“CONSTRUCTING THE CASING should be simple,” Tremelo continued. “I have all the supplies we’ll need in my workshop. The middle part—this orblike object—that’s what we’ll need to research.”

He began to name parts they’d need to collect as Tori wrote down the list. Gwen tried to pay attention, but she was still somewhat lost in the shock of the day. The sight of Viviana on the campus today had triggered a panic that had nearly paralyzed her. She’d had fun dressing up in Phi’s clothes—almost enough to feel normal again. But as soon as she’d seen the gray uniforms of Viviana’s guards, and then Viviana herself, her hands had begun to shake. And when those guards then edged closer to the woods, she’d felt dizzy.

Tremelo had been furious.

“You’re not my student—I can’t tell you what to do,” he’d said after Phi and Tori had shuffled her through the halls to his office. “But I feel responsible for you. And you’ve proved yourself just as foolhardy, just as obstinate as—” Gwen was sure he was about to say Bailey, but he stopped himself. “If you had been seen by anyone who knows you’re not a student, how would you have explained yourself?” She, Bailey, and Phi had not even thought that far ahead.

As the group walked from the Applied Sciences building to Tremelo’s garage workshop, Tremelo kept close to Gwen.

“Once we’re done here tonight, you’ll return to the tree house. If anyone sees you in the meantime, I’ll say…I’ll tell them you’re a visiting cousin.” He sighed. “Not that that wouldn’t raise suspicion on its own, given what the administration knows of my past.”

Gwen nodded, and continued the rest of the way in silence.

In the workshop, they split into makeshift teams, scouring through Tremelo’s hoard of metal parts, wires, gears, and bolts. Gwen, Phi, and Bailey worked over a table piled high with tangled wires, while Hal and Tori fought at the other end of the musty garage.

“I’d saved you a seat at the assembly,” Hal said.

“No one asked you to do that,” said Tori.

Gwen locked eyes with Phi, who made a face.

“Look for anything copper first,” said Tremelo, shuffling through a wooden crate of metal parts. “Most conductive—that I can afford, anyway.”

“Like this?” asked Gwen, spotting a few flat sheets of copper tucked behind the workbench.

“Yes, exactly!” said Tremelo. He grabbed them from her and started a pile in the center of the room. “Let’s collect it all here,” he said. “We’re looking for electrical wiring, thin, conductive metal like that copper, and anything that could be used to construct the frame.”

Invigorated, the kids dug in. Every minute or so, one of them held up an object for Tremelo’s approval or tossed it straight onto the pile. Phi untangled several feet of frayed, cloth-covered wire as Bailey and Gwen sorted the rest of the metal sheets. Hal picked through a tub of nuts and bolts, matching them according to size, while Tori and Tremelo overturned a barrel of discarded motorcar parts to search for framing pieces. The pile in the center of the workshop grew.

“What happens when we figure out what the machine does?” asked Hal. “What’s next?”

“We stop it from happening, of course,” said Bailey. “Right?”

“Yes, but how?” Hal asked.

“That’s obvious,” said Tremelo. This pronouncement was followed by confused silence from the students. “Once we know what the machine does, we’ll know how to counteract it. And once we know that, we’ll build a modified version that Tori will enter into the Science Competition.”

Tori looked at them all with a satisfied smirk.

“I wouldn’t exactly call that ‘obvious,’” said Hal. “Why Tori?”

“Because I’m the only one of us taking Tinkering,” Tori said. “And I get it—we enter the competition so that no one will look twice at us lugging some huge machine—”

“Don’t assume it will be huge!” Tremelo interrupted.

“Okay, some mystery machine into the Fair,” Tori finished. “And then once the time is right, we flip the ‘on’ switch and—”

“Bam,” said Hal. “Whatever ‘bam’ will be.”

“That’s right,” said Tremelo. “Getting our machine into the Science Competition will mean better access to Viviana, and whatever her ‘Reckoning’ will be.”

Gwen glanced at Bailey as they found another sheet of gleaming copper. He was smiling, his blue eyes glittering with purpose.

“You seem happier,” she said.

“Nice to have a plan,” he said.

“Ah! And if I’m not mistaken, there should be some silver shavings in my kitchen,” Tremelo called out. “Be right back!” Tremelo rushed out of the workshop, nearly skipping.

“King Trent Melore, everyone,” said Hal. “The rightful ruler of Aldermere, off to fetch silver shavings…”

“He’s younger, though,” said Tori. “I mean, if you want to get technical about it, Viviana is the rightful ruler.”

Bailey and Phi stared at her.

“But she’s evil,” Bailey said.

“Obviously,” sighed Tori. “And that’s why we have to stop her, and so on. I know that. But if you think about it, the Loon’s prophecy could just as well be talking about her as it was about Tremelo. Except for the fact that Viviana’s a crazy person, there’s no real reason that he’s the True King.”

“That’s not true,” Bailey said.

“It is,” Gwen said, surprising even herself. The others turned to her with curious expressions—eyebrows raised, mouths half-open in anticipation of what she would say next. “I despise her—I know what she’s capable of. But if Melore had lived, Viviana would have eventually taken over the throne as the eldest. That’s one reason Parliament was so divided when she returned to the Gray.” She thought about the men and women of Parliament, arguing deep into many nights about exactly this.

“Right,” said Tori. “My parents knew plenty of Melore loyalists at home who thought she ought to be queen.”

“It was the same in Parliament,” said Gwen. “Though some could see what the years in the Plains had done to her—like the Elder. Others wanted to keep her out because a new ruler would take Parliament’s power away.” She pulled at her hair. Everyone’s attention was on her. She hadn’t spoken very much about Parliament, and the dark days before it disbanded. When she considered everything that had happened to her, those days seemed like a lifetime ago.

