Which had seemed harmless enough.
Until the hoverbarge had cleared the river, deck stacked with steel barrels, and my vision flashed with a proximity warning.
I turned just in time to see a truck full of Gearbreakers driving headlong round the bend of the river—and a young woman, with twin dots of light as her fists, hair a voidlike black—before the barge exploded and threw me halfway across the river.
“There was not a drop of water on that barge,” I say to the silence of the room. “Only gasoline.”
Entwined in flame, the Valkyrie broke the water’s surface.
Inside my own head, my other body slammed against the glass of my eyes. I awoke sharply when the cords snapped from my arms. The mecha was sinking, headfirst, and I thought to myself, This would not be so bad.
But the Gearbreakers, out on the shore—the Gearbreakers who knew I would not drown, that I could not drown, who would come for me to finish the job.
Do I want to die here? I looked into the press of deep water against the mecha’s eyes, inches away from my fingertips. The cords strangling my arms, the lonely moan of the metal shell, the dark, hollow rupture in my chest—Gods, no, I cannot die here, not when this is the last thing I will feel. I will not carry this with me, I will not—
It was an especially magnificent kind of realization: I will die as this. I will never be rid of the Academy’s touch, Godolia’s vision. I will die as theirs.
It is out of my control.
Maybe it always was.
I looked through the Valkyrie’s eyes and saw we had reached the bottom of the river. The water thrummed beneath my fingertips. Dark as dead night, down here. Quiet, for once.
And suddenly, the Frostbringer’s eyes were resting on mine again, the furious, chilling gaze, as if she was the one on the offensive, as if this was her battlefield and I was the one intruding. The single glance promised destruction and promised hate, and without even realizing it, I had intertwined my own vow to her glare: I may die as theirs, but I will damn well take them with me.
But not if I perished here and now, at the bottom of a river, in the head of a mecha, with a Gearbreaker coming to snap my neck.
“I wound myself,” I murmur. “I felt my feet on the shoreline, raised my head in time to see Starbreach’s crew emptying from their car. She lifted her hands, and this … this light spilled from them, up over her face, over her team…”
And she was glorious. Wild grin, black hair alight, battle cries dancing from her tongue. She looked so … happy. When was the last time I was happy?
Can you see? One hundred and seventy feet of steel, iron, and wire, eyes aflame in my head, my features molded to hold only malice, to create only carnage. Can you see I am not this?
“And then…” Under my new Valkyrie jacket, my hand flattens against my ribs. “I was boiling.”
I have not had pain in weeks, and I had started to miss it.
Then Starbreach was before me, and I did not remember anything past the cutting heat searing across my side.
“I still do not know what it was. What she did to me.”
“No one does,” says Lucindo wistfully, folding his hands behind his head. His gaze becomes unfocused, dreamy. “How does some dust-covered kid from the Badlands get so lucky to find a piece of magma tech like that?”
I take a moment to imagine breaking my plate over his head before continuing. “I pulled myself into the river.” Water spilling over my head, a shock of cold against my cheeks. At my side, the scalded plating hissing and sputtering. “The pain was bearable by the time my knees hit the riverbed. I brought my palms together, twisting as I broke the surface, and sent water rushing onto the shoreline.”
“And they drowned?” Jole asks excitedly, chin atop Rose’s curls.
“They scattered.” Bodies tossed by water across the bank, little ants squirming in a downpour. “Their driver was fighting against the rush, plucking up their crew with the wheels choking on river water.”
“Wheels,” Riley snorts across the table, cheeks flushed red from whatever is absent from her drained cup. “What a joke.”
“They picked up all of them, curled up sopping wet in the back of the truck as I pulled myself from the river. Except for Starbreach, who had been thrown to one of the rocks jutting from the bank. The driver stopped around ten feet away; they were shouting at her, I think, and she shouted something back and did not move from her place.” I do not say that she spit on my shadow the moment it cleaved over her head. “Her crew members ran from the car, then grabbed her up to haul her to safety.”
As soon as Starbreach was in the truck, I rose to my full height, the rising sun at my back, my shadow so long it fell across the resource village dotting the opposite bank.
