“You’re not the first one to experience this,” Cassandra says, “it’s quite an effective interrogation tactic. A man will tell me anything when I hang his wife above the machine. He will tell me what I want to know when he sees the first blade tear off her toes. I like to suspend them together so he can see her drop first and be splashed with her blood before he dies.”
“You’re a monster.”
“If I push this button, you drop,” she says, hefting the remote.
I press my lips shut and lift my feet higher, away from the blades. My muscles are starting to ache. Every sway jerks at the cuffs; I might just fall in no matter what I do.
I last until it catches my dress and rips off my skirt. When I see it torn up in the blades, I start to scream.
“Damn it, where is he? I really wanted him to arrive when she was about halfway in,” Cassandra says to no one in particular.
I’m curling up in a ball, the blades reaching up at me. I close my eyes and pray it will be over quick. I wonder if I should make one great twist and jerk myself free of the hook, drop in so it will end quickly, but I have a feeling as soon as I touch the metal teeth she’ll turn the speed down and watch me ripped apart slowly.
I open my eyes when something streaks past the windows.
“He’s here,” she says, her voice dripping with almost sexual excitement.
She slows the machine, and the cable. I hang on for dear life. Any moment the strength in my belly and back will give, my feet will drop, and it will have me.
Then the world goes bright as the sun and I press my eyes shut, blinded. There is a great crash and the roof caves in from above, slabs of concrete spiked through with rebar falling like rain in the corner, followed by a thunderous crashing sound as the armor suit lands on the ground in a crouch.
In the middle of all this madness, I’m back at Bible camp. I remember the voice of old Reverend Abernathy reading from Revelations: and I heard as he cried with a great voice as the lion roars, and seven thunders uttered their voices.
Kristoff’s wordless bellow, half a roar and half a scream, echoes through the chamber. He swings his four-foot-long sword through the air and it clashes in a blue arc of sizzling electricity.
The cable stops, and I hang inches above a brutal death.
“Take off the armor,” she says. “Get out of it now.”
“Don’t,” I scream. “Don’t do it! You can’t let her have it!”
“Do it or she dies, my prince. You’re fast, but not fast enough,” Cassandra snarls.
“Release her, free from harm, and you can have the armor,” he says, without missing a beat.
“No!”
“Shut up,” Cassandra barks. “You step out of it first. Lay down the sword and open the armor, get on your knees, and await my mercy.”
“I should have killed you before.”
“You can’t. Can’t hurt a woman, as if I am some lesser creature unworthy of the same consideration you gave your brother. How did that feel, I wonder? Did you enjoy it when that blade of yours bit through his belly?”
“Enough. Take the armor, let the girl go free.”
“I see you have sense enough not to plead for your own worthless life. Very well. Get out of the suit.”
No, no, don’t.
I stare at him, pleading. It’s not worth it, I want to tell him. My life is a small thing, not worth all this. She can’t have that power. No one should. It has to be destroyed, all of it. I’d rather die than let her have a weapon like that. It’s madness.
His armor unfolds and breaks open, spreading apart around him. He steps down, disengaging his feet from the stirrups before he falls into a kneeling position before it.
“The advanced prototype,” Cassandra murmurs, her lusty whisper amplified to a shout by her armor. “Mine now. Give it to me.”
“You shall have it,” Kristoff says, looking at the floor.
“You should have known I wouldn’t let her live.”
Cassandra pushes the button. I fall.
It happens so fast I can barely register it. The tension of the cable holding me up disappears a fraction of a second after the press of the button, and I can feel the blades rushing up to meet my waiting flesh. I close my eyes, telling myself it won’t hurt too long, trying to think of something happy as I descend toward my hateful end.
Behind Kristoff, the armor suit cracks apart into pieces, falling like a marionette with the strings cut, and the individual parts rocket across the room in a cloud.
The first, biggest part, the back, hits me and knocks me away from the machine. As I fall, the other plates close around my arms and legs, locking in place, ratcheting as they adjust themselves to my body. The helmet slams closed over my head and I land in a roll on the concrete floor.
I get up on my knees as a screen blinks to life in front of my eyes. Little icons whir along the bottom, and I wave my hands at nothing, trying to shield myself from the spinning blips on the screen.
Surging to my feet, I stumble.
This feels incredible. It moves with me… No, it moves before I do, like it’s reading my mind. I stumble back and watch in horror as Cassandra comes charging at me in her gleaming white suit, sword raised high, and brings it down to cleave me in half.
It… It moves. It yanks me out of the way.
“Stay back!” Kristoff roars.
The world goes crazy. A second suit follows the first through the gap in the roof and he jumps, enveloped in it in a single motion, rolls, and snatches the sword from the floor. It arcs to life, buzzing with furious energy as he awkwardly swats away her swing, and their blades lock, moving so fast I can barely see.
I edge back, stumbling as I try to plant my feet, and put big cracks in the floor. It’s a struggle until I realize the suit will balance itself, all I need to do is let it. My heart pounds in my chest as I watch them duel.
My God, it hits me like a train.
