full-bodied suits with masks and hoods, necessary to protect against sandstorms swirling along the border.
Those garments can conceal my identity, especially because of the gauzy material that sits across my eyes, concealing the identifiable green color of my irises.
I stole multiple sets of clothing, along with iron daggers, weapon harnesses, and a satchel I’ve been slowly filling with wooden amulets.
For days, I’ve fought the impulse to attack Hadrian’s followers openly, to shed blood and splatter gore across his troops. For days, I’ve attacked in the shadows, identifying the warriors wearing Hadrian’s mark and taking them down one by one.
I’ve forced myself to be strategic, to kill using only iron daggers or my bare hands instead of my fangs so as not to give myself away.
The fact that Hadrian put a mere three guards on this particular platform—the platform that was once strictly for my use—tells me he thinks I’m either dead or so consumed with vampyric poison that I can’t leave the bloodlands.
Now, I wait another heartbeat.
Tension grows in my muscles as I listen and watch for any sign that I’ve been spotted.
The silence continues.
I tell myself to move. Fucking move!
I had no choice but to come here at this late hour to ensure the forge would be empty of workers, but the timing means I don’t have long before I’ll be vulnerable.
Not because of the sun that will rise at dawn. I’ve tested my ability to walk in sunlight. I don’t suffer even a slight burn.
If only it were that simple.
Soon enough, my nightly torture will begin. A punishment I never could have predicted.
I will have to get myself back out of the forge and to safety before the agony begins.
Quickly, I search the fallen men for amulets. Only one is wearing a piece of the ashen-brown wood. From what I’ve discovered so far, Hadrian limits the amulets to more senior warriors. I imagine it’s because he doesn’t have enough to go around.
My task finished, I slip through the door into the alcove at the top of the forge, preparing to hurry down the deep stairwell into the forge itself.
There’s no light up here, but I don’t need it. My eyesight is stronger than ever before and my surroundings are crystal clear.
As I turn toward the stairs, I’m struck suddenly still by the sight of the protective suits hanging from hooks on the wall opposite the alcove door.
I’ve buttoned Thyra into one of those suits, my hands grazing her curves and sweeping down her thighs as I brazenly took my time securing the overly large material around her body.
She had an Oracle vision in this spot, although I didn’t know it then. She saw herself retrieving the hammer that forged the Dragonstone Blade.
Of all my regrets, and I have many, one of my biggest is that I don’t know what became of that hammer. Thyra wasn’t holding it when I came upon her in the bloodlands, and then the vampyric poison took hold of me and I didn’t ask.
I don’t know what happened to her between the moment she flew away from Mount Vividari and when I reached her in the bloodlands.
Now I press against the wall beside the protective suits, my fingernails extending and scraping downward.
I won’t try to forget what I did to her.
Remembering her pain keeps my guilt sharp and my purpose clear.
Pushing away from the wall, I prowl toward the stairs, where I’m forced to pause again.
The sounds of clanking and clanging drift upward from the forge.
Damn.
I was not a good master to these workers, but I always sent them home at night. I never forced them to continue working during the fraught nighttime hours when the darkness threatened them and their families.
The cacophony of sounds below tells me the workers are busy.
A new sound melds with the others: grinding.
I snarl between my rapidly descending fangs.
Hadrian must have them making iron dust.
They can’t be doing it willingly. Even at my most furious, I never risked the danger of grinding iron to dust.
The longer I listen…and the longer the grinding sounds continue…the more certain I am that Hadrian must have figured out a way to grind iron without risking severe bodily injury or death to everyone nearby.
Or, more likely, Victor is the one who figured it out.
Even if it meant helping Hadrian, Victor would put the workers’ safety first.
He knows what it is to be burned.
But this means I need to rethink my approach. There are bound to be guards in the main work room. A myriad of corridors, storage areas, and even prison cells run off from the main forge. Hadrian’s followers will no doubt be scattered throughout those areas.
