It’s not a lot to ask, and yet, a few minutes later, someone rams their foot into my thigh.
“You son of a—” I roar, leaping to my feet and sending the snow flurries billowing. Maybe a fight is just what I need—who needs a slow freeze when someone else can just knock me out cold, quick and easy—but once my vision clears, I stop short. Jenny cocks her head, white-speckled ponytail rippling.
“Don’t insult Mom like that,” she says, then offers the thermos in her hands. “Hot chocolate? They’ve got loads of it here. Very on-brand. Haven’t seen any cows, though.”
“Not thirsty.”
“Suit yourself.”
She takes a sip, leaning back against a briskwood tree. Her boots go over her knees, just high enough to best the snow.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” she murmurs. “We go from broiling hot to a blizzard.”
I don’t say anything. Jenny looks down her nose at me, but where I expect amusement I find something … very un-Jenny-like.
“I’m sorry about the twig,” she says softly. “Xander. He didn’t deserve it.”
I let my shoulders relax. “Neither did Luca.”
“Or any of them,” Jenny adds. “So what are we going to do about it, dear sister?”
“You have a plan.”
“We already had one. The same one. Godolia got word of the Archangel, sent the Phoenixes to destroy it. So they believe it to be destroyed, yes? If we didn’t have the element of surprise before, we certainly do now.”
“Got word?” I repeat, my voice low.
She takes another sip of hot chocolate before turning away, starting the trek back toward the village. She gestures for me to follow.
“I think we have a mole in our midst, Eris,” Jen says casually, and I nearly lose my footing.
“I thought it was because of the helicopter,” I gasp. “That that’s how they found us—”
“Perhaps. But I’m not risking it. Heavensday is in forty-eight hours. Tell only the ones you trust about the plan’s commencement.”
“I trust all the Gearbreakers.”
Jenny throws me a sideways glance. “Haven’t I always told you to be on the lookout for the next punch? And, Eris, everyone—everyone—here hits hard.”
“I know. You also taught me to get back on my feet.”
“And hit harder.”
“And faster.”
“And over and over and over again,” she sings.
She pauses her march to put a hand on her hip, staring through the quiet streets curling before us. The snow nullifies everything, although it wouldn’t be much louder if the ground were bare. We lost half of the Gearbreakers, half of ourselves. There isn’t one crew that didn’t suffer casualties, not one soul unsplintered by grief. Including Jen. Her eyes are rimmed red, pretty features puffy, lips split and dry. On her neck, the edge of a bandage peeks out from under her scarf. Morbidly I wonder if her tattoos are intact, if ink burns just the same as everything else.
“We leave before dawn day of. Go tell Glitch.”
The hesitation before my nod is slight, but she still catches it.
“What?” she snaps. “What’s the matter?”
“I … I think I messed up with Sona. I thought she … I raised my gloves and—”
“Holy shit, did you kill my Pilot?”
“Gods, Jen!”
“I swear, if you ruined our—”
“I didn’t kill her! It’s just … her and me…”
Jen gives me a long look. “So you fix it. Apologize.”
I shake my head. “I feel like all I do is apologize to her.”
“So make it stick this time,” Jen says in a bored tone. “Honestly, as long as it doesn’t affect her flight, I couldn’t care less about your little lovers’ quarrel.”
“It’s not—”
“Not what, Eris?” she interrupts coolly. “Not important? Not infuriating? Not painful? Tell me, is Miss Sona Steelcrest not important or infuriating or painful to you?”
I scowl as heat floods my cheeks, stupid warmth that dispels the numbness and lets in everything. “I was going to say it’s not like that.”
Jen grins. “Fine. Then you can kill her, but not till after she gets the job done. Bitch threw me in a river, anyway.”
“I’m not going to kill her.”
Something dark drops in her expression. Jen leans over me, fingertip drilling into my sternum.
“No? Then fix it,” she growls. “Fix it because you need to, and because you need her.”
