ANYA
For the first forty-eight hours, I was left utterly alone in my magnificent prison. It was a silence so profound, so absolute, that I could hear the faint, high-pitched whir of the magical alarm system in the walls. At first, the solitude was a suffocating weight. The scale of my task, the impossibility of it, pressed in on me from all sides. I paced the concrete floor of the workshop, my footsteps echoing in the vast space, my mind a chaotic whir of gears grinding against one another with no purchase.
My father's final words to me before he was taken replayed in my mind: "They fear what they don't understand, Anya. They call it heresy. We call it progress." But this… this wasn't progress. This was an affront to both logic and magic, a twisted hybrid of biology and sorcery that had no place in any engineering textbook I had ever read.
After a full hour of allowing fear to gnaw at the edges of my reason, a different instinct took over. The one my father had so carefully nurtured in me since I was old enough to hold a screwdriver: the unshakable need to impose order on chaos.
I started with the tools. I emptied the contents of my worn leather roll onto the gleaming steel workbench. My calipers, my gauges, my files—each a familiar friend with a comforting weight. I cleaned them, one by one, with a soft cloth, arranging them in perfect, descending order of size. Then, I turned to the academy's instruments. It was an arsenal of artifice beyond my wildest dreams. I opened every drawer, cataloging its contents in my notebook. Brass plates of every conceivable thickness. Vials of purified mercury and alchemical oils. Micro-gears so small I needed a loupe to count their teeth. Springs wound to tensions I had previously thought impossible. I spent the entire first day not designing or building, but simply taking inventory, mapping out my new world, and turning my fear into a meticulously organized list. It was the only way I knew how to fight back.
My meals arrived through a silent dumbwaiter concealed behind a panel in the wall. A soft chime would announce its arrival, and I would find a tray of food that was, like everything else at the academy, nutritionally perfect and utterly soulless. Steamed vegetables, lean protein, and a single, perfect-looking but flavorless piece of fruit. I ate because the protocol—and my own logic—demanded that I maintain my physical energy. But there was no pleasure in it.
By the second day, a plan had begun to form in the ordered space of my mind. The Archmage saw my craft as a collection of "contraptions." But I knew the truth. Artifice wasn't about building things; it was about understanding systems. A clock, a human body, a kingdom—they were all just machines of varying complexity. And this curse, as magical and illogical as it seemed, had to be a system as well. It had rules. It had a function. My task wasn't to fight the magic. It was to understand its mechanics.
I spent hours at the drafting table, my charcoal pencil flying across sheets of parchment. I drew diagrams of the human heart, overlaying them with schematics of crystalline structures. I theorized. How would one measure a magical process? What were its inputs, its outputs? What was the energy source? Was it self-sustaining, or was it drawing power from the Prince himself?
You cannot fix a machine you have not inspected, I wrote at the top of a new page. The thought sent a fresh wave of anxiety through me. The "machine" in question was the heir to the throne.
The knock on my workshop door came on the morning of the third day. It was so sudden, so sharp, that it felt like a crack in the fabric of my quiet world. I looked up from my work, my heart leaping into my throat.
The same grim-faced guard who had escorted me from the throne room stood in the doorway. "The King has decreed it is time for your first diagnostic session. The Prince is expecting you."
I swallowed hard, my hands suddenly clammy. The problem was no longer an abstract collection of theories and diagrams on a page. It was a person. A broken, dying Prince. And I was the one who had to pry him open and look at the gears.
"My tools," I said, my voice coming out as a faint croak. I cleared my throat. "I'll need my tools."
The guard nodded and waited as I packed a smaller, more portable tool case. I selected only the most delicate instruments: my finest calipers, a set of resonance forks, and a new device I had been tinkering with in my father's workshop—something I called a "Resonance Caliper," designed to measure the subtlest vibrations in metal and crystal. I'd never tested it on a living being before.
I was escorted through another section of the palace, one far more opulent than the austere corridors I had seen so far. Here, the stone walls were covered in rich, velvet tapestries, and the air was warmer, scented with dried lavender and beeswax. Gilded portraits of queens and princesses stared down at me with serene, emotionless expressions. This was the royal wing. It was a beautiful cage, but the bars were woven from silk instead of iron.
The guard stopped before a set of dark, carved mahogany doors. He knocked once and stepped aside. "The Prince's antechamber. He will see you now."
I pushed the doors open and stepped inside. The room was a suffocating embrace of luxury. Dark velvet curtains blocked out the morning light, and the air was heavy with the scent of old books and something faintly medicinal. A fire crackled in a massive stone fireplace, casting flickering shadows across the room. A young man was seated in a high-backed armchair by the window, his profile turned to me as he stared out at the rainy palace grounds.