Go. Chins tilting back, expressions awash with the glow of my eyes, the Gearbreakers did not move. Please, go.
The engine revved. But this was not a retreat—it was a surge, and Starbreach’s hands shook at her sides, and no shadow or light I could cast could compete with the glow that flooded her hands, and I was … scared.
Not just of her.
For her.
“Before she could raise her hands, I dropped mine.” I smile around the lie weighing my tongue. “It was easy—to crush the car flat, tip the mess whole into the river. I only wish they had given more of a fight.” I trace my finger in circles on the tabletop, feeling for splinters to catch myself on, finding none. “I wanted a chance to use that lovely sword.”
Linel cackles. “That is cold, Steelcrest.”
Victoria knocks the back of her fist roughly against Linel’s shoulder and pushes herself from the table.
“Don’t mind Vic,” Rose calls after her, “she’s just in shock from the story!”
“Nah,” Jole says, rolling his eyes. “Someone could pluck the moon from the sky, and Vic wouldn’t spare them a second glance.”
“I’m bored,” Victoria returns easily, but pauses on the threshold of the dining room.
The image is so odd, suddenly, with her framed in the doorway, the chandelier bathing the sugar-happy Valkyries in a soft glow, napkins and picked-clean plates strewn haphazardly around the large table. Rose’s fingers on my sleeve, idle smile cutting her face. Jole’s hand clapping amiably against my shoulders. There is something intimate about the scene. Comfortable, in a way that makes me fracture, just a little bit. Family dinner, Lucindo had said, when he came to collect me from my room.
When my teachers had announced that I had been accepted into the Windup Program, I smiled, shook their hands, and emptied my stomach as soon as I was alone in my room. It was from hate for them, hate for myself and the way my recklessness and childishness had forever bound me to this nation and the dream of its destruction, and hate of what I would become to achieve it.
And then I awoke from the surgery. I wound my Windup. For just a moment, a glittering, happy moment, I thought it was all worth it. That this was how I could avenge my parents. This was how I could avenge myself.
But I have been here for weeks. I have slept fitfully, clutched by nightmares, and awoken suffocating, swearing that Silvertwin coal dust was being stuffed down my throat. I have woken up nine years old again, crawling over torn hands and splintered knees in the village mines, peering upward where the ground had cracked apart above us all to reveal the speckled cosmos, and deities with crimson-eclipsed eyes glaring down from the heavens.
For weeks I have known I can do damage, lovely and shocking and horrible, and for weeks, I have known that I cannot do enough. I am just one girl. I have just one Windup. And I was so drunk on the mere thought of having power that I allowed myself to be made into this.
Now, I sit at a table with my enemies.
With my fucking family.
Victoria’s gaze falls on me. The cheekbone I struck yesterday is as healthy as Lucindo’s face. “But I’ll admit, Bellsona,” she says, “it is a truly unbelievable story.”
If I had any breath, it would freeze under
her stare. She could not possibly know. “Thank you.”
She nods and takes her leave.
Lucindo rolls his eyes. “She’s a regular angel, isn’t she?”
“No,” I murmur. “She is just a bitch.”
Jole snickers and raises his glass to Rose’s. “Cheers to that, Steelcrest.”
“Steelcrest best watch her mouth,” Wendy growls from across the table, Linel bristling like a shocked dog at her left.
Riley slaps her hand against her thigh. “Oh, we are so very overdue for a fight!”
Lucindo coughs, attempting to muster some authority. “Valkyries, we are celebrating, remember?”
“Aw, does the captain want to make a toast?” asks Rose, batting her eyes, chin perched on her fingers.
“Well, no—”
“I do not deserve a toast?” I ask.
It was only a joke, but Lucindo’s cheeks go redder. He stumbles to his feet, hand knocking against his cup before he finds a grip on it. Raising it high, he stammers, “Oh, ah, of—of course! To our Sona’s first mission, and her spectacular killing of Starbreach!”
