Chapter 110 THE IRON TOWER

Chapter 110 THE IRON TOWER
The giant guillotine blade shivered in the gray ice with a heavy, vibrating HUM.

I stared up through the frozen mist at the top of the ten-story steel edge. My breath caught in my throat. The little girl who used to play with flour sacks, the sister I had carried through the mud, was gone. Standing on the iron beam was a nightmare made of gold and bone. Her small hands were now long, brass needles that clicked against her knees. Her beautiful face was completely buried under that spinning clock-tower dial, the golden numbers glowing with a sick, yellow grease-light.

"Seraphina..." My voice was a broken whisper, swallowed by the cold air.

A deep, tearing agony ripped through my chest, far worse than the iron dough hardening inside my stomach. I failed, the thought beat against my skull like a heavy boot. I killed everyone who stood in my way. I tore through the ocean, but the machine still got her. The loom didn't take her by force, she became the loom.

The grief inside me turned into a hard, sharp spike of pure vengeance. I didn't care about the high capital, and I didn't care about the frozen sea. My father had done this. He had broken her mind until she thought she was a clock. I wanted to drag him down, smash his rolling pin, and rip that gold tower off my sister's neck until she could cry real tears again.

Across the split ice sheet, my father scrambled backward. For the first time in my life, his face wasn't calm. The smooth baker’s skin was twisted with a sudden, ugly panic, his silver eyes spinning so fast they looked like two circles of white fire.

"You are not the master wire yet, child!" my father shouted up at the tower-dial. He raised his wire-wrapped rolling pin, the silver needles on his fingers expanding into long, sharp blades. "I built the frame! I own the kitchen! You cannot close the valves without my key!"

"The key is obsolete, Father," the clock-child roared back. The three golden hands on her face snapped from the six to the twelve with a deafening CLANG. "The design has updated. The old bakers are just fuel for the furnace."

With a sudden, violent twitch of her brass needle-fingers, the giant guillotine blade beneath her boots shot upward, flying back into the dark clouds like a pulled tooth.

Before my father could turn to run, four massive steel chains, each as thick as a tree trunk, dropped out of the dark sky. The heavy links were covered in wet white flour and fresh red blood. They slammed onto the ice around him, twisting like iron snakes.

CRUNCH-SNAP.

The chains wrapped around my father’s arms and legs, lifting him five feet off the splitting ice sheet. He thrashed wildly, his silver blades cutting into the iron links, but the gold light pouring from Seraphina's dial was too heavy. It locked his joints, melting his silver-threaded robes into black slag.

"Aria!" my father screamed across the gap, his eyes locking onto my face with a desperate, pathetic crawl. "The core! Use the World-Eater! If she takes the capital, the oven will burn the whole world to ash! You have to cut the line!"

"You told me to stay in the basement," I hissed, my teeth grinding together as I dragged my body toward the edge of the ice. "Now watch the bread burn."

I didn't try to save him. I forced my right arm down, my purple bone claw smoking with a weak, desperate burst of dark ink. The iron dough inside my ribs was heavy, but the pure hate in my veins was hotter. I crawled toward Kael, who was lying motionless near the frozen brick hull of the ship. His bare chest was blue from the frost, his single eye closed.

"Kael, wake up," I growled, grabbing his thick leather collar with my human hand. "We have to move."

Suddenly, the clock-dial above us gave a long, grinding shriek.

"The extraction begins," Seraphina’s mechanical voice boomed.

The four chains yanked my father upward, pulling his screaming body straight into the dark clouds toward the high platform. But as his boots left the air, he didn't just let himself be taken. With a final, mad roar of strength, his silver needle-fingers shot out, catching the heavy winch rope of our brick ship.

The entire warship gave a violent, sickening lurch. The ice sheet beneath my knees snapped completely into a thousand floating pieces.

Kael’s heavy body slipped from my fingers, sliding off the tilted brick deck and hitting the freezing black water with a loud splash.

"Kael!" I shrieked.

I lunged over the edge, my single black-stained wing snapping wide to catch the wind. I dove into the freezing water, my human arm hooking around Kael’s bare shoulder just before the current could drag him under the ice. I kicked my legs wildly, using the last scrap of my purple magic to drag both of us back onto a floating chunk of the wooden wheelhouse.

We were shivering, bleeding, and trapped on a piece of scrap wood in the middle of a dying sea.

I looked up through the thick white steam. The brick ship was being dragged into the sky by my father's chains, disappearing into the dark clouds above. Seraphina's giant clock-face was gone, her gold light fading into the freezing blue fog.

But the silence didn't last.

A heavy, iron boot slammed down onto the wooden board right behind my head, splashing freezing water into my neck.

I spun around on my knees, my purple bone claw flaring with a weak, trembling fire.

Standing on our tiny wooden raft, his clothes completely dry, his face covered by a heavy iron mask with two glowing red slits for eyes, was a man holding a massive, double-barreled steam rifle. He didn't point it at Kael. He pointed the black iron barrels straight at the center of my forehead.

"The rebel army is under new management, girl," a deep, familiar voice came from behind the iron mask, a voice that sounded exactly like Kael’s, but completely cold, hard, and unscarred.