Chapter 99 THE BREAD MAN’S SHADOW

Chapter 99 THE BREAD MAN’S SHADOW
The flour-covered hand slid down the glass window, leaving a thick white smear.

SCREECH.

My breath froze in my throat. I couldn't move. I couldn't blink. I stared through the glass at the man standing on the tiny nose of our scout boat. He wore his old brown baking apron, the pockets still bulging with wooden spoons and dried yeast bags. His round, kind face didn't have a single scratch. He looked exactly like he did on the mornings when he used to wake me up to knead the sweet dough.

But his eyes were wrong. They were solid, spinning wheels of bright silver thread.

"Father..." I whispered, my heart slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird.

A terrible, cold sickness washed over my stomach. He's supposed to be ash, my mind screamed. The Emperor told me they tore his skin off in the deep vaults! I saw his old bones in the palace cellar! Who is this thing?

The grief inside my chest didn't stay soft. It turned into a hot, heavy ball of pure rage. Every single memory of my childhood felt like a trap. The quiet nights, the smell of warm crust, the way he used to kiss my forehead when the kitchen got too cold, it was all a mask. He had stolen the master core, hidden us in the dirt, and let the whole world hunt his daughters down while he sat back and watched.

"Aria?" Seraphina whimpered from my lap, her small fingers tightening around my bloody sleeve. "The smell... it smells like the big ovens. Is Papa baking?"

"Stay down, Seraphina," I growled, my voice dropping into that dark, metallic rumble.

I pushed the cabin door open, stepping out onto the wet iron deck of the scout boat. The cutlass wound in my side leaked hot red blood down my thigh, but the World-Eater's black fire didn't care about the pain. The purple smoke rose from my right bone claw, wrapping around my arm like a hungry snake.

"You aren't my father," I hissed, my teeth grinding together. "My father died in the dark. You are just another puppet built by the Council."

The man on the bow didn't smile. He raised his hands, and as he moved, the white flour on his fingers began to spin, turning into thousands of thin, silver-threaded needles that floated in the air around his head.

"I built the kitchen to keep you safe, Aria," my father’s soft, gentle voice came out of his mouth, but it echoed inside my skull like a heavy iron bell. "I gave you a quiet life. I gave you the flour so you wouldn't look for the loom. Why did you leave the basement, child? Why did you let them wake the fire?"

"You kept us in a cage!" I roared, my single black wing snapping wide behind me, spraying black foam into the air. "They turned mother into a box of wires! They put clock-pieces into Seraphina’s head! Where were your needles when the Emperor was pulling my skin off?"

"The pattern requires sacrifice, Aria," he said, taking a slow step forward. His heavy leather boots didn't leave tracks on the wet metal. "The Council is old, but the line must remain pure. You have the black core. Your sister has the golden gears. Together, you are the perfect stitch to bind the sea."

"I am going to bind your neck with my bare hands," I promised.

I lunged. My single black wing drove me across the narrow deck like a bullet. I raised my right arm, the sharp purple bone claw, aiming straight for his chest, right where his baking apron met his throat.

But my father didn't dodge. He didn't even raise his arms to block the strike.

He simply reached into his apron pocket and pulled out a small, round wooden dough scraper, the old, scratched one he used to scrape the flour off the table. He flicked his wrist, and a massive wall of solid, heavy white dough exploded out of the wood, catching my bone claw mid-air.

THUD.

The dough wasn't soft. It was as hard as iron, freezing my skeletal fingers inside a thick, white block. The purple smoke of the World-Eater hissed and bubbled against the white flour, but the dough didn't melt. It began to climb up my arm, turning into a heavy, cold cast that locked my shoulder in place.

"Aria!" Kael yelled from the cabin door.

He raised his double-barreled steam gun, aiming it at my father’s head, but before he could pull the trigger, the iron mother lunged out of the water behind the boat. Her red wire arms were smoking, half-melted from the green lightning, but she didn't attack my father. She threw her heavy wire torso over Kael, pinning him to the deck.

"No... husband..." my mother’s mechanical roar shook the glass window, her rusted steel face vibrating with a terrible, buzzing panic. "Do not... touch the kids..."

"The kitchen is empty, Elena," my father said, looking at the wire monster without a single drop of pity in his silver eyes. "The bread is burnt."

He raised his left hand, and the thousands of floating silver needles shot forward, driving straight through my mother's red wire neck. SNAP-SNAP-SNAP. The red cables severed instantly, and her rusted steel face fell onto the deck with a loud, hollow clang, her red engine light flickering out into total darkness.

"Mother!" I shrieked, trying to tear my bone claw out of the iron dough, but the white crust was already moving up my neck, choking my throat.

My father walked over to me, his flour-covered hand reaching out toward my chest. His silver eyes spun at a mad, screaming speed as his fingers touched the cloth right over my purple core.

"The grandmother failed her task," my father whispered, his gentle voice turning into a cold, metallic rasp that made my ears bleed. "But the First Weaver never misses a stitch. Give me the heart, Aria."

Before his fingers could pierce my skin, the dead engine of the scout boat didn't just start, it exploded outward in a massive blast of blue fire.

A giant iron anchor, twice as big as our boat, crashed through the deck from below, pinning my father's legs to the metal boards. Rising out of the blue fire, his golden armor completely gone, his face a raw, skinless skull with two burning blue eyes, was the Emperor. He wasn't dead. He had stitched his own flesh to the iron anchor, and his hands were locked around my father’s ankles.

"The crown... doesn't share... the loom!" the Emperor roared, his teeth clicking together as he dragged my father backward toward the edge of the ship.