12

The storm ebbed, leaving a frosty breeze in its wake.

Mara’s pale face appeared ghostly in the dying fire of the destroyed buildings. I brushed snowflakes from her eyelids and wiped the blood splatter from her chin with my skirt.

The others had moved Lilah, taking her to the midwife’s cottage with Jack. With so many injured or missing, they left Mara, like all of their dead, lying in the snow. I smoothed her golden locks with trembling hands. Rage fell away like dark scales from my eyes, leaving me with a sorrow that nearly seized my heart. I did not know if it was the cold or the adrenaline finally burning away, but my whole body quivered as I knelt by her side. Burns from the tracer lash throbbed red on my forearms and the cool of the drifting flakes soothed the pain.

People moved in a stupor, picking up debris, hugging each other, crying softly. No one came near me. I felt their stares, heard the muttering, but I did not move. If they wanted to hurt me, blame me for this tragedy, they had every right.

The crunch of snow nearby pulled my gaze, and I looked up to see Ashton sinking next to me.

“Why did you stop me?”

“They were luring you to him,” Ashton said. “The way they moved, herding your path…something was off.”

“I do not care.” I shook my head. “Arecibo deserves to die for what he has done to me…to those men.”

“I did not risk my life and others so that you could run back toward Arecibo.”

“He will pay. No matter the cost, Ash. Mark my words.”

“Revenge always proves to be its own poison, Charlie. This will not end well if you pursue him.”

“Arecibo and The Order will never stop hunting me. From the moment they put my family in their sights, we have had numbered days.” I held up my shaking fingers. “The Trembling Sickness, the mechanica, and the years they stole. Am I to let him take the rest of me without a fight?”

He said nothing, merely knelt at my side, his hands on the sword laying across his thighs. His bloodied lip held a purple tinge, and the shiver that rocked his body reminded me of my dream. Moments passed in silence as the emotions within me tangled and pulled me into dark thoughts. “You were with me,” I said finally. “When Arecibo had me. You were there, I think.”

“Not the whole time,” Ashton rasped, clearing his throat. “But yes, I was there.”

“I remember you in the water with me.”

He nodded, his gaze holding mine.

“It was the only thing I could think of to save your life.”

“Tell me.”

He glanced down at Mara, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Not here.”

“I will not leave her in the cold and dark. I know…” my voice broke, “I know what that is like.”

Ashton looked at me for a few moments, a struggle playing behind his eyes, and then he rose, scooping her into his arms. The crimson snow beneath her glistened. I swept the stain away and followed, swallowing against the deep ache squeezing my throat. We went to her cottage, and I pushed through the door, surprised at the mess. I had not remembered the initial blast having caused so much damage. Ashton walked to her bed and laid her down gently, pulling the quilt over her. He turned, his grim expression made even more so by the chill so obviously sapping his strength.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He nodded, his arms limp at his sides. Scrapes left angry marks on his jaw and a bruise shadowed one of his cheekbones. Busying myself with starting a fire, I avoided his gaze. A riot of emotions tangled within me. Relief. Gratitude that he had once again, shown up when I’d most needed him. Deep, frustrating anger at his secrets. And yet somewhere, beneath the anguish and confusion, I knew one thing. Ashton was more to me than I had remembered. More than maybe I should remember. The thought sent a trill of longing through me and I tensed, unsure of my own mind. My own heart, in this moment.

Mara’s small iron stove still glowed with dying embers. I tossed some kindling into the opening and stoked the fire.

Ashton did not move. He watched me and his silence filled the room.

“I said that I hated you. I’m sorry.”

“You have said it before. Many times.” His sad smile made my chest ache.

“I have?” I shook my head. I did not know that. “W-when did I say it?”

“In times like that,” he whispered, nodding outside. “And others, less…public.”

Lip trembling with all the emotion and all the confusion I had fought for the past week, I faced him, my heart ramming. “W-what are we to each other, Ash?”

“I told you before that we fought together…” Ashton tried, but the pain in his eyes did not match his words and his voice trailed off at the shake of my head.

“That is not all.” I searched his face, desperate for some wisp of what I’d forgotten.

My words seemed to hit him in the chest. He let out a ragged breath. “You have memories of us?”

“Broken pieces. Moments.” Hand over my heart, I held his gaze. “But you are clearly here, and I want to know why. How is it that your pull on me is stronger than ever? How can you appear amid the most desperate situation and I feel relief…yearning?”

Ashton’s breath caught in his throat and he stepped back, his eyes rimmed in red.

“Sometimes there was nothing that separated us,” he whispered, his gaze so intense, it stole my breath. “And other times…other times there was a chasm so deep and so dark I feared I could never reach you again.”

