My lungs burned with the stench of sulfur and hot grease, a thick film of soot coating the back of my throat. The foundry floor was a cacophony of hammers hitting anvils, but I couldn't move a single inch toward the bellows. Alaric's hand was a permanent fixture on the small of my back, a searing pressure that felt less like a touch and more like a brand.
"Stay within the chalk line, Elowen," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the roar of the furnaces.
I looked down. A thick white line had been drawn around the drafting table in the center of the workshop. Beyond it lay the machines, the iron, and the freedom to actually build. Inside it was just me, a stack of vellum, and the man who wouldn't let me breathe.
He's not protecting me. He's taxidermying me.
"I can't calibrate the steam pressure from ten feet away, Alaric. The smiths are going to ruin the casting if I don't check the heat."
"The smiths have been working iron since before you were born. They don't need a noblewoman's advice on heat."
"They don't know thermodynamics!" I snapped, turning to face him. My heart was thumping a frantic rhythm against my ribs, and the heat of the foundry was making my head spin. "If that boiler wall is too thin, the whole building goes up. You want your engine? Let me do my job."
Alaric stepped into my space, his shadow cutting through the orange glow of the molten metal. He didn't look at the furnaces. He looked at me, his eyes tracking the pulse jumping in my neck.
"My job is to keep you alive so the King doesn't have my head. If you step out of that circle, the guards at the door have orders to restrain you. Hard."
"Restrain me?" I let out a sharp, jagged laugh. "You already have me in a cage. What's next? Chains?"
"If you keep vibrating like a panicked bird, yes." He reached out, his fingers hooking into the collar of my work shirt, pulling me just an inch closer. The scent of cedar and sweat hit me, a suffocating reminder of how much I relied on his strength even as I loathed it. "You think this is a game? Harrington is outside those gates right now with a warrant for an 'inquisition' into your mental state. If I let you go out there and play mechanic, you're giving him the rope to hang us both."
He's using the threat of Harrington to keep me tethered. But he's also the only one keeping Harrington away. Damn him.
I looked past him. Master Calder, the head smith, was pouring the slag. He was doing it too fast. The air bubbles would ruin the structural integrity of the main chamber. If I didn't stop him, the first engine would be a glorified pipe bomb.
"Calder! Stop!" I yelled, trying to dodge around Alaric.
Alaric didn't just block me. He grabbed my upper arms and pinned me against the heavy wooden drafting table. The edge of the desk dug into my spine, and the air left my lungs in a sharp wheeze.
"I said stay," he hissed.
"He's ruining it! The casting will fail!"
"Let it fail."
"What?" I stared at him, my vision blurring with frustration. "You spent half the royal budget on that iron!"
"I don't care about the iron, Elowen. I care about the fact that the Bishop's spies are watching from the rafters. If you show too much expertise, you're a witch. If you stay here and act like a pampered lady giving 'suggestions,' you're just an eccentric brat." Alaric's grip softened, but his eyes stayed lethal. "Which one do you want to be when they bring out the coals?"
My stomach dropped. The nausea was back, a cold weight in the middle of the foundry's heat. I looked up at the dark rafters. I couldn't see anyone, but I felt the weight of eyes. Cold, judging eyes.
I'm trapped. Between a mob that wants my blood and a Church that wants my soul.
"I hate this," I whispered, my forehead dropping against his chest. "I hate every second of this."
"Good. Hate keeps you sharp." He didn't pull away. He let me lean there for a second, his heart beating a slow, steady rhythm against my ear. It was the only stable thing in this godforsaken world.
But then I felt it. The brass cylinder in his pocket. The one he'd stolen.
He's playing both sides. He's my savior and my thief.
I made a choice. It was impulsive, dangerous, and would probably get me killed, but I couldn't stay in this circle anymore. I didn't reach for the cylinder. I reached for the oil lamp on the edge of the table.
"Oops," I whispered.
I shoved the lamp. It shattered against the stone floor just outside the chalk line. The fire flared up, a wall of orange light between us and the guards.
"Elowen!" Alaric shouted, reaching for me.
I didn't run for the door. I ran for the furnace. My boots crunched on the glass, and the heat scorched my skin, but I didn't stop. I grabbed the long iron tongs from the rack and shoved them into the cooling slag.
"Calder, move!" I screamed.
The smith jumped back, startled. I plunged the tongs in, dragging the impurities out with a frantic, desperate strength I didn't know I had. My muscles screamed, and my ears were ringing with the sound of the fire and Alaric's boots behind me.
I managed to clear the vent. The iron flowed smooth and silver into the mold. It was perfect.
But the cost hit me immediately.
A hand grabbed the back of my neck and slammed me face-down onto the cooling stone floor, away from the heat. Alaric was on top of me, his weight crushing the air out of my lungs. He wasn't being careful anymore.
"Are you trying to get us killed?" he roared over the sound of the crackling oil fire.
"I saved the engine!" I choked out, my face pressed into the grit and soot.
"You crossed the line."
He hauled me up by the waist, tossing me over his shoulder like a sack of grain. I kicked, my heels hitting his chest, but he didn't even flinch. He marched through the smoke, past the terrified smiths, and straight toward the heavy iron doors of the foundry's inner sanctum.
"Put me down! Alaric, let me go!"
He didn't. He threw me into the small, windowless office and slammed the door. The sound of the lock clicking was like a gunshot.
He turned to me, his face smeared with soot, his shirt torn at the shoulder. He looked like a man who was done being patient.
"You want to be a builder, Elowen? Fine. But you do it in the dark."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy iron chain. Before I could scream, he grabbed my ankle and snapped the cuff into place. The other end was bolted to the heavy oak desk.
"You stay here. You draw. You don't see the sun until the engine moves."
"You can't do this! I'm a noblewoman!"
"You're a prisoner of the Crown," he said, stepping back toward the door. "And I'm the only thing between you and the stake. Try to burn the floor again, and I'll make sure the next chain goes around your neck."
He walked out, and for the first time, he didn't look back.
I sat on the floor, the cold iron of the cuff biting into my skin. I looked at the desk, at the paper, and then at the door. I had saved the engine, but I had lost the only bit of humanity Alaric had left for me.
I reached for the pen, but my hand was shaking too hard to write.
Then I saw it. On the floor. A small, silver button that had ripped off Alaric's shirt when he'd tackled me.
It wasn't a blueprint. It wasn't an engine.
It was a piece of him I could sharpen.
I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I just picked up the button and started scraping at the grout in the floorboards.
If Alaric wanted to keep me in a cage, he was going to find out what happens when you trap something that knows how to dismantle everything it touches.
The silence of the room was broken only by the sound of metal on stone.
He had given me a desk, but he had also given me a grave.