“I—”
“Are you listening to me? Get. Yourself. Together. You figure out who you need because they’re the ones you’re coming home to. They’re the reason we still have a home.” Her finger tucks under my chin. She looks exhausted, like she hasn’t slept since I last saw her, crow’s feet like claw marks under her dark gaze. “I know it’s a lot. I know we’ve lost a lot.”
Her eyes burn into mine. I realize that she isn’t tired at all. She’s furious.
“Are you listening to me, Eris Shindanai? We haven’t lost, and we haven’t lost everything, so we can keep going.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ERIS
Wrecked. That’s the word that comes to mind after I finish talking over the Heavensday plan.
We’re gathered in the attic of the safe house, soaking in air that smells like dust, puffy yellow sheets of insulation peeling from the ceiling above the mismatched furniture. I’m perched on a rolled-up rug, Sona at its opposite end. Her eyes are lifted, but not to me, same as the rest of the kids. I don’t take it personally. Everyone finds it easier to look to the ceiling or floor, a slight hunch to their shoulders that doesn’t suit any of them.
It makes me ache.
Arsen has salt lines on his cheeks he hasn’t bothered to scrub away. Nova’s fingernails are long bitten to the quick, and now she gnaws at the skin around them, fresh blood in her cuticles. Juniper and Theo would look better if it weren’t so clear they hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t even thought to try.
And Sona. Sona just looks hollow. I’ve never, ever believed I could knock her over before. For some reason, that’s the thought that rises—that I could push her over and it would be easy because she would let me, wouldn’t even look at me.
Wrecked. The kids are so absolutely wrecked, and it’s such a tangible measurement of exactly how much the world has fucked us over that it’s laughable; and I would be laughing, if I weren’t so completely aware I would immediately start crying instead.
“I am at a low,” I hear myself say quietly, “just like the rest of you. It’s dark down here and awful and we’re going to be here for a while. No one is allowed to get used to it. I needed … I needed some time, but I’m up, okay? I’m on my feet, I’m here, and we have a next step. We’ll figure out the rest as we go along, like we always do. We’re not losing anyone else because I say so. How’s that for a pep talk, Novs?”
Her chin lifts from the furrows of her sweater. “Middling.”
I turn my head, watching Sona’s profile. “It’s your decision, Glitch.”
Her eyes trace the floor. Her eye patch was lost in the chaos, and I haven’t seen her attempt to hide the Mod some other way. The only time she closes it for longer than a blink is when she’s sleeping, and even then it trails its red light across the curve of her cheek.
“They know where we are,” Sona says, sureness embedded in her tone.
“They don’t. They can’t. We’re still alive. Aren’t we?” Arsen asks, picking off puffs from the insulation.
“Let them come,” Nova says. “We’ll destroy anything they send us, just like we did to their Phoenixes.”
Now Sona picks up her head. She doesn’t look as empty as I thought; it’s worse than that—she looks so sad that my heart doesn’t so much break as it twists and ruptures, and I press my palms to my eyes as heat breaks at their corners.
“And lose how many more Gearbreakers?” Sona says, voice warbled and rising. “Look at e
ach other. If I fail … Who is going to be left, if I fail, if they find us again? Who else is going to be gone because of the retaliation I bring, just—Gods—who the fuck am I going to come home to?”
“It won’t be an issue if you do your job right,” Juniper murmurs.
“But if I—”
“If you fail, then don’t come home.”
I tense, hands slipping from my face, the venom off Juniper’s tongue hanging in the air.
“June,” Theo snaps.
“Because you know what we’re here to do?” Juniper’s on her feet now, her hands on Sona’s shoulders, ripping her two-toned gaze from the floor. “You know what we’re here to do, Glitch? We are here to die.” Her dark eyes are ignited, angry tears serrating her cheeks. The gears on her hand stretch as she tightens her grip, her own shoulders trembling. “We are here to get killed, and then get up the next morning and do it all over again, so have some Godsdamn perspective. Come home, don’t come home. Burn the city to the ground or kill us all. If you do this, fail or not, you’re doing right by us, because you’re giving us a chance. It’s not for Xander. It’s not for the dead. It’s for us, Glitch. You do it for us and anyone else still suffocating under Godolia’s thumb. Because if you give people that hope, we’ll end up with more Gearbreakers than we’ll know what to do with.”
