Every time was the same. Every time, she’d arrived to take flowers, bring resources. Every time, she’d ended up fighting alongside Xin men and women against Rok. Every time, she was met with the same apprehension from his people that Arianna would claim didn’t weigh on her until the day she died and yet, there was something to it. Some kind of jealousy that came over her like a shadow when those same people praised Cvareh for his actions as their Ryu.
The more others learned of her, the more she withdrew. Her demeanor had even begun to earn praise from Cain, so much that the man had stopped pestering Cvareh at every turn about his fondness for Arianna.
He never thought he’d actually miss Cain’s nagging. But at least when his friend complained, it meant things were as they had always been. His silence underscored the distance he felt growing between them.
Cvareh lay at Arianna’s side, tracing the outlines of her ashen skin with a long finger. He graced over the scars of her body—the gash where her chest had been cracked open to allow room for his lungs, the ring on her wrists where the hands Finnyr had once carried met her natural flesh, the horizontal slit where her stomach had been scooped out. On and on, her body was pockmarked and flawed. But every curve, every gnarled scar, was hers. Her hands belonged to none but her. Even the lungs, still heaving from their lovemaking, he no longer saw as his own.
“Ari . . .” He leaned in to press his nose against her cheek, nuzzling it.
“I should go.”
“You’ve barely caught your breath.” He watched her get up, locating her underthings first. Cvareh was proud to say that this time he had not shredded them in his zeal.
“We can’t afford time for things like this.”
“I object,” he said with a chuckle. “We’ve afforded time, every time.”
“And we shouldn’t.” Arianna buttoned up the fly of her trousers—all seven needless, frustrating, delicate buttons.
“Why?” He watched as she shrugged on her shirt next, back still to him, as her form in all its beauty began to be shrouded from him once more. Arianna located her vest and was buttoning it before he pressed again, realizing she had no intention of answering him. “Why shouldn’t we?”
“You’re the Xin’Oji.”
“Since when have you cared for Dragon titles?” He stood with a soft chuckle and gripped her shoulders, half-turning her to face him. Arianna’s eyes were full of all the life and fire he loved in her, even when it was directed toward him. “You are right, I am the Xin’Oji. But that merely means no one will object to me—to us.”
“When you kill Yveun . . .”
He appreciated her certainty. “When I kill Yveun, what?” he repeated. It wasn’t like her to leave a thought hanging.
“What then?”
“Then I will be Dono.” Cvareh searched her face, surprised to find pain there. “I promise you, Arianna, I will be a Dono for Nova. Loom will have their sovereignty.”
“I have no doubt.” She pulled away from him and snatched up her white coat. Arianna tugged it on with renewed purpose and went right for the door.
“Ari—.”
“I have to get back to Loom,” she interrupted him curtly, not even bothering to look back. “More Perfect Chimera are ready to sent, and guns will soon be ready to ship with them. I need to help train Ravens to run gliders.”
Cvareh stared dumbly as she left him to wonder what, exactly, he had said wrong.
Certainly, he could’ve chased after her, but he didn’t. He could’ve whispered to her in the days that followed, but he didn’t do that either. The words that needed to be said, words he was still discovering, needed to be said to her face. And those he wanted to hear, he likewise wanted to see emerge from her mouth.
So, when she whispered a week later that Perfect Chimera were on their way, Cvareh vowed to be ready. He prepared his heart, only to have it sink when he discovered not Arianna making the delivery, but Helen in her stead.
Florence
The Rivets’ Guild hall was everything Florence expected after her brief time in Ter.3.2. The clockwork structure of patchwork metal—some dulled with time, greening with age, and other parts fresh like new skin grafts over old wounds—fit with what she’d come to learn was the Rivet sensibility. Steam hissed and gears churned in perpetual motion within the walls.
She was put up in very sensible chambers close to Willard. Florence could tell they were designed especially for guests, as they had different accommodations than usual. Even in comfort, there was something purposeful and methodological about the way the Rivets approached their existence. The whole place echoed of Arianna in the most nostalgic of ways.
Florence had been sequestered from the first moment she’d arrived. Willard and Ethel had greeted her at the platform and talks began almost immediately. How would they allocate their increasing numbers of trained Perfect Chimera? Would they outfit them with Florence’s weapon, or would they save the weapon for regular Chimera in effort to double their effective fighting force? Would they be willing to supply the weapon directly to the Dragons? On and on the questions went.
They looked to Florence for answers that she wasn’t sure she had. She was the Vicar Revolver, and hadn’t ever set foot in the Revolvers’ Guild hall—at least, hadn’t set foot when she wasn’t sneaking. She didn’t know the first thing about how to properly train Alchemists to think like fighters. So she made it up as she went, and hoped it all worked out.
Yes, she was exhausted from trying to live up to others’ expectations. She was tired of the world looking to her for answers she didn’t even know if she had. But Florence knew she wouldn’t sleep tonight.
Her mind was heavy, and her heart was knotted. It was a combination that kept sleep at bay and Florence knew better than to fight losing battles. So, instead, she attempted something she hoped would be productive.
She had set out to find Ari and, thanks to Will’s help, she knew right where to look.
Master Oliver, the name plate on the door still read. She gave a few solid knocks before noticing it was slightly ajar.
“It’s open, Flor.”
The voice alone shot right to the heart of her. Florence suddenly wondered if she had the courage to enter. She’d done so much, but felt daunted by this small task.
Pulled by an unseen hand, Florence pushed through, and saw, for the first time in months, the visage of the woman she’d admired for years.
Arianna sat behind a large drafting table, where papers weighted by rulers hid under pencils worn down to nibs. Her coat was hung on a peg nailed into one of the bookcases, almost hidden by manuscripts draping half off the overfilled shelves like crooked teeth. Ledgers stuffed in-between threatened to spill out their secrets in protest of their treatment.
Florence’s eyes drifted from the worn leather chairs around a table, to the bookshelves, to the doorway to the rooms beyond, and back to Arianna. Any frustration or apprehension she felt melted away the moment she saw the white-haired woman dressed in plain woolen trousers and a rumpled shirt, open at the collar.
It was like finally a piece had been slotted back into place. This was where Arianna belonged, not in some dingy flat in Old Dortam.
“So, this is where you grew up?”