“Well then, let’s do what we can,” Hudson suggests. “We’ve got ten and a half hours before everything goes to hell, so let’s work the problem. What’s the next step?”

“The blacksmith,” Flint answers. “Right? Our options change based on if we can convince him to leave with us or not. So let’s get him on board before we worry about the rest.”

He’s right. It is the obvious next step. Which is why, after throwing our trash away, we follow Remy back into the crowded street.

It isn’t long before he turns us down a narrow, dark alley and then past two massive windigos. I expect them to stop us, but one nods while the other pats Remy on the head. And I’m reminded, once again, that these people—these creatures—raised Remy after his mother died when he was five years old. That this place is as much a home for him as it is a prison.

I can’t help wondering what that feels like, what it does to him to know that once he leaves, he’ll never see any of these people again—even though some of them are the closest he’s ever had to a family.

The other day, Calder mentioned something I learned when I got to Katmere—that it’s not only the family you have that makes you who you are but also the family you make. Often it’s the latter who helps you catch the wind on sunny days and who anchors you when seas get rough.

How terrible to have to give that up just for the chance to finally truly live.

We take two more turns as a sound like thunder booms all around us. I want to ask Remy what it is, but he’s moving fast, and I figure I shouldn’t distract him. Also, I’m honestly not sure I want to know.

We take one last turn, and it lands us on a building-lined path so dark, I have to hold on to Hudson to make sure I don’t trip in the pitch-black. And for a creature who’s supposed to be “of the dark,” it’s total bullshit that I don’t have better night vision.

On the plus side, the path lightens up a little the longer we’re on it, but it’s not until we almost reach the end that I realize why.

The light—and the heat—we’re feeling is coming from the hugest furnace I have ever seen. A furnace that is currently being manned by a giant with a massive welding mask over his forehead. A giant who, upon seeing Remy, lifts his mask…

And I gasp.

His face is crisscrossed from forehead to chin with the most brutal scars I have ever seen.

132

Chains Aren’t the

Only Things

Getting Broken

Cyrus did this. I know it. Everything inside me screams it. He tormented this man—just like he’s tormented the Unkillable Beast for a millennia—simply because he could.

It’s disgusting. Unthinkable. And yet here it is, more proof that Cyrus is vile, inhumane, evil. And that he must be stopped, no matter what the cost. Because anyone who can do this, anyone who hurts someone like this because they can, anyone who spends centuries using and destroying their own son, is capable of anything.

When I consider what he’s sentenced us to prison for while he runs free, it makes me even more determined to stop him. More determined to make sure he can never hurt anyone again. When we break out and I get my gargoyle back, I promise myself Cyrus will pay for this.

“What do you want, kid?” the blacksmith asks Remy in a voice so low and rumbly that it rattles the windows in the buildings around us. Which makes sense, considering he’s gigantic. Not Unkillable Beast gigantic, but not regular-giant gigantic, either. He’s big, really big, but it’s not until Remy walks closer to him that I realize just how big. Remy, at about six foot four, barely makes a third of this guy, who must be almost twenty feet tall. A giant among giants.

No wonder he has such a huge furnace.

“We have a proposition for you,” Remy says, speaking loudly.

“I don’t have time for any propositions. I’ve got cells to make.” He turns around and grabs a massive curved mold from the stack behind him, then brings it over to lay on his workbench.

I recognize the shape and curve of it—I’ve been staring at a fully realized version of this for days now in our cell. It’s part of the cell wall that makes up the cage we’re in, and he’s hauling the thing around like it weighs nothing.

Cells, I mouth to Hudson, whose face has gone grim. The bracelet within a bracelet within a bracelet that we’re all trapped in? No wonder he’s all but enslaved down here—the prison will eventually cease to exist without him…which, not going to lie, feels like a win-win to me.

“Why are you making cells?” Remy asks. “Mavica says we have some empties for the first time in years.”