She waits for Sona to nod, and once she does, June releases her with a dry, cheerless laugh.
“Come on,” Juniper says, and drags Arsen to his feet by his shirtsleeve. “Let’s give them the room.”
“But—” Nova protests, and June uses her other hand to pluck up the back of her sweater, Arsen still fastened in her other grip. Nova’s tiny legs kick helplessly as she’s lifted clean from the floor. “What—”
Theo rises and follows the procession down the attic stairs, the door at the bottom sighing shut.
Now Sona meets my eyes, and she meets them steadily, but her shoulders are braced. Like she’s expecting me to flinch. Like she’s making herself stone now so she doesn’t crack when I recoil.
I move closer, and softly Sona says, “Eris.”
It’s a warning. It’s clear in the way she holds my name, but still in the way I like that she does—with care, because she knows I’m something dangerous; she knows I’m something fragile, and she doesn’t fault me for it. She can still see I’m made of sharp, sharp pieces.
There are marks against her neck where I tore at her. I tried to run into fire, and she stopped me, and I punished her for it.
Silently, I lower my brow to her shoulder. Am I praying? I haven’t ever tried to speak to the Gods before—besides to scream at them, to damn them—and I don’t know if praying is supposed to feel calm, but this doesn’t, not when the only thought running through my head is Please don’t move away.
She doesn’t move away.
“How do I fix this?” I murmur, words traced into her shoulder.
“You don’t. You do better.”
“I almost killed you.” There is a lump in my throat that hurts to dig around. “Gods, Glitch, what if I—”
“You are terrible at killing me. You will probably fail the next time, too.”
“Stop it.”
“I could stand very still and give you an easy shot—”
“Stop it.” I lean back, grasp her face in my hands and suspend them there, her expression knocking all words from my tongue—she’s not laughing, she’s miserable, and I’m the cause, or at least the catalyst. My fingertips shake against her jaw. “I’m sorry,” I say, and it’s not enough. “I’m so sorry, Sona.”
Her hands find my wrists.
“I could hate you,” she whispers, her words a live wire. “I could hate you, but it would kill me, and that is not how I am dying for you.”
“I don’t want you to die for me,” I say fiercely. “Are you listening to me? I don’t want that.”
“But you would do it for me. For everyone else. You do not get to be alone with that, Eris; you do not get to save people without them doing the same for you.” Her gaze burns into mine; I try to look away, and her hands close against my jaw, forcing me still under the soft weight of her fingertips, and then she whispers, with a quiet, jagged kind of ache, “You do not get to love someone and think they won’t feel it.”
I’m crying. Of course I’m crying. I have a stone heart, but it shatters when it beats too fast, and I love to fight, but I hate these battles. It’s not one war, but I have only one existence to give them, and they’ve molded it viciously. It’s not who I want to be. I want to be soft, and I don’t want to take shit from anyone. I want to be able to love someone I’m not afraid of, and I am so afraid all the time, because I love those kids so damn much it scares me, because it’s so simple for them to be gone. I want quiet but not all the time, and I want good, teeth-rattling fights and a family that’s alive and to stretch out on the rug with my books and to leave home knowing I’ll be back soon.
“I—” I start, and stumble. I shake my head. “I’ll outrun it, eventually.”
She smiles a little, corners of her mouth tucking beneath my palms. “Outrun what, Eris?”
“All of it. Everything this world has done to us, to ruin us.” This isn’t a prayer. It’s a declaration of war. “It’s rotting me, but I’m not going to let it win.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SONA
Heavensday
We are not going to make it, I think to myself as the truck jolts again, nearly sending us all tipping into the desert. Jenny, frustration bubbling over, has attempted to grab the wheel again. Nova’s thrumming music and their ceaseless bickering from the front seat complement each other perfectly, either sending the crew into a fit of laughter or a stunned silence at the severity of the threats.
