“Ineed your help,” Jory said just loud enough for Mari to hear over the din in the kitchen.
She straightened, wiping her hands on her apron. Something in her chest fluttered. Jory almost never wanted help, especially from her. The request itself was as flattering as it was unexpected.
The kitchen buzzed with activity; this was the true heart of the castle, where life moved beneath the cold exterior. Copper pots hung from iron hooks, their surfaces gleaming in the firelight. The clatter of dishes and the low hiss of the stove created a familiar rhythm.
In the back corner stood Riven, his tall frame bent as he haggled with one of the kitchen hands over a small pouch of herbs.
Mari rolled her eyes and returned to stirring the kettle, sleeves pushed to her elbows. “This ought to be good,” she said, smirking. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
Jory glanced around, then leaned in. “I need to get into Sarah’s room.”
The flutter in Mari’s chest died, suspicion replacing the warmth. “No way.”
Riven’s voice cut in. Without turning from his haggling, he spoke as if he’d been listening all along. “What you need,” he said, eyes twinkling with knowing amusement, “is a sleeping elixir.”
He turned, a small vial pinched between his fingers. “A few drops in his tea, and the guard won’t wake until morning.”
Jory felt the wager as a weight in his palm, a glass container barely larger than his thumb, but heavy.
Jory edged closer, peering through the slightly open door. A thin slice of candlelight spilled into the castle hallway.
The low bell tolled in the distance, its somber notes threading through the castle. Slowly, steadily, it announced what everyone already knew but few would speak aloud.
Martha was dead.
“It’s done,” Oona said with finality. The last bell tolled.
Inside, Oona and Sarah sat by the hearth. The fire painted shimmering gold across their faces. He pressed himself against the cold stone, heart hammering, and listened.
Ward, who should have been posted, was slouched against the wall farther down the corridor, chin to his chest, breaths deep and even.
Sarah flinched as if struck. “We could have stopped them.” Her words were urgent, her fists tightening. She forced herself to stare at the fire instead of meeting Oona’s gaze.
“It was too late, Sarah,” Oona said, gentler now. “Don’t blame yourself.”
A fire burned steadily in the hearth, its light playing across the heavy tapestries that lined the walls, animals and forests coming to life in the irregular illumination. The air was perfumed with lavender and beeswax, a scent that felt alien to Sarah.
The bed dominated the room; it was a grand four-poster, draped in downy furs and embroidered linens, and nothing like the rough pallet she had shared with two others back in Martha’s cottage. The floors were layered with woven rugs so she barely felt the chill beneath her bare feet.
Sarah perched at the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap, twisting the silken fabric of her dress between her fingers. It fit her so well—the dress a deep burgundy, trimmed with gold thread that caught the firelight when she moved.
Her hair was combed and braided neatly down her back, no longer wild with snow and soot. She looked like someone else, someone who should be grateful. But gratitude was the furthest thing from her mind.
Oona studied her carefully. “What’s important is that you survive, Sarah.”
Sarah’s head jerked up. “What do you mean?”
Oona sat beside her. The mattress dipped gently beneath her weight, but the space between them remained deliberate. Careful.
“I didn’t want to tell you this.”
Outside, Jory shifted, leaning closer. A soft shuffle caught Oona’s attention.
“Someone’s there,” she whispered.
She rose in one fluid motion. “Wait here,” she said to Sarah, before stepping out into the hallway.
Jory’s heart pounded. Flattening himself, he hid right behind the door as she opened it and passed, her steps measured as she scanned the hallway. Ward hadn’t moved, but she made her way toward him, inspecting the sleeping man. In a flash, Jory slipped inside the chamber.
Sarah gasped. Before she could speak, he pressed a finger to his lips, then ducked behind a thick tapestry. The fabric was heavy, musty with age, and dust stirred as he pressed against it.
Oona returned seconds later, shutting the door firmly. “Just the guard shifting in a sleep. Elena would be furious,” she murmured, unaware of the extra presence.
She went back to Sarah. The fire cast shadows along the walls, warping their outlines. Oona sat down, breathing out slowly.
“You’re special, like me. You were made for something very different. You have a destiny, Sarah.”
Sarah stiffened. “I know. Martha always said the Candlemakers had a purpose—”
Oona cut her off. “No, Sarah. Not only that. You and I, we’re…” She forced the words out. “We were made.”
Sarah frowned. “Made?”
Oona twisted the fabric of her sleeve.
“We’re machines, Sarah.”
The silence that followed crushed the air from the room. Sarah recoiled like she’d been struck. “No. That’s not true.”
The raw words drove a wedge between them. “You’re wrong.” She was shaking.
Oona reached for her, but Sarah jerked away, scrambling back onto the bed.
“Look,” Oona said, now urgent.
With deliberate slowness, she tugged back her sleeve, revealing the faint scar where Nexus had cut her. Then, pressing her fingers to the wound, she parted her own flesh; and beneath it, metal glinted in the firelight.
Sarah held her breath. She stared. Then:
“No.”
The horror in her voice sent a fresh chill through Oona.
“You’re a machine.” Sarah’s body shook. “I’m not.”
