Blood and Clockwork by Katey Hawthorne

Author:Katey Hawthorne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Steampunk, Fantasy, LGBTQIA
Publisher: Less Than Three Press, LLC
Published: 2016-03-13T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Though it was absurd, the moment the door to the exsanguination chamber closed behind us, I felt I could breathe easier again. It was a relief to tear off the shirt wrapped around my face—and it had nothing to do with my own less-than-pleasant odor. "I thought the stories of a curse on the tower were old wives' tales, nonsense to frighten children," I said. "Yet I knew something was unnatural the moment I set foot in Avalonia. I knew, and I ignored it."

"Blood magic, curse, all the same I guess," Marco said. He unwrapped his face as we walked, both of us instinctively wanting to be as far from that door as possible. "You solved the mystery, anyhow."

"Yes and no." I frowned and tucked my shirt into my belt, not bothered to put it back on just yet. I left my waistcoat where I'd hung it over the railing. What I really wanted after that room was a bath. A long, hot bath, with some fragrant salts. But what I had was life-water, so I retrieved my flask, took a long swallow, focusing on the cleansing burn of it down my gullet. Then I passed it to Marco. He shot me a grateful look and threw his own shirt over one shoulder for carrying. I went on: "We discovered that blood magic is the source of the tower's motion, yes. Or, at least, that's the most likely explanation."

"And you said the town outside—Avalonia—is all deserted?" Marco took a long swallow of the life-water, then handed it back.

I nodded, putting the cap back on and replacing the flask in its pouch. "It was the capital, but it's been a ruin for a century. Perhaps the Prince's need for blood depleted the population. Though of all the stories I've heard, that was never one of them."

"Well, a curse is magic, technically, right?" he said. "So it's not totally out of the blue."

He was right. In retrospect, it was naïve of me not to have expected magic in the tower. I'd thought I was being so progressive, so enlightened to think the curse just a superstition, an absurd explanation for things we couldn't understand scientifically. I'd ignored the way the hairs on my arms stood straight up as I entered the ruined city. And now, here we were. "Yes."

"And all magic is bad?"

"Magic just is. It's not inherently good or bad, but there has yet to be any human who can wield it repeatedly without going mad. To even become a scholar of magic history at the universities, people take the strictest vows and adhere to a daily regimen meant to keep everything in absolute order. Even having that kind of understanding of magic's chaos can be… tempting, I suppose."

We were both quiet for a few moments, lost in our own thoughts, and then I sighed. "I came in search of the mysteries of the world's finest clockwork. And I thought—I thought if I could disprove the curse, Avalonia might become inhabitable.

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