“You’re going the wrong way!” Jenny screeches.
“I am following the freaking stars, Jen! Are you literally going to tell me that the sky is conspiring to give us the wrong directions?” Nova spits back.
“I’m not blaming the sky, dumbass, I’m blaming you. You’re too busy listening to your shitty music to figure out what direction you’re going. I’m telling you, I should drive! At least I’d go faster than the pace of a brisk walk. And—and … hello? Earth to the ice princess?”
Nova has gone quiet, but her eyes are wild and grossly diverted from the path ahead. Then she jerks the wheel to the left, sending Jenny’s head slamming into the curve of the car’s roof.
“Don’t insult my music taste,” Nova says smoothly, tone glossy and sweet as Jenny curses violently.
Daybreak creeps over the horizon about an hour before the Junkyard peeks into view, and that is also the point where the smell of singed wood infiltrates the air, and another, unspeakable stench of burnt meat when any of us are careless enough to try to differentiate. Juniper pulls her shirt collar over her nose and buries her face into Arsen’s shoulder. Nova, never one for quiet, chooses her most outrageous song and spins the volume knob until it threatens to pop away in her frantic fingers.
The Junkyard replaces the stench with the tang of rusted metal and the cold, fresh shock of snow. Nova maneuvers the car methodically through the maze of wreckage and tree trunks. We reach the Archangel’s armored wing tip first, foliage over our heads one moment and metal the next as we pass through Jenny’s mirage tech.
Once the engine is shut off, Jenny takes the lead, effortlessly leaping onto the wing and over its shoulder curve, despite the wicker basket pressed between her gloved hands.
We have breakfast atop the mecha’s chest, the frigidness of the air kept at bay with a few thermoses of hot chocolate and thickly sliced milk bread slathered in a seed-speckled jam. I find myself enjoying the return of murmured conversations soon escalated to quick teasing, the comfort of a full stomach.
Eventually the bread has all been reduced to crumbs and the sun reaches a certain point in the sky. Jenny stands from her cross-legged position, brushing her palms against her jeans before shielding her eyes, chin t
ilting up.
“I was hoping for more coverage,” she murmurs.
Eris shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll be flying too high for anyone to see us. Well out of the wall cannons’ range, too.”
Jenny’s eyes slowly drop to her sister. “So you’re going with her, then,” she says flatly.
Eris only gives a bare nod before leisurely licking the jam from her fingers. But when she stands and pulls her gloves from her pockets, it marks the end of the peace.
The crew rises along with her. An awkward silence ensues as everyone grasps for something to say—what could be said that has not already been said? I watch them grapple for any words that could add another layer of armor, another missile to the chamber, another particle of dumb luck.
I do not want any of that. I just want to hear their voices once more, reinforce the reminder that for once, after a fight, I have something worth returning to.
Nova swallows hard. “This is the boss battle, isn’t it?”
Jenny snorts. “Let’s hope not. A battle is not a part of the plan. Just a quick massacre, in and out. And they’ll be back here before sunset. Mind stopping the solemn sentiments and getting the hells off my Windup?”
The crew obliges, but not before each giving Eris a lingering embrace, which she fails to pretend to accept begrudgingly. Jenny meets my eye over her shoulder and juts her chin, beckoning for me to follow. As I trail past, Juniper catches my hand and pulls me into a hug.
“You’ll be fantastic,” she says breathlessly, and the rest of them collapse on me, arms around my sides, kisses peppered on my cheeks until heat fills the skin.
“Wish I could see it,” Arsen says. “But I’m sure we’ll feel the tremors all the way back in Winterward.”
Theo beams, freckles scrunching. “Give them hells, Sona.”
“You’re going to have more gears than all of us combined after this,” Nova muses, rolling her shoulder blades back, where her own tattoos branch like wings beneath her coat. She cocks her head to the side. “As if you weren’t already more mecha than the rest of us.”
Gearbreakers Page 30