He didn't turn when I entered. "Another one?" he asked, his voice a low, bored monotone. "I thought Father had run out of court magicians to throw at me."
"I am not a magician," I said, setting my tool case down on a small table. The soft click of the clasps sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet room. "I'm an engineer."
At that, he finally turned, and my breath caught in my throat. This was Kaelen Sterling, the reckless rebel from the dock, the boy with the sharp tongue and cynical eyes from the Orientation. The Prince. He looked different here, away from the rigid structure of the academy's public spaces. His uniform blazer was gone, replaced by a simple, high-collared black shirt. His dark hair was a mess of unruly curls. He looked less like a prince and more like a poet in a tragedy. The only sign of his royal status was the palpable aura of impatience and pride that radiated from him like a physical force.
"An engineer," he scoffed, his lips curling into a disdainful smirk. "Even better. A tinker. Has my father truly been reduced to hiring the help to fix his broken heir?"
His words were designed to wound, to assert his dominance and my inferiority. The old Anya would have flinched, would have mumbled an apology. But something had shifted in me in the past few days. I was no longer just the disgraced clockmaker's daughter; I was a royal artisan with a death sentence hanging over her head. I had nothing left to lose.
"I cannot fix a machine that I cannot inspect," I said, my voice cold and clinical. I opened my tool case, the familiar scent of oil and metal a small comfort. "Whether you see yourself as a machine or not is irrelevant to me. The curse is a system with its own set of mechanics. It is those mechanics I need to understand."
He was silent for a moment, his green eyes narrowing. He seemed momentarily taken aback by my directness, by the cold logic of my response. But then the cynical mask slipped back into place.
"And how, precisely, do you plan to 'inspect' a curse, artisan? With your pliers and screwdrivers?" he mocked.
"With this," I said, lifting the Resonance Caliper from its velvet-lined case. It was an intricate thing of brass and silver, its two delicate arms ending in tiny, needle-like points. "This device measures subtle vibratory frequencies. In metal, in crystal… and perhaps, in a heart that is becoming crystal. I need to take some readings, establish a baseline."
I stepped towards him, the caliper held carefully in my hand. He watched me approach, his expression a mixture of contempt and a flicker of something else—a weary, guarded curiosity.
"I will need you to remove your shirt," I stated.
A harsh, humorless laugh escaped his lips. "You truly have no sense of decorum, do you? Just walk into my chambers and demand I disrobe."
"This is not a social call, Your Highness. This is a diagnostic procedure." I held his gaze, refusing to back down. "I must place the caliper directly against your chest, over your heart."
We stared at each other for a long moment, a silent battle of wills in the dim, fire-lit room. His jaw was tight, his fists clenched at his sides. I saw the struggle in his eyes—his pride warring with the desperate, secret hope that maybe, just maybe, this strange girl with her strange metal toys could do what no one else had.
He let out a long, shuddering sigh, the sound of a man surrendering. With a final, resentful glare, he began to unbutton his shirt. I tried to maintain my professional composure, but my heart began to pound a nervous rhythm against my ribs.
His shirt fell open, revealing a torso that was lean but defined, the pale skin stretched taut over his ribs. And there, over his heart, was the faintest shimmer, as if the skin itself was made of spun moonlight. It was the only visible sign of the crystalline rot within.
"Well? Get on with it," he snapped, his voice rough.
I stepped closer, my fingers trembling slightly as I lifted the caliper. "This may be cold," I warned. I needed to guide the instrument to the right spot, and that meant… I had to touch him.
I took a deep, steadying breath and placed my free hand on his chest. His skin was warm, a startling contrast to the cold dread that had taken root in my stomach. I felt the solid muscle beneath my palm, and then, the steady, rhythmic thump of his heartbeat. Thump… thump… a healthy, living sound. I guided the caliper's delicate arms until they were poised over the faint shimmer.
Then I lowered the instrument, its cold brass points making contact with his skin. He flinched, a sharp intake of breath, but he didn't pull away. The caliper whirred to life, a soft, almost inaudible clicking sound. I reached up and placed the small, earpiece-like resonator to my ear. I closed my eyes, focusing all of my attention on the sound, expecting to hear the simple, rhythmic beat of a human heart.
But that's not what I heard.
The sound that filled my ear was beautiful, haunting, and utterly impossible. It was the sound of a thousand tiny bells, a crystalline melody that was delicate and pure. It was a music box made of starlight. And interwoven with that perfect, fragile melody, with every single beat, was another sound.
A soft, sharp, terrible little noise.
The sound of something breaking.
And for the first time since I'd taken this impossible task, I wasn't listening to a heartbeat. I was listening to the sound of a man shattering, one perfect crystal at a time.