“But this isn’t about who has the right to rule,” said Bailey.

“Of course,” said Gwen. “The Elder taught me no one has the right to rule anything, only the ability to prove that they can. But not everyone in the kingdom thinks that way. And they’ll hear the name Melore, and think she’s what they’ve been waiting for. They don’t know. And by the time they do, it might be too late to stop her. It makes our task harder.”

“Sadder too,” said Phi. “Viviana must have gone through some terrible things in the Dust Plains.”

“You’re a very forgiving person,” Gwen said, trying to catch the edge in her voice. She couldn’t shake the memory of Viviana pointing up at Grimsen the owl and shouting the order to end his life.

“I’ve seen what it’s like out there,” Phi said. “It wasn’t fair, what happened to her. But that doesn’t change what she is now.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Gwen said. She stared at the wood grain of the workbench in front of her, her vision blurred with anger or sadness—or both. A moment passed before she realized that Phi was looking at her, her eyes soft and full of concern.

“You saw her, didn’t you? Before today, I mean,” Phi said.

Gwen nodded. The others slowed their movements, turning ever so slightly toward her to listen better. She felt a knot begin to tighten in her chest.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve seen her and Sucrette. There was a demonstration.…” She said the last word harshly. Gwen put down the wires she was untangling, and took a deep breath. She had witnessed the Dominae’s cruel exercises of control, and watched Viviana take the life of an animal Gwen loved. But she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to tell them that. To say the words made her think of how she’d failed the Elder.

“She uses machines that look like animals,” she said, thinking of the Clamoribus. “They’re not alive, made of metal and wire.”

“Oh, sure, we’ve seen those,” said Tori. “They were all around the city during break.”

Gwen shook her head. “But she thinks of living animals the same way—easy to control. Easy to kill.” She paused, and took another deep breath. “She murdered the Elder’s life-bonded kin, Grimsen, right in front of me.” She broke off.

“I could never forgive that,” murmured Phi.

“No,” said Gwen, her heart aching at the memory. “Me neither.”

As twilight crept over the campus, Gwen hurried silently around the school buildings, back to her tree house. The lamps flickered on along the campus pathways, but Gwen stuck to the shadows. As she passed the guesthouse, a grand brick structure near the teachers’ quarters, she glanced up at the lit windows. Viviana was in there—so close. Gwen wondered how difficult it would be to sneak through a window and into the guest rooms, how easy it might be to end Viviana’s short reign with a vial of poison or a slash of a quick knife. Easy for someone else, perhaps—and not how the Elder would have wanted this fight to end. Gwen shuddered and scurried on her way.

As she left the lights of the main campus behind, Gwen began to feel a mounting anxiety the deeper she moved into the forest. She sensed the owls of the woods, especially those close to the tree house, hopping and tittering with concern. She quickened her pace.

Entering the clearing where the tree house stood, she felt the eyes of dozens of owls watching her. The windows of the structure were dark, and something told Gwen that she should be careful. She felt in the pocket of Phi’s jacket for the Glass. Certain that it was safe, she began to climb the footholds nailed into the trunk.

She paused a few rungs from the trapdoor. No sounds came from inside the little house except for the nervous fluttering of owls’ wings. Carefully, she lifted the door and climbed up.

Her pallet bed was overturned, and her books were scattered across the room. With a cry, Gwen noticed the piece of wolf pelt that had protected the Glass was on the floor, rather than tucked safely in the trunk of the tree. Whoever had been here had found her hiding place—she thanked Nature she’d brought the Glass with her. She picked up the pelt, wrapped it around the Glass again, and tucked both into her rucksack.

Next, Gwen looked around for Melore’s harmonica. Righting the bed, she found it tucked underneath. The leather box that housed it was scratched, but to her relief, the instrument was unharmed. She held it to her heart, thinking about the Elder. Only then did she notice how loudly her heart seemed to be pounding, and how her hands shook.

Whoever had been here tonight hadn’t found what they’d wanted—but Gwen knew that they’d be back. She and Tremelo had spoken about this moment—the moment the Glass was no longer safe at Fairmount. She knew what she had to do.

She did not have much to pack. She changed out of Phi’s school clothes and back into her own pants, boots, shirt, and traveling cloak. Leaving the books and the bedroll, she shouldered her rucksack and took up the bow and arrows Tremelo had lent her. She paused, looking at the cozy little tree house that had been her home since the Elder’s death. She felt another tug of grief, just as she had gazing at Fairmount earlier. She didn’t truly belong here, no matter how kind Phi and Tremelo had been. With the Elder gone, her mission was solitary. She’d been chosen by him, and now by Tremelo, to do what the others could not: to disappear.

For one small, terrible moment, it seemed unfair. She wished she were just a regular student, with no long journey ahead of her except the one across the commons to get an egg tart for breakfast. But the moment passed.

Owls perched on the rafters, watching her. One of them, a scruffy brown owl—young, like her—sounded a low hoot. She felt a seed of encouragement bloom inside her. She fished the beetle-back coin out of her pocket, and dropped it in the knot of the tree in the Glass’s place. She began to walk away, but then something pulled her back. She fished the harmonica out of her cloak, and left it too in the hollow trunk for her friends to find.

She climbed down out of the tree house and made her way in the darkness, across campus to Tremelo’s garage. She whipped the cover off the motorbike he’d only just finished building, and cranked the starter—once, twice, three times before it sputtered to life. As she wheeled it out of the workshop, she thought she saw a light come on in the teachers’ quarters. She sped away, before she was caught—or before Tremelo could come find her, and she’d have to say another good-bye.