My blistered palms throbbed with every heartbeat, a raw, wet heat that made gripping the charcoal pencil an agony. The workshop Silas gave me was a birdcage of rusted mesh overhanging the main mine floor, and I could see everything below. Most of all, I could see Alaric, strapped into the test-seat of the Great Engine, his face a mask of stone as Silas's goons tightened the leather restraints around his chest.
"I need to talk to the head smith," I yelled down through the mesh, my voice scratching my throat. "The intake valve is warped. If I can't explain the clearance—"
The smith, a hulking man with a burn scar across his eye, looked up. He opened his mouth to answer, but Alaric moved first.
"Back to your forge, Miller!" Alaric barked, his voice echoing off the cavern walls.
The smith hesitated, looking from me to the Captain.
"I said move!" Alaric's glare was a physical force. The smith cursed and turned away, disappearing into the shadows of the lower tunnels.
He's cutting me off. He's making sure the only voice I hear is his.
"Alaric, what are you doing?" I leaned against the mesh, the wire cutting into my forehead. "I need his input. I don't know the local iron's carbon content. If the Key is too brittle, it'll shatter and kill you!"
Alaric looked up. The orange glow of the furnace caught the sweat on his brow. "You talk to me, Elowen. No one else. You want a measurement? I'll get it for you. You want a sample? Silas's boys will bring it."
"They don't know what they're looking at!"
"They don't need to. And you don't need to be whispering to miners about 'clearance' when I know you're actually looking for an exit."
My heart did a slow, nauseating roll. He knows. He's not just protecting me from Silas; he's protecting his mission from my sabotage.
"I'm trying to save your life," I hissed.
"You're trying to build a back door," Alaric replied, his voice low enough that the guards near the stairs couldn't hear. "And if Silas catches you talking to anyone but me, he'll realize you're not as compliant as you look. I am the only person you speak to. That is not a request."
He's a wall. A beautiful, suffocating wall. He wants me to be his genius in a vacuum.
Silas walked onto the floor, his heavy boots clanking. He carried a bucket of oily water and dumped it over the engine's primary cylinder. The steam hissed, a white cloud momentarily obscuring Alaric.
"Progress, Architect?" Silas shouted.
"Slow," I lied, hiding the modified drawing under a piece of scrap metal. "The regulator is missing a lead seal."
"Captain says you need more coal for the forge," Silas noted. "He says he'll handle the delivery."
"He's a soldier, not a porter," I snapped.
"He's whatever I tell him to be as long as he's in that chair." Silas grinned, then looked at Alaric. "Get the coal, Veyron. Then get back in the straps. We test the first gear at sunset."
Alaric unbuckled himself, his movements fluid and dangerous despite the exhaustion in his eyes. He walked up the stairs to my cage, two guards trailing him like hounds. They stopped at the door, but Alaric stepped inside, kicking a bucket of coal toward my desk.
He didn't leave. He stepped into my personal space, his body blocking the view from the door. He grabbed my wrist—the burnt one—and pulled it toward the light.
"You're shaking," he muttered.
"I'm tired, Alaric. And I'm sick of being treated like a child who can't speak for herself."
"You aren't a child. You're a target." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, jagged piece of glass—a shard from the broken windshield. He pressed it into my hand, his fingers curling mine around it. "Stop trying to talk to the smiths. They're Silas's kin. You speak to me, or you stay silent."
"You're isolating me."
"I'm keeping you alive." He leaned in, his lips inches from mine, the heat of his body a terrifying comfort in the cold shed. "If you have a plan to melt this thing down, tell me. Don't tell the man at the forge."
I could tell him. I could tell him I've already thinned the pressure plate. Or I could keep the secret so he can't stop me from saving him.
"There is no plan," I lied. The glass shard bit into my palm, a sharp reminder of the cost of deception. "I'm just building the Key."
Alaric's eyes darkened. He didn't believe me. He leaned closer, his hand moving to the back of my neck, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. It was a gesture that felt like a caress and a chokehold all at once.
"Liar," he whispered.
He kissed me, a hard, punishing collision of teeth and desperation. It wasn't about love; it was about ownership. He was marking me in front of the guards, showing Silas that the architect was tethered to the Captain and no one else. I hated him for it. I hated how I gripped his tunic, pulling him into me because he was the only thing in this dark hole that didn't want to eat me alive.
He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. He looked at the drawing on my desk—the real one, with the flaw in the cooling line.
He didn't say a word. He just took the charcoal pencil and drew a heavy, dark line through the flaw, 'correcting' it.
"Build it right, Elowen," he said, his voice flat. "Or I'll make sure Silas knows you're useless."
He turned and walked out, the guards slamming the mesh door behind him.
I stood there, looking at the dark line he'd drawn. He had just fixed the engine. He had just ensured that when the test run happened, there would be no explosion. No distraction. No escape.
He's choosing the mission over us. He'd rather be Silas's weapon than my fugitive.
I looked at the glass shard in my hand. Then I looked at the primary steam line running along the ceiling of my workshop. It was the only thing Alaric couldn't reach from the floor.
I made a new choice. An impulsive, suicidal one.
I climbed onto my drafting table, reaching for the valve that controlled the workshop's heating. It was a direct bypass to the Great Engine's boiler. If I opened it now, I wouldn't just be sabotaging the machine; I'd be venting live steam directly into this room.
"Architect! What are you doing?" the guard yelled from the stairs.
I didn't answer. I twisted the valve with the glass shard as a lever.
The pipe didn't just open; it burst.
A wall of white-hot steam exploded into the small workshop, screaming like a banshee. I was thrown back, my skin feeling like it was being peeled off by the heat. I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe.
"Elowen!" I heard Alaric's roar from below.
I hit the floor, the nausea finally winning as the world turned into a blurred mess of white and grey. I reached for the blueprints, trying to shred them in the damp heat, but my fingers wouldn't work.
A pair of hands grabbed my ankles, dragging me out of the cloud. It wasn't Alaric.
"The girl's burnt!" a voice yelled. "Get Silas! The engine's venting!"
I looked up through the haze. Silas was standing over me, his brass helmet reflecting the chaos. He didn't look worried about me. He looked at the blueprints.
They were perfectly dry. Alaric had moved them to the metal lockbox before the steam hit.
He knew. He saw it coming and he saved the machine, not me.
Alaric appeared at the door, his face pale, his hands reaching for me, but Silas's men held him back with harpoons.
"She's too dangerous to be left in the cage," Silas said, looking at my blistered arms. "Chain her to the engine. If she wants to play with steam, she can do it where it'll kill her first."
The status had shifted. I wasn't the architect in the high workshop anymore.
I was the human pressure-gauge, bolted to the very machine I had tried to destroy.
Alaric looked at me, and for the first time, I saw the mask crack. There was no military logic in his eyes. Only a raw, bleeding guilt.
"I told you to follow orders," he whispered as they dragged him back to the pilot seat next to mine.
I couldn't even answer. My tongue was too swollen from the heat.
I just looked at the chains on my wrists and the man who had helped put them there.