The scrub forest was not a fairyland, though—or at least not the harmless fairyland in the children’s stories that had been sanitized of blood and monsters. The original versions of the old fairytales had been vicious and violent, much like the tiger who scented Falak deep in the scrub.
Most tigers avoided humans, but the mother tigress who lived in the forest behind Falak’s grandfather’s house smelled the boy, and the boy smelled human, and humans were threats to her cubs. Only for a moment might she have noticed how small he was, how fragile, how tender. More than likely, thoughts of the boy’s vulnerability never crossed her mind.
If Falak’s grandfather had not grown suspicious of the quietness in his garden—in his experience, children were almost never quiet—and if he had not followed the boy into the scrub, the tigress might have eaten the boy whole. Even after his grandfather scared the tigress away with his booming voice, and after he’d scooped up the small body that had been savaged and mangled, Falak’s grip on life remained tentative and uncertain.
His death seemed imminent.
But Falak’s mother and father knew the secrets of the circus’s tinkerer. Svieta had confessed the truth about why she’d run from the collegium in Toksva. They had heard her accounts of her unthinkable experimentations with mechanical creatures and human souls. Despite the taint that had followed her from Toksva, Falak’s parents had let the odd engineer join their troupe. They had given her a home, acceptance, and belonging.
In return, they asked Svieta to give Falak his life, no matter the taboos or anathemas she had to violate to do it.
And so, Svieta reached across the veil and snared Falak’s spirit, as well as the spirit of a magpie. She removed the boy’s tattered and useless arm and replaced it with one made of brass and copper that ran on clockwork—pulleys, gears, and levers. She also removed the boy’s useless heart and replaced it with a steel one fueled by the spirit of a bird known for collecting scraps and castoffs and treating them like treasures.
When the heart was beating and his blood was pumping again, Svieta returned Falak’s spirit to his body. The boy was a miracle and a wonder, if only to those who knew the secret of his survival.
Chapter 24
After Falak finished his story, he opened his shirt collar and pulled it aside, revealing the scars over his chest—scars that looked very much like old marks from the claws of a protective tiger mother. Among those rough and jagged wounds, however, was another scar that was thinner, sharper, and more precise. Falak drew his finger along that fine line on his chest. “I am alive because of Svieta and what she did for me. And now....” He swallowed, and his gaze dropped to his lap. “And now, so are you.”
I yanked my hand free from Gideon’s grasp and yanked my shirt collar open. Instead of a ragged wound or a surgical cut with ugly black stitches as I’d half expected, I found only a clean white bandage wrapped carefully to conceal the...miracle? wonder? horror?...underneath.
Tentatively, I pressed my fingers to the dressing covering my chest, but my wound was still too raw and painful to touch. I glanced up, met Falak’s gaze, and furrowed my brow. “Did I die?”
The ringmaster answered with a miniscule jerk of his chin. “You were...passing.”
I gaped at him. “Passing?”
“Not beyond the veil, but passing through it.”
My gaze cut to Svieta. “And she what? She keeps a collection of mechanical hearts lying around just in case? She snatched my spirit up and shoved it back in my body?”
Beside me, Gideon grunted. His face had gone pale, and white lines framed his eyes and mouth.
“Something like that,” Falak said.
The princess shifted beside me and set her hand on my knee. “And then some.”
I gawked at her, wide-eyed and gasping like a fish out of water. “Then some what?”
Hello, granddaughter, it’s wonderful to meet you in person. Or in spirit, I guess I should say.
I screamed.
Everything went swirly and faded to black for several heartbeats—several mechanical heartbeats, if I believed everything I’d been told. I came back to myself, panting and trying my best not to vomit. “What in the Shadowlands is going on?”
The princess shook her head and grimaced. “Not in the Shadowlands. At least, not anymore.”
“Why is everyone talking in riddles? Tell me straight.”
She broke the silence first, perhaps because she, too, had been in my position, had been subject to Magic and scientific procedures she hadn’t quite understood. “When Svieta cast the spell to capture your spirit, she captured another as well.”
I placed a hand over my chest, above my racing heart, which now felt a little heavier, a little more substantial. I sensed something else, too—as though I stood in a dark room and felt the presence of another being. “But it’s not a chickadee or a magpie, is it?”
Falak shook his head. “It’s not an it.”
“It’s a who,” Genevieve said.
I bit my lip and gnawed while letting my companions’ pronouncements sink in, and they did, like cannonballs dropping to the bottom of a cold pond. “There’s another person’s spirit inside me?”
The princess nodded solemnly. Her eyes were huge, her expression grave.
“Whose is it?”
Genevieve gave me a wary look, as though I were an angry bull and she was about to step into my pen. “Svieta says she believes it’s your grandfather.”
Again, the world spun. My grasp on reality stuttered. But when I’d recovered from that shock, I affixed my best no-nonsense glare on the round little tinkerer. “Explain.”
Falak translated as Svieta spoke. “She said that, similar to my situation”—he pointed at his chest, specifically at his heart—“the function of a mechanical heart requires more than merely clockworks. She’d intended to bring something simple from the Shadowlands to fuel it, the soul of a doe or a fox.” Falak smothered a snicker. “She thought a fox would suit you.”
I huffed and rolled my hand, gesturing for him to continue.
The ringmaster cleared his throat. “Svieta says when she performed the spell that opened the veil, she found someone already waiting there, as though he was expecting Svieta’s invocation. He said he was Trevelyan Stormbourne, former king of Inselgrau and grandfather to the current crown princess.”
“If I accept everything that’s been said so far....” I paused, insinuating I’d not yet accepted everything that had been said so far. “How do we know this spirit is who he says he is?”
Genevieve patted my knee. “Svieta wondered the same thing. She asked the spirit to prove his claims.”
I waited for her to finish, to explain how the spirit had verified he was truly my grandfather, but no one volunteered an answer. “And?” I prompted.
