and raw above the deafening roar of the fire. “We just have to make it down the coast and we’ll be safe—”
They reached the port. There were other terrified humans huddled on the docks: all of them dirty and shell-shocked, children wailing, parents staring back at the city with anguish on their faces. Their city, their beautiful city, their history, their lives—all of it destroyed. Clara shifted in his arms, pressed her face into his neck. Thank the gods she was all right.
But something was still wrong. Siena kept wavering, looking back at the city, the haze of smoke and flame. Leo knew what she was searching for. Knew it was too late. But she would never believe that. Not when it came to Yora.
Right at the edge of the docks, seawater lapping at their feet, Siena stopped dead. She was holding something. Cupping it with both hands. She must have been holding it this entire time; he hadn’t noticed. Siena held out her hands, revealing a stone cradled in her palms. It was about the size of a plum, smooth like glass, a deep, dizzying blue.
“Take it,” Siena said, pressing the blue stone into Leo’s free hand, the one that wasn’t clutching their daughter. “Please just take it.”
“Si, what is this?”
She looked manic. “Tourmaline. Just take it.”
“What—what is that? Why does it matter so much? Si, please—”
“It’s Yora!” she said desperately, terribly, her voice breaking on the name. “Please, Leo, please, it’s Yora, it’s her heart, it’s everything, please just take it, take it and keep it safe. I have to go back for her, for her Design, I have to save something else of her, but I’ll be back. I promise.”
“No!” he gasped. “No, Si, don’t you dare—SIENA,” but she was already running, running away from him and Clara, away from the port, back into the burning city. Leo screamed her name. Clara began to cry, struggling against his grip, wailing for her mother—Mama!—Si, please, don’t do this—Mama, come back—
And then Crier was wrenching awake, gasping, tasting bile.
She flung the locket away. It hit the opposite wall of the carriage and fell to the floor at her feet, landing with a thud far louder than any object that small should have made.
Crier tried to calm her breathing. She stared at the locket, resting so innocently on the floor of the carriage. Practically glowing, even though the velvet curtains were drawn across the carriage windows.
It’s Yora. It’s her heart.
No, Crier thought, even as the pieces fell into place at last.
Tourmaline.
You’re Tourmaline, she thought, thinking of the magnificent blue stone Siena had held in her palms. You are Yora, and you are Tourmaline. It felt impossible that the truth had been right here the whole time, first hidden beneath the collar of Ayla’s uniform and then in Crier’s hands. It was real.
It was just like Rosi had said—someone had invented the Automa before Thomas Wren, but their designs had been stolen. Siena’s mother was the inventor, the creator of Yora: a creature similar to Wren’s Automa, but not the same. A different prototype. One that had a blue gem for a heart and didn’t require heartstone to live.
The blue gem. Tourmaline. A source of immortality.
Crier understood the locket now, too, what it was. Siena had been a Maker—amateur, maybe, but a genius. She must have made the locket to trap memories—perhaps she’d made it for Leo, since it seemed to have captured his side of the story and not hers.
Somehow—the result of genius and alchemy—Siena had created Tourmaline, too; she’d put it in Yora’s body in an attempt to ensure that Yora, her greatest creation, would never die. It was real.
It was real.
Oh, gods.
Maybe Tourmaline wasn’t perfect—Crier couldn’t forget Yora’s soulless eyes, her blank stare. But still. Immortality. An infinite source. The Automa who knew how to create Tourmaline would be the most powerful Automa in Zulla overnight. Kinok would be more powerful than the sovereign. More powerful than the entire Red Council, the Scyres, the Watchers, Queen Junn. Every last Automa would be under his command.
The girl who was no longer under Crier’s protection.
No, said a voice in Crier’s head, so fierce that it took a second for her to recognize it as her own. No. You cannot take her.
There was only one thing to do. Crier felt oddly calm as she considered it. Something inside her had already accepted that she would do what must be done to save Ayla and stop Kinok. It was simple, in the