Chapter 104 THE FIRST BATCH

Chapter 104 THE FIRST BATCH
The massive steel meat cleaver caught the bright light of the kitchen fires as it hung in the air.

"No!" I screamed.

I tried to lunge across the long wooden table to grab the cradle, but the gold wires wrapped around my ankles were tight, pinning my boots to the white-tiled floor. The kitchen smelled like warm yeast and fresh lard, a smell that used to make me feel safe when I was a little girl. Now, it made me want to puke. It was the smell of the trap.

My father didn't look up at my shout. His flour-covered thumbs brushed the baby’s tiny, purple bone claw. His round face was totally calm, like he was just checking the temperature of a loaf of bread before sliding it into the brick oven.

"Every master weaver has to test the thread, Aria." His soft voice bounced off the white walls, scratching the inside of my ears. "The purple core is too wild for a soft body. If the skin splits during the first rising, you throw the dough away and start a fresh batch. That is how a bakery works. That is how the world stays fed."

He was going to kill me before I even learned to walk; the truth hit my brain like a cold iron hammer. I wasn't his daughter. I was just the first loaf that baked too fast.

A dark, boiling sea of pure hatred flooded my throat, washing away the fake kitchen memories. My entire childhood was a lie. He didn't save me from the palace; he hid me in the basement because I was a broken tool he didn't know how to fix yet. He let the world rot; he let my mother turn into wire, all so he could keep playing with his little gold coggles and flour sacks.

"You are a monster," I hissed, my teeth grinding until they cracked. "I will burn your kitchen to the ground. I will chop your hands off."

"You already did, sister," a sweet, light voice whispered right behind my neck.

I snapped my head around.

The white tiles beneath my feet split open with a loud, wet CRUNCH. The kitchen vanished, ripped away by a sudden rush of black grease and hot steam.

I was back in the floating forge. My human hand was still locked onto Seraphina’s wet shirt, the gold wires from her chest still boring into my skin like hot needles. But the old me, the scarred Aria in the diving suit, wasn't talking anymore. The brass wires from my sister’s chest had pulled her face down onto the stone table, her silver-threaded eyes totally crushed by the weight of the spinning gold cogs.

She was dead. The future version of me was nothing but a heap of scrap metal now.

But the gold light didn't stop pulsing. It was flowing out of Seraphina’s chest and pouring straight into my right arm, making the sharp purple bone claw turn a bright, burning yellow colour.

"Aria! The floor is going!" Kael roared through his teeth.

He was still pinned to the brass floor plates by the three silver needles in his shoulders, his face purple from the pressure. The giant stone table in the centre of the room was tilting fast. The steel cables holding the floating island were snapping outside the walls, sounding like a row of cannon shots. BANG. BANG. BANG.

"Seraphina, wake up!" I yelled, pulling her small, floating frame against my chest with my good arm. "Hold onto me! We have to go!"

Her tiny head rolled onto my shoulder. The empty eye sockets were smoking, but her chest gave a sharp, violent hitch.

"Aria..." she wheezed, her small voice sounding like dry paper rubbing together. "The old me... she put something inside my stomach. It’s cold. It feels like a big iron key."

Before I could ask her what she meant, a heavy, metallic thud shook the brass plates right beneath my knees.

The wall behind the stone table tore open. Standing in the gap, his golden gear-hands dripping with black grease, was the clockman. His smooth, faceless head was cracked down the middle where the Emperor’s snake-monsters had bitten him, but the single keyhole in his forehead was still glowing with a mad, oily blue light.

He wasn't alone.

Floating in the dark air behind his shoulder was a massive, black iron frame shaped like a giant spider. It didn't have eyes or a mouth, but dangling from its iron legs were hundreds of thin, pale skins that looked exactly like mine, clones, all of them empty, their white suits stained with old grease.

"The old line is erased," the clockman's triple-layered voice boomed through the steam, making my purple core shake behind my ribs. "The master loom has decided. The first batch must be cleared from the floor."

The giant iron spider lunged forward, its long metal legs slamming into the brass floor plates as it shot straight for Seraphina.

I didn't try to run. I opened the black hole in my belly all the way, letting the purple fire of the World-Eater mix with the gold light in my bone claw. I raised my glowing yellow fingers, ready to rip the clock-man’s faceless head off his neck.

But before my claw could touch his armour, my sister’s small hand snapped out, her fingers locking onto my right wrist with a tight, terrifying strength that didn't belong to a child.

I looked down at her face.

Seraphina’s empty eye sockets weren't dark anymore. Two bright, solid silver keys had pushed out of her skin, spinning at a blinding, screaming speed inside her head. She looked up at me with a cold, robotic smile that looked exactly like our father’s.

"Papa says it's time to turn the oven off, Aria," my little sister whispered.

With a hard, violent jerk, she drove her silver key-eyes straight into the centre of my chest, right where my purple core was beating.