Lady of Dawn by Aria Noble

Author:Aria Noble [Noble, Aria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Their new shelter was not nearly as large or stable as the now-sunk building they’d first chosen. Ember wasn’t even sure it was a building — or, rather, it had been, but was now not much more than a clutter of debris scattered around a vaguely room-sized shape. There weren’t walls to speak of, and the ceiling, or what had once been the ceiling and was now, in the building’s floe state, the southern forward wall, was missing entirely.

Not exactly an ideal place to shelter, but with night coming and Shahif’s certainty that they were about to be hit by another storm, or perhaps what was the second wave of the morning’s storm, it was better than nothing.

Ember tried to help when the others set about constructing a makeshift wall out of the debris they found in the room, but Eli pushed her away from the task. “You almost drowned today,” he said like that was some kind of explanation.

“So did you,” she shot back.

“Ember, please. Just … go check on Irina.”

Ember scowled. If he’d said anything else, tried to dismiss her any other way, she might’ve been able to push back against it, might’ve had an argument for why she could still help.

Eli probably knew that. Probably made that particular order because he knew that for Ember to push back against looking after the little girl in their party would make her feel like a real shit. What could she say? No, she wouldn’t check on the scared, parentless child who just watched several people disappear and probably die, including the dolls who had been her remaining family?

Of course she couldn’t say that.

So Ember only gave Eli her most ferocious scowl and turned on her heel to go sit with Irina.

The little girl was sitting in the far corner of the room, away from the bustle of the people hurrying to build some kind of wall out of the tables and splinters scattered in easy reach around them. Ember sat beside her, close enough that she could reach over and touch her, but she didn’t.

Irina looked up at her. Ember recalled the first time she’d seen the girl, muddy and crying — she looked much worse now. “Are Bubby and Poppy gone, too?”

“I’m sorry,” Ember answered, meaning it. “I couldn’t get them in time.”

Could dolls survive underwater? She supposed they didn’t need to breathe, certainly not the way people did. After all, Felix didn’t have anything like lungs, and he was still able to talk, so clearly the way dolls produced words didn’t involve shaping air in their throats and mouths, which was the only other thing Ember could think that would necessitate breath.

But what about the circuitry inside them? Her doll hand hadn’t apparently suffered any damage from being submerged, but that was just a hand. Would the more complicated bits, the ones that made them appear almost people-like, get destroyed by water? How complete and waterproof were their skins?

She didn’t know. Most of the dolls she’d

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