I smile while they all raise their glasses, and take my first sip of the night. To Starbreach. The shocked, furious look on her face as her crew came up for air, goggles loose at her neck, tugged along by the pull of the river. Her truck sinking beneath her, far beneath the froth of the water—not crushed flat, merely dropped like a stone. From a reasonable, survivable height.
I will not be a killer. Not for as long as I can help it.
“And, of course, to the Frostbringer,” Lucindo adds, a new expression touching his face. His ridiculous smile now feels anything but kind. He shrugs, the gesture almost shy, but his words are barbed. “May she crack.”
“Has she?” I ask, once the cheering has died down.
“Ah, well, the Zeniths decided to give her a little time before the real interrogation starts.” Lucindo sighs wistfully.
“Merciful.”
“Don’t worry, Cap,” Wendy sings, ruffling the back of Linel’s head. “We got a few jabs in for you, ’member? On behalf of the Valkyries.”
Lucindo brightens a bit. “Officially, I have no knowledge of this. None of you do.”
“She won’t talk,” Jole says bluntly. “Any Gearbreaker worth their salt isn’t going to break.”
“Cynic,” Rose jeers.
“And if she does not break?” I ask. “What happens then?”
“Take a guess,” Lucindo says.
“Execution?”
“Aw, you’re such a baby,” Rose coos, briefly pinching my cheek. “Nah. Ever heard of corruption?”
The word claws cold against my throat. “Of course. But it is not possible.”
“Oh, it is possible,” Lucindo assures me. “Just takes a while, you know, rewriting someone’s head. Scrubbing out those memories, lining up new ones in their place, and then—ta-da—you have some brand-new loyalties.”
Fucking Zeniths.
Of course the rulers of Godolia cannot help but turn a girl inside out when she refuses to slaughter her friends.
“Entire process is Godsdamn agonizing, though,” Jole adds, taking a casual sip from his cup. “So I’ve heard. The shock alone kills most of them.”
My fingers still against the tabletop. “Them?”
“Yeah,” Lucindo says, and this time, when he smiles, it reaches his eyes. “Frostbringer’s not our first Gearbreaker, you know.”
“Anyways,” Rose sighs, propping her chin on her fingers and looking over at me. She wavers as she does so; Jole puts a hand out from what seems like habit, steadying her. “Sooo, Sona, darling. How are you acclimating?”
It takes me a moment to absorb the abrupt topic change. “Acclimating?”
“Rose was freaked after the Mods surgery,” Jole chimes in.
Without looking back, she launches a fist into his shoulder. “I cannot believe I ever told you that. But yeah, Sona, it’s true. I mean, the panels, the whole light-jammed-into-our-sockets thing, a lot of Pilots ‘freak’ at first, as Jole so eloquently put it. So we’re always here if you need to talk, ’kay?”
I stare at her. I almost want to start laughing outright. But there is something so sincere across her features, across Jole’s, and when I raise my gaze to the rest of the Valkyries, I find they have all gone silent, nodding along.
Heat floods my face and I do not know why.
“All right,” I manage. “Thank you.”
A Pilot called Killian speaks up. “You really are extraordinary, Sona. Getting into the Valkyries right off the bat, at your age?”
“Most of us are transfers, promoted from the lower units,” says Yosh, shrugging. “I’m from the Paladins. Linel and Killian, the Phoenixes. Vic, too. Riley and Wendy, the Berserkers, and Jole and Rose, the Phantoms.”
Jole nudges his elbow against Rose’s. “Yep. That’s how we met.”
I resist a cold shudder at the mention of the Phantoms: mechas with pure black metal skin, spring-fortified legs imbued with cutting-edge, shock-absorbing tech to make their steps utterly soundless. They work only at night, when their forms blend into the pitch-dark landscape, and will stand still as the horizon until the time to strike arrives. Then, their victims will look up and truly believe the night has been chipped away, fragments moving as their own entities. They will not realize what has arrived until it is too late.
In Silvertwin, most people never even had the chance to realize what was killing them.
It is a bad memory, one they do not know I possess, so I push it down, and when I look up, an awed smile is perched across my face. I am impressed by my peers. I am not terrified of my friends.
I am not terrified.
