Chapter 109 THE BLOODY APON

Chapter 109 THE BLOODY APON
The sight of my sister’s red blood on his hands made the world stop spinning.

Drip. Drip.

The thick, bright red drops fell off his white fingers, burning tiny, smoking holes straight through the gray ice beneath his boots. My father stood on top of the giant anchor, his face completely smooth and calm. He looked like he had just finished mixing a batch of sweet morning rolls, not like he had just smashed my mother into iron scrap.

"You hurt her," I whispered.

My voice didn't sound like a girl anymore. It sounded like a heavy iron door dragging across a stone floor. The purple fire of the World-Eater didn't just smoke from my right bone claw; it exploded out of my chest in a wild, boiling wave of hot ink that melted the brick deck beneath my feet.

The grief inside my heart didn't scream. It died instantly, leaving nothing but a vast, black pit of pure, absolute hatred. He used her, my mind hammered against my skull. He let me think he was a soft baker who loved us. He let me carry the scars while he waited to dip his fingers in Seraphina's veins. I didn't want answers. I didn't want to hear his gentle voice talk about his stupid pattern ever again. I wanted to tear his arms off his shoulders and feed his silver eyes to the sea.

"Seraphina is perfectly balanced now, Aria," my father said, his voice coming out soft and warm against the freezing frost. He raised the wooden rolling pin, the thick silver wire wrapped around it humming with a faint, oily light. "The gold gears needed a fresh lubrication to lock into the high wheel. Her blood was the only grease clean enough to seal the stitch. You should be happy. The family business is finally secure."

"I am going to kill you," I growled.

I didn't wait for him to step down. I lunged off the brick rail, my single black-stained wing snapping behind me with a loud CRACK that shattered the remaining ice around our boat. I flew through the freezing steam like a bullet, my right purple bone claw extended, aiming straight for his smiling face.

My father didn't even blink. He simply flicked his wrist, swinging the wire-wrapped rolling pin in a tight, quick circle.

WHIP-CLANG!

A massive wave of sticky, iron-hard white dough shot out of the wood, hitting my bone claw mid-air. The white crust wrapped around my skeletal fingers instantly, freezing my arm in place. But I wasn't the weak girl from the submarine anymore. The fury inside my veins gave a violent throb, pumping the purple fire right through the dough until the white crust turned into black ash.

I broke through the trap, my human hand locking onto his brown baking apron, dragging both of us off the anchor and crashing down onto the jagged gray ice below.

We rolled through the freezing slush, my claws tearing at his silver-threaded robes. I managed to pin his chest down, my sharp purple fingers digging through his linen shirt, searching for his heart.

"Where is she?" I screamed into his face, my spit mixing with the flour on his cheeks. "Where did you send her?"

My father didn't fight back with fists. His silver eyes began to spin at a mad, screaming speed, the light from his pupils burning two tiny white holes straight into my good eye.

"She is already at the High Citadel, child," he whispered, a thin, bloody smile stretching across his lips. "She is sitting on the throne of needles. But you won't live to see the first bake."

Before I could drive my bone claw into his throat, his left hand shot up. His fingers weren't made of meat anymore. They split open into five sharp, silver needle-pipes that drove straight into the open cutlass wound in my side.

"ARRRGH!"

A screaming, white-hot agony ripped through my lungs. I felt his needle-fingers pumping thick, freezing white dough straight into my stomach, locking my internal engine from the inside. The purple fire around my body flickered and died, leaving me gasping on my back in the freezing slush.

My father scrambled to his feet, wiping the black grease from his apron. He looked down at me without a single drop of pity, his silver wheels slowing down to a quiet hum.

"You were a good test batch, Aria," he said, raising his heavy leather boot over my head to finish the job. "But the kitchen must be swept."

Suddenly, a loud, deafening BOOM shook the ice from behind.

A massive, red-hot iron boiler plate flew through the steam, hitting my father square in the ribs. The force of the blow threw his body twenty feet across the ice, his silver robes tearing open as he hit the jagged shards with a dull THUD.

I forced my head to turn through the freezing pain.

Crawling out of the broken hull of the brick ship was Kael. His chest was completely bare, his skinless purple burn scars glowing with a faint, desperate blue fire. He didn't have his iron peg leg, and his left arm was hanging limp, but his right hand was locked onto the chain of the ship’s heavy iron crane. He had pulled the boiler plate loose with his bare teeth.

"Aria... get... up..." Kael choked out, his single blue eye rolling back into his head as he collapsed onto the frozen deck.

I tried to push myself up, but the white dough inside my belly was turning into solid iron, freezing my ribs.

My father was already standing up from the slush. His ribs were bent at a weird, broken angle, but his silver eyes were burning with a wild, terrifying rage. He raised his wire-wrapped rolling pin, pointing the tip straight at Kael’s exposed throat.

"The junk must be cleared first," my father hissed.

But before he could strike, a heavy, mechanical CLICK echoed from the dark air directly above us.

The dark northern sky didn't just open, it shattered. A massive, ten-story-high iron guillotine blade dropped out of the clouds with a deafening SCREECH, slamming straight down between my father and me, splitting the three-foot-thick ice sheet completely in two.

And sitting on the top of the giant blade, her silver dress dripping with fresh red blood, her head completely replaced by a massive, spinning gold clock-tower dial, was Seraphina.

The three golden hands on her face snapped down to the number six, and her voice echoed out of the iron plates, a voice that sounded like a million gears crushing a human bone.

"The timer has run out, Father," the clock-child roared. "The capital belongs to the machine."