Any fight I have with them will endanger the workers and for now, I can’t assume the workers are on Hadrian’s side.
Returning to the protective suits, I reconsider them.
I’ve never worn them, although they were officially made for me. I had them made so I could protect Emiliana, Victor’s soulmate, when I would smuggle her in here to see him.
From the whispers I’ve gleaned over the last few days, she’s remained imprisoned on Mount Vividari, along with all of Galla’s other ladies.
Quickly pulling one of the suits over my body and head, completely covering myself, I proceed carefully down the stairs.
I pause briefly in the shadows at the bottom, taking swift stock of the large workroom ahead of me.
Rows of metal worktables are lined up throughout the room and interspersed with metal anvils and a multitude of fire pits.
The workers aren’t wearing protective suits, no doubt for the same reason they couldn’t wear protection while forging iron blades: their movements would be hindered by the thickness of leather needed to protect their skin, making their work even more dangerous, and any thinner leather would only be a fire hazard.
But they are wearing masks—metal ones with some sort of fine grating near their mouths, presumably to stop them from inhaling dust.
While in two-thirds of the room, the workers appear to be making more masks, in the final third, they’re painstakingly grinding iron by hand. The grinding tools are contained in transparent boxes, the workers extending their gloved hands into the cases.
Guards patrol the room, and to my relief, they’re all wearing protective suits like mine. The space is busy enough that I should be able to make my way through it without raising suspicion.
I hold my breath as I time my entry into the room and then casually mimic the nearest guard’s path along the rows of workers.
Keeping my shoulders hunched to make myself look smaller, I reach the other side of the room, where I slip into the nearest corridor, again matching the speed of movement to the guards patrolling this corridor.
They each give me a nod as they pass me. I give them a nod in return.
Within minutes, I make it to Victor’s workroom.
I was prepared to encounter a guard outside his door and I’m surprised when there isn’t one. Or three, for that matter.
Then I see why.
A large, steel bar extends across the middle of the door, too thick even for me to break it, ensuring nobody inside this room is getting out. Of course, there’s a back way out from Victor’s library, but I saw the guards standing outside that external door.
I don’t squander my time. Maybe there are no guards because nobody’s getting through this door. Or maybe they’re simply in the middle of a changeover.
At the back of my mind, I’m conscious that my time is running out and I can’t second-guess anything.
Lifting the bar and placing it to the side of the door, where it won’t draw too much attention, I slip inside and pull the door closed behind me.
Victor hunches at his workbench on the far side of the room, his back to me, his shoulders stooped low.
Gone is the faintly soapy smell, my brother’s clean scent.
The air is dank and the walls are covered in new drawings, some depicting large mechanisms with cogs and wheels, others showing strange canisters, some appearing made of clay while others are clearly metallic.
Victor stiffens, his back straightening, his voice more deeply angry than I’ve ever heard. “Hadrian, I’m working as fast as I can. You’ll have your fucking weapons when you have them.”
More alarming to me than the uncharacteristic ferocity in my brother’s voice is the wheeze of air on his next inhalation.
“Victor?”
He swivels in his chair, his focus snapping to me.
His jaw drops. “Antony?”
As quickly as I can, I pull off the protective hood and face covering.
Victor hasn’t moved. “But…you’re dead.”
“Death didn’t want me.”
Victor lurches out of his chair and that’s when I see the dark rings under his eyes, the cracks in his lips, the faded tinge of bruising across his jaw…
And the delicate silver chain wrapped multiple times around his neck, hidden until this moment by his lank hair.
He jabs at the ruby circlet. “Get this fucking thing off me.”
Only the current king can latch and unlatch a ruby circlet. Any other attempt to remove the chain results in a triggering of its metallic teeth and a brutal loss of whatever limb it’s wrapped around.
In this case, Victor’s head.
I’m at his side in an instant, my hand reaching for the clasp before I’m frozen with doubt.