Fear and fear and fear. Frozen water in her veins, her ice-white heart. Her own body a prison. Mouth wired shut, limbs heavy with frost. The bravest thing she’d ever done was running away, and even then she’d been terrified. She’d second-guessed herself, felt guilty for leaving, wondered if perhaps she was overreacting, if she should have stayed and played the perfect, obedient child, even if it was unbearable. Ungrateful, her mind had whispered. Naive. Ignorant. Helpless. You are the Lady Crier, daughter to the sovereign, and that is all you were Created to be, and you will never be anything else. How dare you defy your sole purpose?

“No,” she said aloud, staring at her reflection in a tarnished hand mirror propped on one of the shelves. Her eyes were wild and bloodshot. “No. You’re wrong.”

She whirled around, taking in every detail of the room, all the hundreds of objects on the shelves. Rusty old daggers and glass baubles and children’s toys, a painted leather mask, fat yellowed books, a wooden jewelry box crusted with gemstones of all colors, a series of little porcelain animals, a pocket watch. A set of reed pipes, a rag doll, countless knives and arrowheads, a crown of dried flowers, a tattered white dress. This collection of stolen things. Heart hammering at her temples, breaths loud and harsh, Crier committed all of them to memory even as her vision started blurring around the edges. This collection of ghosts. Her father’s crimes. She took them in, sick with fury. Grief.

Then she burst into tears.

She sank to a crouch, buried her face in her hands, and cried like she had never cried before. The loud, uncontrollable sobs of a child. A human child. Even newbuilt Automa did not cry like this; they were taught very early on what was acceptable, and this was not. Tears streamed down her face, hot and itchy, salt on her lips, as if she had an ocean inside her and it was finally brimming over.

After what felt like hours, the sobs petered out into shaky, hitching breaths. Crier sniffled hard. She lifted her head, feeling full and hollow all at once. She wiped her face, her nose, blinking away the last tears.

Then she frowned.

On one of the bottommost shelves, mostly hidden beneath the sleeve of the white dress, there was a sliver of deep midnight blue. Crier shuffled forward on her knees, skirts trailing behind her. She reached out and closed her fingers around that piece of blue. It was no bigger than a sun apple but heavier than she’d expected, heavy like a lump of iron. At first glance the surface seemed perfectly smooth. But when Crier looked closer, she saw tiny letters etched into the blue stone.

She had seen this stone before. Never in real life, only in memory. The first time she’d accidentally smeared a drop of blood onto Ayla’s locket and tumbled into the memories of a man who had lived and died years before Crier was even Designed.