“The anger,” I said nodding. Hands to my eyes, I rubbed the tears stinging behind my lids. “What have I become?”

“You are still you, Charlotte,” he said softly. “But what you have endured, that kind of thing, it leaves scars, seen or not. Perhaps it is best if you let those wounds alone. Start anew.”

The mechanica in the back of my hand gleamed in the firelight. Running the pad of my thumb over the metal and glass, I shook my head. I did not think I would ever heal, ever be whole. “I need to know what he did to me.” I looked into Ashton’s eyes. “What you did.”

Letting out a slow breath, Ashton nodded. “Very well.” He reached for the clasps at his ribs, released the buckles, and pulled his chest armor off. It clattered to the floor. His linen shirt beneath clung to the muscles of his torso revealing a jagged tear in the material. Stained crimson, it bore through to the skin. A burn from tracer fire.

“Ash,” I gasped, moving towards him.

“No.”

I froze at his sharp order.

“I only mean to help.”

“Please, I am fine.” His face filled with tension and something else, wariness?

“But you are injured. Let me—”

“Charlie, if I have you in my arms, I will not have the strength to tell you what you want to know for fear you will leave them.”

I blinked, nodding minutely. “Very well.”

Hand to his wound, Ashton lowered himself onto the chair by the fireplace. He motioned to the stool opposite, and I sat, facing him.

“Arecibo first heard of your father, and then your ability to withstand the Trembling Sickness through his dealings with Rothfair. In his laboratory, Arecibo poured over countless journals documenting Rothfair’s obsession with finding out what your father knew and how he had held off the disease for so long. When it became apparent that, you too, possessed this ability, he used the full force of the Order to secure you for himself.”

Uneasiness crept along my limbs, a fear from nowhere. From memory. So much pain. The sound of my own cries echoed in my head. “Go on.”

“When my agreement with Lizzie went wrong,” his voice broke. Overwhelming sorrow shadowed his gaze. “He is who she contacted in the Order. That is how he first had you in his grasp.”

“I almost got away.” Riley breaking me out of the facility, the melee as the Reapers invaded the domes, all of it seemed only days ago. Cold sweat slid between my shoulder blades.

“But not before he had seen what you could do. What you could endure.”

“Plus, I stabbed him.”

“Well, and there is also that.” Ashton smiled weakly.

My gaze went to his hand over his wound.

“Arecibo had you out west, outside of the domes, in a government facility cut into the mountain that was not known to many.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the smell of damp rock walls and the sound of pipes creaking as they led me into the cave-like opening.

“He convinced his superiors that you were the key to creating not only a cure to the Trembling Sickness, but a way to resist it, if infected. With the affliction decimating all of the Peaceful Union, they gave him free reign, especially after he managed to secure you. When I finally traced your location, you were nearly dead.” His eyes glazed over, remembering. “After months of experiments, dozens of subjects deliberately exposed, none of them survived. They could not resist the sickness and quickly deteriorated despite multiple graphs of your tissue.”

“Tissue…” My fingers found the scars on my legs beneath my skirts. On my thighs, my arms, my back. Bile rose in my throat, but I fought it. I had to know all of it.

“He tried bone, muscle, blood…whatever he thought might transfer your resistance to them, but they all died eventually.” He leaned back, gritted his teeth against a shiver. “His problem was two-fold. With the Peaceful Union in shambles, the bulk of the soldiers either deserted, died in the Reaper invasion, or were outnumbered. The Order sought to defeat the scourge of this disease and return stability to the quickly toppling city-states. They had invested millions of pounds of gold in the new government after the quakes. The Peaceful Union is the brainchild of The Order. And now their people were entangled with a country near collapse. The Order stood to lose not only their grip on all of North America, but their stronghold in Europe if they failed to protect the countries abroad from the sickness. Yet month after month, the Order lost battalions to the sickness before any headway could be made. Arecibo needed to make the knights resistant to the blight because they were knights of the Order. Loyal, trained, controllable.”

“But I was the only one who could stave off the affliction.”

“And you are none of those,” Ashton said quietly. “At least not to The Order.”

“If you found me, why did you not get me out?” My voice cracked as confusion and betrayal squeezed my throat. “How did you end up fighting by my side?”

Ashton shook his head, staring at the fire. “I had no choice. The trauma to your body, the experiments, they had taken their toll, and you had nearly turned. Arecibo kept you suspended in that fluid tank to keep your thrashing from breaking any more of your bones. I found you drugged, weak, and unable to respond,” His voice cracked. “I tried to get you out, but the wires kept your heart beating, fed you. For months you had not moved of your own volition. I thought I could carry you out but…”

“You were interrupted.” The image of him in the tank with me filled my head. His desperate face, the hands reaching for him, all of it was real. Sobs bubbled in my chest as anguish and pain ripped across my mind flooding from my tortured memory. I gasped, remembering and unable to breath. “You s-stayed with me?”