He could kill her anytime he feels like it. She’s not very good with the sword.
He could bat her blade aside and run her through or slice off a limb, but he won’t, he keeps stopping himself, and every time he commits to a blow and pulls back, she lands one, raking the blade along the surface of his armor. Within a minute his suit is chipped and dented in a dozen places and his left knee sticks, making him limp.
“You pathetic, romantic fool,” she laughs, charging at him. “I hope you die knowing that you could have beaten me but your silly morals wouldn’t—”
“Shut up,” he roars, swinging at her.
She blocks the blow and edges out of the way. I knew she would, he aimed his cut at her sword, not her.
“Persephone go, now!”
My voice echoes across the room. “I won’t leave you!”
“Leave, or she’ll kill us both!”
“You force me to damage the damned suit,” Cassandra snarls, “but with two of them I can piece together what I need. Die.”
He’s losing. She’s going to kill him. I have to do something, but what can I…
Penny, you idiot, you’re wearing a seven-foot-tall tank suit.
“Hey!” I bellow, charging at her.
It’s just appropriate, really.
“Get away from him, you bitch!”
She swings at me, and Kristoff parries the blow, turning her sword aside. When the flat of her blade hits my arm guard, the screen flashes and a red mark appears on a little stickman in the bottom corner. She damaged my suit.
That makes me irrationally mad, so I punch her in the face. My fist rings with the impact, and it sends her reeling. She swings her blade again but I’m inside her arms, and and catch her in a bear hug.
I don’t know how this thing works, so I just run straight into the wall with her. The concrete buckles and cracks in a spiderweb from the impact, and then she pummels the side of my head with her fist.
The crackling blade comes down toward my face. I throw my arms up then roll away as Kristoff’s blade guards me from t
he impact.
I get to my feet, springing up easily as the suit reads my movements. Dizzy, I stumble back.
We have her flanked, he and I on different sides. She sweeps her sword from side to side, waving the tip at us. Kristoff feints at her.
“We have you,” he says, edging closer, limping. “You can’t take us both in that old armor. Give up, Cassandra.”
She laughs, tinny and echoey in her armor. “The moment I lower my guard you’ll kill me.”
“I swear, I will grant you clemency. I want an end to this. I want it to be over. I grant you safe passage if you surrender your armor and swear never to set foot in my lands again.”
“You want an end to this,” she snarls, “you shall have it.”
She charges at him, bats his blade aside, and drives hers straight at his chest.
I scream, wordless, and throw myself at her.
I do…something. It feels like I just jumped off a ten-story building and my feet hit the ground heels first.
Before I even know what happened we hit the ceiling, and drop down. The walkway buckles under the weight of the suits as we roll, locked together. I jam my fist into her faceplate, kick at her, and she dents in the side of my armor with a hammer blow.
I kick and my armored talons scrape across her faceplate. She falls.
Straight into the shredder.
It catches her foot and she screams high and loud, the sound amplified into a piercing wail by the speakers in the helmet she wears.
I roll off the platform, land hard on the concrete, and grab the remote as she screams obscenities and tries to drag me in with her.
My finger hits the speed control and breaks the remote.
Not before it turns all the way up. Her curses turn to screams and then to a high-pitched wail that blends with the shriek of the machine. My prince seizes me and spins me around.
“Don’t look. Don’t look.”
His sword clatters to the ground and he sags to his knees.
“Are you hurt?”
“We have to go. Now!”
He rises and pulls me along. I use the suit’s power to lift and carry him out of the building. Behind me there’s a wild, almost animal shriek and the shredder blows apart with a whump and the high-pitched wail of an engine uncoupled from the machine it drives.
Outside we stagger to our knees.
“I’ve summoned help,” he says.
The Kosztylans arrive first, on his heels, almost.
“How did you find me?”
He yanks the helmet off his suit and drops it. “I put a tracking device in your shoe.”
“Help me get this thing off, damn it.”
Opening it piece by piece, I drag myself out of the armor. The two suits crouch there side by side as we sit on the dirty ground next to each other.
“Would you have let me go, if I wanted?”
“Yes. I only… I would let you go, but I would not let you come to harm. Always I would watch over you, keep you safe. You are my life, even if I must set you free.”
I rest my hand on his.
“I want to go home.”
“Yes, home,” he sighs, “I understand. It is much to ask for you to give up everything you’ve ever owned to—”
“I mean our home. Back to our castle.”
His face lights up and he leans over and gently kisses my cheek, leaning his forehead against mine. His people are quickly lifting the suits into a truck, carrying them piece by heavy piece.
“When you went out before, you were fighting her.”
“Dozens of times,” he says sadly. “Never could I simply end it. The temptation was there… But there was a line I could not cross. I will never hurt a woman, no matter what sort of monster I become.”
I smooth the hair away from his face and he winces as my hand brushes a knot on his head.
“My prince,” I whisper.
He takes my hand. “When we are home again I will destroy these things. All of them. I will tear down the assembly line, destroy the schematics, all of it. As long as it exists there will be the threat that someone will use it. It is too great a power for anyone to have, me most of all. It must end with us.”
