Elsewhere in the palace, Scyre Kinok must also be preparing for the ceremony. Kinok, her betrothed. Four hours from now, her husband. Forever. Crier couldn’t stop thinking about it: the concept of forever. Automae lived for a long time. Twenty, fifty, eighty years from now, she would still be married to Kinok. The seasons would change, her father would die, Kinok would replace him as sovereign. For most of her life, Crier had believed that as Hesod’s only child, his only natural heir, she would be the one to inherit his throne. She thought she knew the path her life would take: as soon as her father decided she was ready, she would join the Red Council. She would work as a Red Hand, a councilmember, for decades, doing whatever she could to pass laws strengthening the frayed relationship between Automae and humans in Rabu. She’d spent the last ten years writing essay after political essay, establishing her beliefs, her values, her legitimacy as a potential councilmember. But the day her father had finally invited her to a meeting of the Red Council, she’d been forced to stand silently in a corner and watch as her father chose Kinok to fill Councilmember Reyka’s empty seat. Crier had realized that day that her father had never planned on allowing her to join the council, let alone become sovereign. She wasn’t destined to be a part of her nation’s future. She was destined to be a wife, a trinket, given away as a gesture of goodwill the moment her father wanted to join forces with someone whose power was threatening his own. Kinok: Scyre, Watcher of the Iron Heart, leader of the rapidly growing Anti-Reliance Movement. Kinok: a man who had tricked Crier into thinking she was Flawed, broken, Made wrong; a man who had used this “Flaw” to blackmail her into bending to his will. Who was on a quest to find Tourmaline, a new source of power for their Kind. Who had learned Ayla’s grandparents were somehow connected to the creation of Tourmaline, and therefore wanted to find Ayla.

It felt like Crier’s bodice really was suffocating her. It felt like her ribs were cracking, shattering inward, piercing her lungs. Her heart.

The worst part was her father’s obvious pleasure. He had never been proud of her like this. Not when she’d studied day and night, memorized libraries’ worth of books, kept silent, obeyed him, adhered to his Traditionalism, followed every rule. That had earned her nothing but indifference. Or the occasional praise like a thin gold veneer over a heap of criticism: This is well written, daughter. If only the content were as good as the technique. But over the past week, he’d taken to treating her like a well-behaved dog, rewarding her good behavior with tiny gifts. Tokens of his affection. A book filled with charts only of various seas, as recorded by sailors and voyagers. A peacock-feather quill with a pot of silver ink. Most precious of all, a golden key. It opened the door to Hesod’s trophy room, one of the only rooms in the palace nobody, not even Crier, was allowed to enter. A few months ago, she would have been honored. But these days she had no interest in seeing her father’s spoils of war. A room of human artifacts he’d been collecting for years. They weren’t trophies. They were stolen. She’d left the golden key in the drawer of her writing desk, hadn’t touched it since. Didn’t plan to.