I moved to him then, cradling his jaw in my palms, my heart stuttering. They had beaten him. Imprisoned him. And still he found a way to save us both. My fingers went to the collar of his tunic and pulled it back. Scars marred the skin of his shoulder. I knew there were others, remembered the bloody stripes when they dragged him in and threw him in front of the glass of my prison.

“I could not,” his voice, gravelly, pulled my gaze, “I could not leave you.”

Emotion, vast and profound gripped me, and I pulled him to my chest. I shook with silent cries. His arms slipped around my waist, and he held me close.

“Arecibo just…let you live? Why?”

“He knew about the All Key. My intention to use it against The Order. Even my alliance with Lizzie and Defiance.” Ashton shook his head. “He believed we were of the same mind. That his experiments would allow an edge for us, and that with the Trembler Knights, we had a better chance of gaining an advantage within The Order and making change. And so, I said what I had to, did what I had to. I needed him to think I was allied with him if he promised me a place at the table in the New Order he planned to make after dismantling the old.”

“Do you believe him? That he wants change?”

“Arecibo wants one thing and that is to rule,” Ashton said. “He thinks that you can make that happen, but you were weakening and his work with the knights kept failing. I feared…I was out of options....”

“You had a hand in what he did to me?” I whispered as a knot wrenched taut in my middle. “I cannot believe—”

“No,” Ashton cut across me, his face desperate. “What Arecibo did, he dreamt of on his own.”

“Then, what are you saying?”

“Please understand,” Ashton brushed my cheek with his thumb, and it left a trail of heat behind it. His gaze lingered on my face, the devices at my temples, and he smoothed my hair behind my ear. “Your time was running out. I was desperate to save you, Charlie.”

“Ash.” My lip trembled. He was the reason for this mechanica fused to my body. “I cannot believe…” I held my hand up, eyes brimming as I looked at the metal against my skin.

I tried to pull away, but Ashton hooked my chin with his finger, held me with his gaze.

“It was the only way to spare your life. Arecibo is schooled as a doctor. But he is renowned as an engineer for the Order of the highest degree. He had already tried to control the tremors in the knights with shocking devices in their armor but they did not work for long because of the patient’s inability to resist the affliction, however—”

“I kept the symptoms at bay. And I could be trained. By you.” Overwhelmed at what I was hearing, the floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet.

Ashton stood, catching my sway, and lowered me into his chair. He knelt before me.

“Arecibo was beginning to believe that the resistance to The Trembling Sickness had to do with your mind. How your brain was constructed. Hearing that, and knowing he had no compunction against dismantling his own warriors, I feared for you in the worst way.”

My hands went to my face, nausea passing over me at the thought of what Arecibo might have done if he’d thought the answer to his ambition was in my head. “I think I may be sick.”

“The sickness had progressed, you were breaking your own bones,” he said and ran his palm down my arm.

The ache there was familiar. I remembered the muffled crack it made when I banged it in the tank.

“I thought if I could convince him that his new devices would be successful with you, then I could keep him from taking you apart. And I could stop the wretched affliction from killing you.”

I understood logically why Ashton did what he did. That his desperation to save me outweighed what he could not know would truly be the result, but somehow, betrayal bore deep into my heart. I was a monster now. More than if I had simply been allowed to die like the others.

Why would You let this happen, Lord? Why did You not protect me?

The resounding emptiness weighed heavy in my soul. Did the Lord listen to something like me? Trapped as I was between death and life…was it too far for Him to even hear me anymore?

Fighting off the dread pooling in my chest, I squared my shoulders, trying for an even tone. “So you convinced Arecibo to spare me. He believed you completely, that you were on his side then?”

“Not enough for me to be privy to what he did to you or how the devices worked, but enough to keep me from the end of one of his guard’s swords.” Ashton shook his head. “But truly, it was you who saved my skin.”

“How is that possible?”

“Every time after the surgery that you were brought out of the induced stupor, you fought, thrashed with the laboratory assistants, the nurses, everyone. They did not know if your mind had broken from the abduction, the pain from the procedures to implant the devices, or if the mechanica itself was somehow causing the anger and confusion, but your viability as a subject had diminished in Arecibo’s mind. Your reaction to seeing me saved both of our lives. You calmed. You healed. And so, despite my trouble with The Order and my suspected treachery in their eyes, Arecibo spared my life as well.”