Oona turned her arm over, staring at the exposed metal. The words should not have hurt. But they did. The rejection landed deeper than Sarah could have known.
Glancing up, she caught her reflection in the polished glass of the window. The candlelight glinted off the sheen of her exposed wound.
For the first time, she saw herself how Sarah saw her, as Kael had seen her. A Frankenstein.
Then the tapestry shifted with a rustle. Sarah’s gaze snapped to the side. A shape loomed behind the woven fabric, a figure stepping forward from the darkness.
The tapestry swayed as Jory emerged.
A small bundle slipped from his grip. The honeyed candies he’d brought, the ones he’d helped make himself, scattered across the floor like shattered glass. For a long moment, he just stared. His face had gone pale. His lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came.
Sarah turned to him, panic lacing her breath. “It’s not true, Jory.”
Jory shook his head, only once. Then he spun around and ran. His footsteps echoed down the corridor, each one heavier than the last. Sarah’s heart twisted painfully.
She focused on Oona again, her chest rising and falling too fast.
“You ruined my life.”
She ran.
Oona didn’t follow. She looked down at her arm. At the metal beneath her skin. Then back at the window, and to the shine off her wound.
“What am I?” she whispered.
“How did you know I would be here?” Sarah’s voice was small, almost swallowed by the emptiness of the space.
“Truth is…” Kael said, his words hanging in the stale air between them. “I didn’t.”
She let out a breath. “Then why are you here?”
Kael looked around, taking in the destruction that surrounded them. The scent of old leather and lye hung in the air, mixed with the sharper notes of ash and charred wood. The windowless room beneath the old tannery, untouched by the snow and cold above, was somehow colder than outside.
The meeting room was exactly as he feared. The long table where the Candlemakers had once gathered lay overturned. Pages littered the floor, boot prints stamping out what remained of sacred words. A heavy candlestick lay bent and blackened in a corner, buried in ashes. Only charred beams remained from the resulting fire.
“Same as you, I guess.” The words filled the abandoned chamber. “Chasing ghosts.”
Sarah moved with hesitant steps, as though the ghosts of the room might rise if she disturbed them. Her rough wool coat was gone, replaced with a dark tunic. Braided in back, her black hair still hung unevenly around her face.
As her hand drifted along the edge of the broken table, she lingered on a scorched section where the wood had bubbled and blackened.
“They destroyed everything,” Sarah said, catching her voice on the last word.
Kael moved closer to her. “Not everything. Not us.”
Sarah’s face crumpled. “What am I?” The words cut her throat on the way out.
Kael shook his head, reaching out, pulling her in. She resisted before letting herself be drawn against him, her forehead pressed into his shoulder.
“Oona said… I wasn’t like you. Am I an android?” She pulled back just enough to look at him, searching his face. “I am all alone.”
Kael’s grip on her shoulders tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough to anchor her.
“Look, I don’t know what you are. I don’t know what I am anymore.” He spoke in quick, rough bursts. “But we can choose—choose to be, choose to belong, to each other.”
He released her with one hand, reaching around his neck to take off the pendant. The cord slid through his fingers, the metal catching the dim light. And for a second, he held on to it. He didn’t want to let it go, as though he would lose his link to the past. Even so, he held it out to Sarah, the pendant swinging gently between them.
“Here. This was given to me as a promise, a promise of my humanity by someone I cared deeply about.” He swallowed. “Now, it’s yours. If Oona said you were a machine, I say you are human… and this proves it.”
Her pupils bloomed. She reached for it, then stopped, her hand a hair above the cool metal. A tremor ran through her fingers.
Then, instead of taking it, she shook her head. “No, I don’t deserve this.”
Kael frowned. “Sarah—”
“It’s my fault.” The words tumbled out. “I turned her in.”
Kael blinked. “What?”
Sarah’s hands closed around her arms, hugging herself as if to hold herself together. “I betrayed Martha. She’s dead because of me.”
Kael froze. Her words hit like a physical blow; she turned her in. Neither of them spoke as the distant drip of water echoed through the ruined chamber.
Taking a breath, Kael pressed in, gripping her hands, enclosing both the pendant and her fingers in his larger ones.
“No,” he said, struggling to hold in his feelings. “You don’t have to carry that.”
But Sarah shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “I turned her in. I… I—” She gasped for breath.
Kael’s grip tightened as his own guilt roared to the surface—the knife and the lie and the moment he had chosen survival over justice. “If anyone is to blame, it’s me,” he muttered to himself.
Sarah peered up at him, eyes wet, disbelieving. She shook her head, but the words to argue wouldn’t come.
Kael swallowed hard and straightened. His hand rested on her shoulder, grounding both of them. “The point is, we keep going,” he said, nothing betraying the turmoil he felt. “We live with our mistakes, you and I. And we make it right.”
After a moment, Sarah nodded, resting her gaze on the torn pages at her feet. She slipped the necklace over her head, the pendant coming to rest against her chest.
Kael turned away, his gaze falling on the bent candlestick in the ashes. His brow furrowed as a spark of determination lit in his chest, pushing back against the darkness.
The fire wasn’t out.