Westie drew in a sharp breath as he rolled on top of her. She wrapped her arms around his neck while their lips consumed each other. They kissed until Westie felt like she would detonate. She grabbed hold of his arm with her machine and flipped him onto his back, where she shredded the rest of his underclothes. An animated smile split his face in two and made Westie laugh, but as soon as she removed her own underclothes, his smile melted away.
Her confidence fell apart when he looked at the part of her arm where the pins of her machine had been drilled into skin and bone, latched on like some metal parasite. Westie had always kept that place hidden, even as a child. She started to wrap the blanket around her shoulders to hide herself, but he stopped her and reached out, touching the raised scars around the pins where Nigel had attached two other machines that hadn’t worked.
The teasing and stares from strangers had formed a callus around her heart over the years, but being there, exposed to Alistair, Westie felt soft and pliable. Like one disappointed frown could shatter her world.
His finger traveled from the edge of her skin to her machine, caressing the gears, cogs, the copper wire, down to the metal fingers. The muscles in Alistair’s jaw rippled when he touched the bare skin of her leg. There was a long pause before his hand moved again. He pulled away, and Westie watched his fingers fold into the sign for beautiful. For once she felt it was true.
Alistair rolled her slowly onto her back. She blew out a shaking breath and worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. He propped himself on his elbows, cradled her face in his hands, and looked at her in a way she’d never seen before, a way that needed no words. She knew then that she would give him a gift she could never get back. It made no matter. That gift was always meant for Alistair and no one else. With a kiss and an arch of her back, it was his forever.
Thirty-Five
They slept for a couple of hours. By the time they woke up, Henry had settled down enough for them to ride. They arrived in Sacramento by noon, Westie on the verge of bashful and Alistair with eyes squinting in a permanent smile.
Fleets of aeroskiffs flew over the city, the sky tinted brown from the smoke exhaling from their stacks. Most of the coaches on the road were the walking kind, just like the one Isabelle’s parents had bought her. They struggled to move as their sharp metal legs sank into the softened mud of the streets.
“Are you ready for this?” Alistair asked her when they reached the bank. His hair was wet and had turned to soft waves.
“Ready as I’m likely to get.”
They climbed down from their horses. Alistair held her hand, a gesture that would’ve felt foreign only days ago. She wrapped her fingers around his, taking comfort in the strength of his grip.
When they stepped through the doors of the bank, everyone inside stopped what they were doing to stare. Some gasped, others shied away upon seeing the pair’s mechanics. Westie noticed Alistair’s eyes shift to the ground as they did whenever people stared.
“Is it my dress?” Westie said, loud enough for all to hear.
Her clothes were wet and splattered with mud. Most of the folks in the bank wore fancy clothes to ask for loans or beg for extensions. Westie used her machine to shake out her dress, slinging mud onto everyone else’s silk and velvet.
“That better?” she asked.
Alistair chuckled beneath his mask, a sound that was as familiar to her ears as her own voice but spooked others. No one moved or spoke, just stared.
An older gentleman with a strangely sculpted beard that split in the middle and curled up at both ends stepped out from behind the counter. “May I help you?”
“We’re here to see Amos Little,” Alistair said.
The man’s face rolled from smile to sadness in one swift motion. “I’m sorry—you must not have heard.”
“We don’t hear much about the outside world in Rogue City,” Westie said.
He braided his fingers protectively in front of his chest the way some folks did when they were about to tell someone something sad enough to flail their arms at. Westie’s heart sank lower each second he prolonged the silence.
With eyes lowered and a tremor in his voice, he said, “I regret to inform you that Amos Little has passed on, but I’ll be happy to help you with any of your banking needs.”
The hope Westie had felt earlier dissipated, its remains carried away on the wind like a dandelion. She leaned against a wall covered in Wanted posters. Dead? But he’d just been at her party not that long ago.
“How did he die?” she asked.
“House fire—a terrible accident.”
“Accident my ass,” she mumbled low enough to keep the banker from hearing.
Even after closing her eyes and slowing her breathing, the malevolent thing knotting in her chest grew until it was painful. She put her copper hand to her heart. They’d come all this way for nothing. Whatever rivalry there’d been between Amos and the mayor, now she’d never know.
Deciding there would be no hysterics, the banker dropped his hands to his sides and asked, “Is there anything I can help you with?”