As Vladim moved to turn the locks, I heard Genya whisper. "You definitely owe me a kiss after all this, Don't think I won't hold you to it."
I laughed lightly. "We'll see."
"There is no seeing, you will, if I have to be the one to do it then so be...
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DAVID HAD MANAGED TO SLIP AWAY AGAIN after the last council meeting, and it was late the following evening before I had a free moment to corner him in the Fabrikator workrooms. I found him hunched over a pile of blueprints, his fingers stained with ink.
I settled myself on a stool beside him and cleared my throat. He looked up, blinking owlishly. He was so pale I could see the blue tracery of veins through his skin, and someone had given him a very bad haircut.
Probably did it himself, I thought with an inward shake of my head. It was hard to believe that this was the supposed boy Genya had fallen so hard for before I came into the picture.
His eyes flickered to my hand. He began to fidget with the items on his work table, moving them around and arranging them in careful lines: a compass, graphite pencils, and pots of ink in different colors, pieces of clear and mirrored glass, a hard-boiled egg that I assumed was his dinner, and page after page of drawings and plans that I couldn't begin to make sense of.
"What are you working on?" I asked.
He blinked again. "Dishes."
"Ah."
"Reflective bowls," he said. "Based on a parabola."
"How... interesting?" I managed.
He scratched his nose, leaving a giant blue smudge along the ridge. "It might be a way to magnify Alina's power."
"Like the gloves?" Alina had asked that the Durast remake them. With the power of the stag, she probably didn't need them. But the gloves would allow focus and pinpoint light.
"Sort of," said David. "If I get it right, it will be a much bigger way to use the Cut."
"And if you get it wrong?"
"Either nothing will happen, or whoever's operating it will be blown to bits."
"Sounds promising."
"I thought so too," he said without a hint of humor, and bent back to his work.
"David," I said. He looked up, startled, as if he'd completely forgotten I was there. "I need to ask you something."
His gaze darted to my hand again, then back to his work table.
