Ayla was already waiting outside the stables when Crier arrived. She looked equal parts wary and furious.
“What’s happening?” Ayla demanded the second Crier was within earshot. “Why did you—?”
Crier grabbed her wrist, gently but firmly, and pulled her off to the side. She leaned in close, and even through the fog of worry, her eyes caught on the freckles dusting Ayla’s nose. The shape of her full, pretty mouth. There it was again, that indignance, that anger that was so harsh and yet that made Ayla who she was. That fierce vibration in her that Crier felt drawn to again and again . . .
“Hush,” Crier hissed, partially to herself. “Please. Wait here. Keep your head down, don’t make a scene.”
Ayla’s mouth dropped open, but Crier turned and quickly moved toward the carriage. It was waiting at the mouth of the stables, a black beetle shell pulled by two fine old horses. The driver, an aging manservant with skin like cracked leather, was already perched on his seat at the front, reins in hand.
“Do you need help with your trunk, my lady?” he asked.
“No,” said Crier. “Are we set to depart immediately?”
He nodded and tugged at the reins; the horses pawed at the ground, flicking their ears impatiently. “At a moment’s notice, my lady.”
Crier loaded her trunk into the carriage and then darted back to the side of the stables. Ayla was still standing there, anger in every line of her body, but there was no time to explain anything. Crier didn’t want any of the stableboys—or worse, her father—to see Ayla, to know that Crier was bringing Ayla along with her to the South. Her father hadn’t expressly forbidden it, but probably only because he thought there was no way Crier would dare.
Well, she dared.
After all, she knew she couldn’t leave Ayla here alone. She might have bought Ayla some time, a respite of safety, but how long would it last if she wasn’t there to watch out for her?
“Come,” Crier muttered. “I’ll tell you everything in a moment, just come with me and keep quiet.”
Ayla looked confused, but Crier took her hand and led her forward before she could reply. To her surprise, Ayla’s hand clutched around her own. And despite herself—despite everything—a thrill went through her.
The second they were both seated, Crier drew the curtains and rapped her knuckles on the thin wall separating them from the driver. “Go, go!”
The carriage lurched forward, and they were off.
As Kiera, the First, got older and stronger, she required more and more blood—and so, by the fifth year, the queen was dying.
So great was the queen’s love for Kiera that she would have gladly sacrificed herself to give Kiera even one more day of life . . . but Wren had fallen deeply in love with Queen Thea. Blinded by this human weakness—this love that grew inside him like a twisted, rotted thing—he planned to save the queen by killing Kiera. But the queen discovered his plans before he had a chance to act, and Thomas Wren was imprisoned.
Desperate to save the queen, Wren continued his work as a Maker even while imprisoned.
And this, above all, must never be lost to the waves of Time: no matter how much Queen Thea claimed to love her Automa daughter, it was she—not Thomas Wren—who murdered Kiera in the end.
—FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE AUTOMA ERA,
BY EOK OF FAMILY MEADOR, 2234610907, YEAR 4 AE
18
Ayla’s thoughts rattled louder than the carriage wheels.
She was stuck in an enclosed space with Crier for the foreseeable future, furious about being virtually kidnapped and even more furious about the fact that she was so damn hyperaware of Crier’s presence, of their knees bumping every time the carriage lurched, of the smell of her hair, the scent of her clean, perfumed skin, the cut of her jaw and the smooth column of her throat—
Ayla pressed her forehead against the carriage window and refused to look at Crier. Because every time she did, she found it difficult to stop looking.
Maybe she wasn’t even all that angry with Crier. Maybe she was just angry at herself. Here was the object of her revenge. And yet every day that ticked by and she couldn’t kill Crier, every day that she used the lady to try and gain access to information instead, was another day that she felt herself . . . weakening. Softening. Warming. It was the only way to describe it, as if her