“So you have all piloted various Windups?”
Rose rolls her eyes. “Sure. But if I had the chance to be a Valkyrie from the very beginning, I would’ve, hands down.”
“Did you always know you were going to be a Pilot?” Killian asks. “Or did your parents ship you off when you turned twelve?”
“Oh, nothing like that,” I say. “I am an orphan.”
“Nice going, Killian,” Yosh mutters.
Thank you for your sympathy. It is because your nation slaughtered my family. I shrug. “It all turned out for the best, did it not? Being here, with all of you…”
Rose puts her hand in mine, squeezing as she threads our fingers together. I have the awful realization that despite these dark thoughts in my head, I am suddenly blushing under her careful attention.
“That’s sweet of you,” she says.
“Oh, Sona, you’re nothing but a big softy, aren’t you?” Jole teases.
Carefully, I detangle our fingers. “It is a shame, though, that I will never get to experience piloting another Windup.”
“Why would you want to?” Lucindo teases, hands folding behind his head. “We’re not scaring you off too quickly, are we?”
Rose laughs. “We’re the elites, Sona, and I’m having the time of my life being one. We get the best floor, the best mechas, the best, most narcissistic spot in the Heavensday Parade…” She shakes out her jacket sleeves with a flourish. “The best fits.”
“So you’d never transfer?” asks Jole, raising a brow.
“Please,” she retorts. “Into what other unit? If they ever want to transfer me, they’ll have to rip my corpse straight out of the Valkyrie.”
Muttered agreements circle the table. Jole leans back in his chair, a smirk on his face, and interlaces his fingers behind his head.
“And if the rumors are true?”
“Jole,” Lucindo murmurs, shaking his head.
Rose rolls her eyes again. “Oh please. You’ll believe every bit of gossip that passes through the Academy. Gives you something to live for.”
“What rumors?” I ask.
“They’re nothing,” she says smoothly, then shoves Jole’s shoulder. “And shame on you for getting her hopes up!”
Jole ignores her, looking right over her head to me
et my eyes. “See, Sona, there’s been talk about a new model of mechas being introduced into the Windup Program. It’s going to be even more elite than the Valkyries, and some of the Pilots are probably going to be hand chosen from our unit.”
“So what?” snaps Rose. “Where are your loyalties, Jole?”
“Oh please,” Jole coos, smile flickering. “Tell me you wouldn’t trade a pretty blade for a pair of wings in a heartbeat.”
I lurch forward. “A pair of what?”
“See, that’s why the new unit’s gonna be so elite. Freakin’ wings, man. Pilots will be able to fly. Snatch drones, airplanes, missiles, and other nations’ shit right out of the sky. And the name! Gods, they’re going to be called Archangels. Is that not the most badass thing you’ve ever heard?”
The room breaks into excited chatters, every Pilot ecstatic at the possibility of a new brutal toy to play with.
“Look at her,” Rose snaps. “She’s shaking with excitement, you absolute idiot. Sona, it’s just a rumor. Don’t get your hopes up, kid. You have plenty of ability to wreak havoc in other ways, don’t you worry about that.”
I brace myself before she squeezes my shoulder kindheartedly, still scolding Jole. I want to break her fingers off one by one.
“It is just a rumor, anyway.” I look to Lucindo with an easy smile across my lips. “It is not true. I will not worry myself over it.”
A pause.
“You’re being awful withdrawn, Jonathan,” Jole notes.
The room goes quiet. The corner of Lucindo’s mouth twitches, then he collects himself.
“I cannot confirm,” he says, pouring the remainder of the wine into his cup. He takes a measured sip. Then his face breaks into a smirk. “Nor deny, I suppose.”
Jole’s mouth falls open. “Holy—”
“Shit,” Rose gasps.
Archangels.
They cannot satisfy themselves with the mere earth, but now hope to steal the sky as well. As if Godolia’s power is not so thickly strung throughout the air already that I cannot move. As if I am not already terrified enough whenever I dare to glance toward the heavens.
A sliver of pressure presses into my palms as my fingernails break skin. I glance down to see crimson seep onto my trousers.
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