I squeeze his hand.
“There will be many changes. We will make a better world…for our children.”
“Yes,” I sigh. “Yes, we will. Take me home, my prince.”
“As you wish, Penny.”
11
It is my wedding day.
I haven’t seen my prince since last night. We did not sleep together, as usual. I took my old room and now I pace back and forth in my gown, wondering how anyone even expects me to walk in this thing. The train is thirty feet long, fanning out behind me like the gossamer wings of an enormous lace butterfly. The bodice is studded with real pearls, a gold chain wraps around my throat, and the high collar is covered in an intricate pattern of fire opals, sapphires, and emeralds.
My mother pulls my veil down and tucks it into place. I clutch the bouquet and try to look like a bride. Mom sighs.
“You look lovely, honey.”
I finally called them before we left New York. They really were in town, but came on their own.
You should have seen the look on my father’s face when my fiancé walked into the pizzeria and introduced himself. After that Kristoff hired a real pizza chef from New York to come to Kosztyla and train people to open a pizzeria here in the capital city.
It wasn’t all sweetness and light. My mom and dad were there…as was his girlfriend. They separated while I was gone and didn’t tell me. He was driving to her house every week to make the phone call and keep up the illusion that I had a happy home, such as it ever was, waiting for me.
As Mom fusses over me, Dad, sans girlfriend, is with my husband-to-be. I’m told they had a wild party last night; I’m rather glad I’m not privy to the details. I can be reasonably confident there were no strippers, so that’s a plus.
I pace around and around the room.
“You’re going to wear out those slippers of yours,” she says.
I sigh. She’s right. They’re silk and have freaking pearls on them. If I pace around much more my toes will be sticking out by the time I get to the great hall.
There’s a knock at the door and my breath catches.
My father, in a finely tailored tuxedo, enters the room as my mother opens the door for him. In contrast to all the years that I remember of their marriage, they actually look happy to see each other. He stands a little taller, and he’s lost weight.
Maybe if I’m lucky Mom will start dating eventually and settle down with somebody more to her liking.
“They’re ready for you,” he says, sighing. “I have to walk you down and all that. Beth, you can go ahead.”
Mom nods to me and walks past him, stopping to kiss him on the cheek. Peace on my wedding day, I should be overjoyed. It’s good luck, I hope.
When we’re alone he says, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” I tell him firmly, sighing deeply. “I do, I really do. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.”
He offers me his arm, and I take it. It’s a long walk, and the halls are lined with guards carrying heavy pikes, staring straight ahead as we pass. My honor guard, as tradition demands.
I’ve been hearing the phrase “as tradition demands” a lot lately.
The walk feels like it takes hours but it’s really about ten minutes. There’s no chorus of Here Comes the Bride as I walk down the aisle, a long row between benches and benches of guests. Dignitaries, celebrities, people from all over the world, and the press. This is on TV around the globe.
My prince stands at the altar, set up before the throne on the dais. One of his ministers will perform the ceremony.
My soon-to-be husband looks at me reverently, a soft, happy smile on his face. As my father steps away and I come to face him, the music swells and my lip trembles. I can feel tears welling in my eyes.
Come on
, Penny, you can handle this.
I steel myself as he lifts the veil and draws it over my shoulders, baring my face to him. He looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time, studying every detail of my face with reverence and adoration. I want to kiss him now and the ceremony be damned.
We have to go through all the motions first. The ceremony is in Kosztylan and then repeated in English. I say my vows haltingly in his language, and then he places a ring on my finger, and I one on his.
The ceremony doesn’t stop here. I drop to one knee, bowing my head slightly. From a padded case he lifts a tiara of silver, fine wires braided together with a fire opal in the center. As I draw the veil off my head completely, he tucks the crown into my hair and carefully adjusts it, takes my hands, and pulls me to my feet.
Then he kisses me, to an excited roar of applause. I grin and forget myself, hot tears of joy burning down my cheeks as he pops the clasps holding my train in place, doffs his heavy cloth-of-gold cloak, and throws it over my shoulders. I clutch it like a blanket, maybe hamming it up a bit too much as I sniff at it and wrap it around myself, turning to kiss him again.
The reception is here. The guests stand as an army of servants clear the benches, unfolding huge, cleverly joined oak tables as everything in front of the dais is cleared away and a table carried out in front of us.
I take my seat at his right hand, our… Hell, call them what they are. Our thrones are pushed together so they touch, and I rest my arm on his as the presentation of the wedding gifts begins. It takes two hours for them all to be given, foreign dignitaries and government ministers and locals carrying them up, holding them high so we can see them, then carrying them off to a side table where they quickly pile high.
Then comes dinner, the first of nine courses, so much food that if I tried to eat a full helping of all of it, my dress would burst.
I’m not showing yet but I would be if I ate all this.
So much attention is fawned over me I start to feel drunk from it, and end up leaning on Kristoff’s arm, ignoring most of the goings-on as the food is brought and taken. He feeds me choice bites from his plate for a while, and then the time comes for the cake.
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