BAILEY, AS WELL AS the two Dominae guards holding him, whirled toward the crowd at the sound of clinking weaponry rushing toward the stage. Bailey’s eyes grew wide—he saw Eneas Fourclaw running in his direction, and the wide, friendly frame of Digby Barnes, leading a horde of fighters. Viviana’s guards loosened their grip on him in surprise. Bailey lunged away. In the corner of his eye, he saw Gwen, shouting something at him with one hand cupped around her mouth, but the words were swallowed up by the fighting around him, and the rhythmic thudding. He thought he heard her say “cart” or “part,” but he had no time to decipher her words—the automaton was upon him. He dashed across the stage, dropping into a crouch. Around him, heavy footsteps pounded the wooden boards. He looked up to see a dozen Dominae guards rushing past him to meet an advancing flank of fighters just offstage. Viviana stood at the back of the platform. Her hands were rigid, fingers outstretched. The sound of wings and claws grew louder as almost every animal on the fairgrounds surged toward the oncoming fighters.

The incessant, mechanical pounding that Bailey had heard since returning to the platform grew louder as well—it vibrated directly behind him now. He scrambled around and came face-to-face with the mechanical tiger. It lunged; Bailey ducked and rolled away. As the automaton pivoted to leap again, Taleth appeared at Bailey’s side. Bailey scrambled to get away from her, but he couldn’t move quickly enough. With one step, she stood over him, her colossal paws on either side of him. Bailey put his arms over his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

He heard her roar, and then he felt her whiskers tickling the back of his neck. He opened his eyes—she stood between him and the automaton, protecting him from her false double. From somewhere close by, just offstage, Bailey heard faint echoes of music—long, sustained notes like choral chanting or the slow draw of a bow across a violin. The Halcyon. He looked out onto the field below the stage. In the midst of fighting among the Dominae and the Velyn and RATS, Tremelo was in his motorbuggy. He leaned over the passenger seat with Fennel the fox, directing the gramophone horn at the stage. Tori was with him, cranking a lever on the machine’s side. At the sound of the haunting music the Halcyon created, Bailey felt a quivering in his chest, and he knew that Taleth felt it too.

The sound echoed over the fairgrounds, and Bailey could see that the kin of the Velyn and RATS were helping to fight the Dominae, not attacking like the other animals. The Halcyon was helping them resist Viviana’s Dominance. Several animals on the outskirts stopped attacking their human kin as well—they paused, ears twitching, as though wondering where they were. The more wounded of the kin simply dropped to the ground, their bodies still at last. Viviana’s hold on them had broken.

“Yes!” Bailey cried, but there was no time to celebrate. The rest of the fairgrounds was still in turmoil—the Halcyon wasn’t strong enough to stop the Reckoning, not against Viviana’s machine.

Suddenly, a roar and the shriek of claws on metal—the automaton leapt on Taleth, biting at her neck and shoulder. Bailey cried out as he felt the pain on his own body, just as two guards rushed at him, tackling him to the ground. He landed a hard kick to one’s chest, but the other held him down, pinning him to the stage. Viviana appeared over him, her hands now clenched into fists.

“You feel her pain, her injuries—and look how pathetic you are because of it,” she sneered. “You represent the old ways. Empathy is weakness! Dominance is progress. I can form an army at will. I can make animals serve humans for the betterment of the kingdom! And”—she beamed at him, as though she was sharing a wonderful secret—“I can control whatever I wish: animals, energy, perhaps one day even life itself.”

“But you can’t control it,” said Bailey. “Just look at what’s happening!”

Viviana did not answer him—instead, she raised her hand and gestured toward the automaton. It stopped, midlunge, in its fight with Taleth, and swung around to face Bailey. Its tail of metal lashed as it crouched. It was about to pounce.

The automaton opened its mouth, and Bailey stared up into the gleaming cavern of metal joints and wires within. It was a machine, an uncaring killer. Bailey regarded the subtle carvings in the metal plates that formed its face, and the painted copper made to appear like luminous fur. He could feel the waves of energy pouring out of its metal mouth and joints—Viviana’s energy projected through it. Bailey concentrated on Taleth, and on the music emanating from the Halcyon. He could feel his own bond growing stronger. Bailey pushed back against Viviana’s energy, focusing on his own. As though Viviana’s Dominance was a tangible force, Bailey confronted it, his hands outstretched in front of him and his entire skin alive with sparks that only he could feel. He could feel Viviana’s Dominance begin to fall back, its resistance wavering. The mechanical tiger stalled, its movements jerky and weak.

“What are you doing?” Bailey heard Viviana shout. “What have you done?”

