Page 90 of Heart of Iron
“They wouldn’t have raised the blood taxes if the draining factories hadn’t exploded.Now there’s a shortage and the Echelon need blood fast.Don’t you see?This becomes a cycle of blood and death!”
Rosalind jerked the lantern out of Lena’s hands.“I’m disappointed.I thought you would understand.Especially considering where the plans for the Cyclops came from.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Your own father.Sir Artemus Todd, with his brilliant, erratic mind.He spent the last year of his life discovering a blue blood’s weaknesses.We use the toxin he created to incapacitate them and his firebolt bullets to kill them.Instead of fleeing from Vickers with you, with his family, he risked his life to place his final plans for the Cyclops in our hands.It cost him everything, but he’ll forever be remembered amongst our ranks.”
Lena could barely remember the night they’d been forced to flee.Being shaken awake early in the morning and bundled into a carriage.Her father demanding that she look after Charlie, and though she’d seen him speaking with Honoria, pressing a coded diary into her hands, she hadn’t caught any of their words.
That night had changed her life forever.Torn from her lessons, her world, her hopes of a future amongst the Echelon, she’d been dragged into the dark, grim confines of the rookeries.All she’d known was that her father’s patron Vickers—the duke for whom he performed his brilliant experiments—wanted them dead.
She’d never known why.
“Father was a humanist?”she asked, her voice breaking slightly.
“To the bone.”
Another shock on a seemingly never-ending series of them.Lena reached out, trying to find the wall as her knees shook.
“That’s why we wanted you,” Rosalind continued.“Your sister had betrayed his memory by marrying a blue blood.She could be of no use to us.You, however, showed some skill with clockwork and cogs.You design things that could be useful—”
Lena’s mind made the leap.“You think I could learn to create the Cyclops?”Then there would be no more need for the mechs.Would Rosalind—or Mercury rather, for she was starting to see the difference between the two—simply have them killed?The way she’d done to Mendici?A shiver ran down her spine.What would Mercury do if Lena said no?
There was nowhere to run.To hide.No allies remaining.Not even—
No, don’t think of him.She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, steadying breath, trying to ignore the nausea.
Think.
The only way Rosalind could have known of Lena’s skill with clockwork was from Mr.Mandeville.Suddenly the way he’d always watched over her so carefully became something far more sinister.
“I design toys,” she whispered.
“But you could make a Cyclops.”Rosalind took a step closer.“The transformational clockwork is proof that you have the skill and the ability to design such things.”Her eyes lit up like warmed chocolate.“You would be a hero.”
A hero.Three weeks ago, she might have still cared for such things.Recognition, finally, but never from her father.He had died for the same schemes that lit this woman’s face with excitement.
Everything in her life was a lie.Mrs.Wade spied on her and Mr.Mandeville too, no doubt.Her father, a man who’d virtually ignored her as some kind of little doll, had designed weapons to take the Echelon down.
And Honoria had likely known.
Lena leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.Who could she trust?There were so many secrets she felt as if her head was going to explode.But then she’d been keeping her own from her family too, hadn’t she?
The loneliness hit her like a punch to the gut.No one to trust, no one to tell.Nobody who knew her secrets or had shared their own.Nobody except Will and he was—
Lena lurched to her knees and threw up, her whole body shaking in misery.She’d been trying so hard not to think of him, trying to keep the hurt buried, but it welled up, choking her, forcing her stomach to heave.
Tears burned in her eyes and she wiped her face with her sleeve.Oh God, what was she going to do?How was she going to tell Blade that Will…that he was gone?The thought was inconceivable.He was so large, so full of life and heat and fire, his eyes snapping amber flames whenever she looked at him.She couldn’t bear the fist of pain deep inside.She needed to see the body, needed to get him back to her.To bury him properly.
To tell him that if she’d ever suspected he might have kissed her back, then she would never have returned to the Echelon.To this mess.
But first she had to get out of here.She looked up.At the pair of shiny boots in front of her, and the rows of metal drones.
“No,” she whispered.“I won’t do it.”
“Not quite the answer I was hoping for,” Rosalind said quietly.The hammer on the pistol drew back.“How disappointing.Come.Get to your feet.I’ve no further use for you.”
Twenty
