A Web of Steam & Puppet Strings (Sevastyan #1)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Faces steeled. Eyebrows furrowed and jaws set and hands clenched. Our feet moved quickly, hearts moving quicker, and we filled up the dining hall and went back to work.

I gathered up sheets of metal and an armful of bits and pieces to fashion helmets, then settled in a corner of the cafeteria. My fist pounded the steel into place and my palm smoothed out creases as if I was working on clay. I mashed together four simple bases before I set to forming my own twisted version of the face plates and ridges.

I was in the midst of sculpting the accents and jamming shards into place when Anastasya knelt beside me, snatched up one of the metal skull caps, and lined the inside with strips of thicker cloth that must have been pulled from the blankets.

"For comfort," she said, very intricately working a way to attach the threads inside. "You're going to sweat all your brains out, I hope you know."

"You've got one too."

Her bright eyes flickered to me. I couldn't be certain if I'd seen a thrill of excitement or fear in that single glance, but I supposed the two went hand-in-hand. "Are you decorating it for me like this one?" She gestured to the project in my hands.

"Would you like me to?" I thumbed through a pile of shards before I located the perfect elongated piece and stabbed it into the sweep of patchwork I'd begun. "I can think of a few quick designs to give you."

Her pink lips dropped with a sad frown. "I'd never intended to wear such a monstrous thing on my head like my mother or my uncle, but...I suppose I'll need to. You also have my permission to accent Aristarkh's."

The knot returned to my stomach, but it was smaller than before. "Do I need your permission?"

She hesitated, fingers freezing in mid-thread for a heartbeat, before continuing. "No. Of course not."

"Then that's his loss, isn't it?"

Her pale eyes lifted to me, but I casually returned to business, making a show of seeming very, incredibly, extremely distracted and concentrated.

She murmured, "I suppose it is."

"How long have you known him?"

"Since he arrived." She set aside Lazar's helmet and took the skull cap that had been fitted to Aris. I noticed her fingertips were tipped in angry red. Molding metal was not her strong suit. "One of my mother's servants was sick one day, so she borrowed mine. It happened to be the day he arrived, and when my lady returned to me, she told me all about him and where he'd come from and how my mother kept him sedated. I spent a few nights sneaking into the laboratory to see him, but she only ever kept him strapped to the table with a needle in his arm. One day, I pulled the needle out. I stayed with him until he woke up."

A small smile stole her pink lips, her face straining to keep it from growing too big. Her eyes kept distant as she remembered things I'd never know, a part of Aris' life that belonged to no one but the two of them.

When she snapped back to the present, however, she turned her red face away from me and cleared her throat. "Ah—that is to say, he was quite rude and hasn't changed a bit since. After a week, I undid the straps and let him free into the courtyard."

This time my fingers stilled. "He didn't attempt an escape?"

She shook her head. "He insisted it wasn't the right time. He said there were people he needed to save first."