The tiger stopped, as though it was jammed. It twisted its head to one side and lifted a paw, which remained frozen in midair like a statue. Its tail lashed in one direction, then the next, and grew still. The intense pounding that had echoed throughout the fairgrounds ceased, as though the tiger’s heart had stopped. In its place, Bailey heard the battle behind him, and the shouts of familiar voices. His friends were coming, fighting their way to him through the Dominae.

Bailey looked back to the mechanical tiger standing over him. Viviana’s own words echoed in Bailey’s mind: I can control whatever I wish: animals, energy…life itself. But why control the tiger with the bond, and not the Catalyst? he wondered. Unless—

The realization came quickly, like an electro-current shock: the Catalyst was inside the tiger.

“It’s the heart,” he said aloud, understanding what Gwen had shouted earlier.

Viviana rushed toward him. Quickly, Bailey searched the tiger’s body for weak points, wishing that he still had his claw, or even the Jackal’s cane—anything that he could use to penetrate a seam in the machine’s immaculate hide. He focused on Taleth. She paced around the automaton, growling. Bailey thought of the moment he’d first Awakened, imagining the crisp air of the mountains in her nostrils, the soft snow that had fallen around them as they looked at each other for the very first time. Then he pictured her heart, in its cage of bone and blood. He could feel it beating in rhythm with his own. Through Taleth’s eyes, he pictured the automaton standing before her, and its rib cage of copper and steel. That’s how we end this, he thought. The heart—that’s what we need to destroy.

Taleth lifted her head in a victorious roar, and brought her claws down on the seam of the automaton’s ribs. They wrenched open with a metallic screech. With her teeth, Taleth tore the wires holding the heart in place, lifted the Catalyst out of the automaton’s chest, and spat it out. It bounced onstage, landing only a few feet away from Bailey. The orb throbbed, almost like a real heart, and the pounding that Bailey had heard before—which he now knew had been coming from the orb—had weakened to a low pulse.

Viviana shrieked.

Bailey reached for the orb, but it was too far. Viviana lunged at him and clutched at his leg—he could hear her calling to her guards to take him, to rescue the orb. He felt himself being pulled back, in the grip of the Dominae. Taleth, however, would not let him be taken. She leapt at the guards, forcing them away from Bailey.

At the edge of the stage, a thin figure appeared. Bailey’s breath caught in his throat.

“Hal!” he cried. “Hal, you’re all right!”

Hal waved, and Bailey saw that he had the claw in his hand. Bailey pointed to the orb.

“Help—it’s the tiger’s heart!” He wasn’t sure whether he’d made any sense at all—but Hal seemed to know what needed to be done. With one powerful swing, Hal pierced the orb’s metal shell with Bailey’s own tiger claw.

The pulse died, and Bailey heard a pop as the last strains of energy left the orb. He stood, with Taleth positioned between himself and the Dominae, and watched as the Halcyon’s soaring music reached not only the battlefield by the stage, but also the entire fairgrounds. The fighting stopped. Like a ripple radiating outward, Bailey could see the effect growing, reaching more and more animals and their human kin, as though each strengthened bond helped to fortify the next, until the entire field had attained a stunned, haunted peace.

Those who had covered their faces with their hands or crouched in the mud began to rise and look around, dismayed and bewildered. Heartbroken cries could be heard as the people regarded the aftermath—the bodies of their kin, and the wounded animals and humans.

Bailey ran to Hal, and threw his arms around him in a bear hug.

“You’re okay! You’re alive!” he said, holding his friend tight.

“So are you,” said Hal, hugging him back.

“I’m sorry,” Bailey said. “It’s my fault that—”

He was cut off by a roar from Taleth: Viviana stood only a few feet away from them.

“You truly think you’re able to stop me?” she seethed. “One fight—one destroyed piece of scrap—and it’s over?” She stepped back and spoke loudly, addressing Bailey and Hal and the entire crowd all at once. Out on the field, the people held one another as they looked up to the stage.

“I am the queen of a New Age of Invention; I do not draw my power from one tiny machine. I have the means to control the entire kingdom at will, and my armies spring up whenever I choose.”

“They’ll never follow you now,” Bailey shouted. “Not after what you’ve done today.”

“After today?” Viviana repeated. “The people will fear me. Which is all the power I need.”

She gestured to the grounds, where Bailey saw that indeed, the citizens of Aldermere were cowering. Families comforted one another, and those who weren’t trying to run from the fairgrounds were hiding their faces, afraid to see what Viviana would do next. Bailey’s heart broke to see so many animals fleeing the fairgrounds, skittering and flying and galloping to the woods, and their human kin watching them go with eyes filled with betrayal.

“That is what power looks like,” Viviana said. “That is what my father never understood. And it killed him. But now the name of Melore is transformed! It lives on—”

“In his son,” said Tremelo, as he stepped onto the stage. “Trent Melore.”