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Chapter 29

Lotte

The chaos on the streets of Walstad broke around the factory like an angry sea against an unyielding shore. Lotte could just make out the edges of the shielding charm from the towering window of the factory. Like an invisible wall of magical energy that closed around the building, impossible to pass.

Nora claimed that her grandmother had once shielded a whole city this way.

Although ultimately, it had fallen to rebellion.

She had gotten used to feeling ill at ease since arriving in Walstad. Moving through glittering parties and gleaming shops and conversations she had nothing to say in. But for a moment, fighting through the riots, she had felt like herself again. She knew what it was like to be that angry. She understood the rage pouring through the streets more than she did the vague indifference of the Holtzfalls. She had been angry for so long at being punished for the circumstances of her birth. Being told that she was worth less than the people who had more. Because she was unvirtuous and cursed and they were good.

Leyla Al-Oman kept her office sweltering hot, but Lotte was still wearing Theo’s jacket over her dress. She was aware of the collar of his shirt sticking to his skin as he stood next to her, both watching the chaos from the window.

She thought that she might have got used to him by now. But she was still conscious of how stupidly, heroically handsome he looked.

Heroes didn’t betray their oaths. But they didn’t turn their backs on their brothers either.

That contradiction, that battle raged within him. She could feel it like a thrumming heat every time he closed his hand over hers. She ached to do something. To find the third choice for him, the way out where he betrayed neither her family nor his. But there was nothing. Nothing Lotte could do except keep his secret.

As night fell, the police moved through the streets with militaristic thoroughness, voices blaring through the voxes, ordering the rioters to return to their homes. Deploying more fumet charms. More weapons.

“What are those?” Lotte asked as the police rolled small metallic charms through the streets. She had her answer as rioters’ legs gave out below them.

“Stoffel charms,” Nora said from where she was working with her grandmother, her silk bathrobe over pajamas pooled out around her elegantly amidst the tools and metallic parts. “Produced here at LAO. Standard police solution.”

“Another solution would be lifting the curfew.” She didn’t even bother trying the silly innocent act with Nora; she’d seen through her already.

“She speaks her real mind for once!” Nora feigned shock. “And stone-cold sober this time.” She passed the small screwdriver she had been using to her grandmother. “I like you better like this. You’re the descendant of a woodcutter, not a fawn.”

Lotte liked herself better too, but she wasn’t going to admit that to Nora. “I have no idea who I’m the descendant of.” The words slipped out. Nora paused, halfway through engraving a charm on a piece of metal.

“Your father.” Nora didn’t raise her eyes, but there was an unusual interest in her voice. “Aunt Grace hasn’t told you who he is?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better, even.” Nora had been a Holtzfall all her life. If there had been a man coming and going in her mother’s life, maybe she would know.

Or she might know where Benedict’s memories were kept.

Nora seemed to consider Lotte for a long, silent moment, but when she spoke again, it was to her grandmother in a foreign language. And the moment between them was gone.

They didn’t say another word until Nora abruptly set down the charm she was building and declared, “Well, we can’t possibly stay here tonight, sleeping on anything other than a silk pillowcase will cause mayhem to my hair.”

For a second, Lotte thought Nora was crazy enough to believe she was just immune to the fray outside. The police were dispersing it, but still—

And then she clicked her fingers, and from the corner, a metallic dog rose to its mechanical haunches. It looked eerily like the wolves Lotte had seen on the road. Lotte’s eyes drifted to Leyla Al-Oman, who was intently looking at her work.

Nora’s earlier words danced through her mind. I don’t want you to kill anyone.

And for the first time Lotte wondered if Mercy Holtzfall hadn’t been lying to her that first night when she said she’d never kill one of her own family. Lotte wasn’t Leyla Al-Oman’s family. But Nora was. And she was Nora’s competition.

Nora clicked again, and another dog came alive, then another and another.

Until there was a pack.

Modesty was the first to spot them when they entered the mansion, her eyes darting up, the words on her lips dying as she saw them. Two Holtzfalls and a knight, surrounded by a pack of metal dogs. They had marched them through the streets like a magimek honor guard, through the dying fray of the riots, all the way to the mansion unscathed.

The look on Modesty’s face was something even Holtzfall wealth couldn’t buy as, next to Lotte, Nora scratched one of the metallic dog’s ears. “Sorry we’re a little late.”

Mercy Holtzfall, as usual, was unreadable as she surveyed them.

“Knights and dogs to the barracks” was all she said finally. “We were about to sit down for dinner.”

They were to sleep at the safety of the mansion too. Mercy Holtzfall’s orders. After a painfully awkward family dinner, a servant walked Lotte to a room with eggshell-blue wallpaper and a view of the woods. But she had barely closed the door when there came a knock.

Nora stood there, somehow wearing a change of clothes that fit her perfectly while Lotte was still wearing Theo’s jacket. There was something unreadable on her face in the dark of the hallway as she leaned in Lotte’s doorframe.

“I don’t know who your father is.” She picked up the conversation from hours ago as if there’d only been a small lull. “But I do know how we might be able to find out.”