“And I did not die in the dark and the cold.” I hugged myself, the dread of that place seeping into my bones.

“Arecibo found a way to not only control your tremors, he harnessed them.” Ashton took my hand and brushed his lips to the skin of my knuckles. The pad of his thumb swiped the glass of the mechanica, and I felt his warmth radiating into me. “With these.”

“Abomination,” I whispered, remembering the faces of the citizens at the inn. They had reared away from me, frightened. Slipping my hand from his, I turned, not wanting his gaze on me.

“No, Charlie.” He took my hands in his, holding my fingers to his chest. “A miracle. You endured unfathomable horror and yet you are here still.”

How could I have forgotten what it felt like to have him close? To have my demons stilled with his whispers on my skin? Despite all that I had learned, the way he looked at me spoke volumes about why he did what he did. That he would do anything to save me. Even if I did not want to be saved. That was something, I told myself, I had better not forget.

“Why can I not remember any of this?” I leaned in, resting my forehead to his. The scent of his skin soothed my nerves. “Why did I not run when I was able?”

“Arecibo’s hold on you was profound and growing with every passing day.” Ashton rose, running his hand through his dark hair. “We were not left alone. You remained within reach of the guards at all times. Though we ventured out and did the Order’s bidding, you were never not surrounded by his men. I thought when you were strong we could run but something was happening to you. At times, you did not seem to recognize me at all. And then, on one occasion, I tried to make you leave with me. It was at White Cliff.”

“White Cliff.” The name brought forth images that hit me with so much force, I groaned.. A dagger in my hand as it dripped with Ashton’s blood. Crimson spreading across his chest. The shock and betrayal in his beautiful eyes. “Oh, no. No, no, no. That cannot have truly happened.” My palm went to his heart and I felt the scar there underneath the material. “Ashton…”

He placed his hands over mine, holding me still.

“Arecibo did things to your mind, Charlie. With his machines and his elixirs. I had seen your fury in battle, but it was spilling over into everything. You lashed out at everyone as if in fear for your life. You had nightmares and woke flailing for your weapon. It was a darkness I could not watch take you. I knew it was a risk, but had to act.”

“I left you there to d-die.” My entire body shook with the realization. “I am so sorry…so, so sorry.”

“Shh,” he soothed, pulling me close and smoothing my hair. “It was not you. It was Arecibo’s doing. His torture and his drugs.”

“That is why you were gone. I—I did not know. I did not remember,” I croaked, shaking my head as if to clear it.

“Arecibo devised a procedure to wipe your mind. It began, I think, when he suspected my plans to escape with you. He planted fear and dread in your heart and it kept you under his control. After you…” he winced, searching for words, “the incident at White Cliff, I had to find another way to get you out. I used Arecibo’s belief that I was dead to operate in the shadows, but by then he had moved you again. To use trains and iron-clad ships. It took nearly half a year to find you again. And I had another problem. The Order, Arecibo, his knights all knew my face. I needed help.”

A slow dawning moved through me. The information that saved Outer City from starvation. The mysterious man who wanted nothing in return for his help.

“You are The Ferryman.”

“Riley had a price on my head, and he would never believe me. But he was looking for you, and he trusted Mara.”

“After all that I cost you. After how I hurt you?” I sat back, unable to comprehend the depth of Ashton’s devotion. “You helped them find me.”

“Charlie,” Ashton leaned in, his breath warm against my temple. “There was never a moment where I did not love you more than anything in this world. More than life itself.”

Breath ragged, I turned, brushing my lips against his, my body shaking. He kissed me, softly, deeply, and with all the hope and loss that we had endured together. I leaned into him, wrapped my arms around his neck, never wanting to let go. A tremor wracked through me and my teeth chattered. My hands shook and I held one up. The palest blue tinged my fingertips and wrist. “Ash…” I showed him, and he pulled away. A shadow flitted behind his gaze. Something was wrong.

“We cannot stay here, Charlie. It is not safe. For you or those you care about. Tonight proves that.”

I stood on unsteady legs, feeling the burn of his kisses still on my lips. “He will come back for me,” I said and the vision of Arecibo’s pale face staring down sent a shiver of dread down my spine.

“He sent those knights to test you, and I think he got his answer.” Ashton rose, tying his scabbard to his belt once more. “What you can do to his knights. Repel them, hurt them. You are the only one who can stop him.”

“He did not know I could do that?”

Ashton shook his head, his lips set. “Now he does. And that makes you both more valuable and more dangerous than ever.”

“Then I must go,” I said, my heart heavy. “Far from here.”