“Calm before the storm,” the blacksmith tells him as he slides his helmet back into place and opens the huge doors of the furnace. The blast of heat that comes out is so hot that I don’t have a clue how Remy could stand being so close to it. I feel like I’m half melted, and I’m at least twenty feet away.

“What does that mean?” Flint yells to be heard over the roar of the giant fire.

“It means someone is planning on sending a shit ton more prisoners here,” Hudson answers grimly. His tone suggests Cyrus is the someone in question.

“From Katmere?” I ask, feeling sick.

“From wherever, I would imagine,” Remy answers caustically.

The blacksmith slowly fills the mold with molten metal, then sets it aside before laying a massive piece of hot metal on his workbench and starting to pound on it with a sledgehammer that’s almost bigger than Flint. He pounds and pounds at it—each slam of the sledgehammer echoing like thunder—until a very distinctive, very recognizable curve starts to form.

But by the time the curve shows up, the metal has started to cool, so he opens the furnace back up and thrusts it inside again. Which is good with me, considering his banging is so loud, it makes it nearly impossible to think.

“You need to go,” the blacksmith tells us as he reaches for a ten-gallon jug of water and takes a quick drink.

“I think you’re going to want to hear what we have to say,” Remy says, matter-of-fact.

The blacksmith looks like he’s going to refuse, but in the end he grabs a seat on a massive rock and eyes us with annoyance. “Fine, tell me what you want so I can turn you down and you can be on your way.”

It’s not the most open invitation I’ve ever heard, but it’s more than I was beginning to think we would get from him, so I’m trying to be optimistic.

“We need you to make us a key,” Flint tells him, starting off slowly—I think to see if he’ll nibble.

Thankfully, he does. “What kind of key?”

Hudson steps in and explains about the Unkillable Beast, who has been chained up for a thousand years with a cuff he made.

But as soon as the giant hears about the beast—and the cuff—he starts shaking his head. “I can’t do that,” he tells us. “There’s no way.”

“Why not?” I ask. “Don’t you think a thousand years is long enough for anyone to be chained up?” I use the argument purposefully, considering he’s been enslaved for just as long.

“A thousand seconds is too long for someone to be enslaved,” he snaps back. “But my believing that doesn’t mean I can help you.”

“But it’s your work. You’re the blacksmith who made the cuffs to lock him up.”

“Yes, and I’m also the blacksmith who’s an indentured servant to this prison. For the most part, they leave me alone as long as I make the cells and the bracelets. I like it that way, and I’m not about to risk the life I’ve got to try to make things better for some creature who pissed Cyrus off for all eternity. Some creature I don’t even know.”

But you do know him, I want to say. In so many ways, he’s just like you. But I know it won’t matter. People rarely commiserate when in pain.

“If you won’t do it for a stranger,” I ask, “what about for someone you do know, Vander? Someone you love?”

“How do you know my name?” he demands. “No one here knows my name.”

“Because I know Falia,” I tell him. “And she wants you to come home to her.”

“Lies!” he booms. “What trickery is this? My Falia is thousands of miles away from here—”

“In a redwood forest, I know. I was there with her a few weeks ago.” I gesture to Hudson and Flint. “All three of us were.”

“I don’t believe you. Why would you go to see Falia? And how?” His voice is scornful. “You’re in prison.”

“We’ve only been in prison a few days,” Flint tells him.

“And we came here, at least in part, for you,” Hudson adds. “To convince you to make us a key and to help get you out so you can return to Falia.”

“Lies!” he bellows again as he turns and picks Hudson up in one of his meaty fists. He shakes him. “No one ever gets out of this place. No one. Which means I will make you pay if you are telling me lies about my Falia.”

“No lies!” Hudson’s face is straining with the effort to pull his arms free of the giant’s hand, but I can tell he’s not going to break the hold before he’s crushed. I rush to his side, place one hand on the giant’s free arm. “I swear it. She told me to tell you, ‘Still I recall.’”