Page 159 of Dukes of Peril

It made me Queen.

I no longer hate Forsyth–I just hate the people in control of it. I have a home here. People I love. Even people like the cutsluts and Story, who I actually like. I see the value in the women working at the Hideaway, too—Auggie and Mrs. Crane and all the rest– who are just trying to keep afloat. They aren’t bad people.

Except my eyes fall to the North, and my blood thins.

I’d threatened my father with extermination, but he’s right. In the end, he’s untouchable. He has the city in his grip, and we’re one lunatic’s trigger finger away from being dust if pushed too far. There’s no Perez to oust him. No heir waiting in the wings. No hope of waiting him out. There’s just him and his drugs and dysfunction.

And those goddamn explosives.

I gave you what you need.

The hatch suddenly rises, Remy’s head appearing. His eyes search for me in the dim light, eventually catching my gaze. “Hey,” he says, climbing up. He’s still shirtless, and if I’m not mistaken, wearing Nick’s jeans, the denim looser on his thighs as he crams his fists into the pockets. “I feel kind of like you might want to be alone, but—”

“I do.” I stop him with a pointed look. “But Remy?”

His forehead knits. “Yeah?”

“That doesn’t apply to you,” I explain, extending a hand. I can’t think of anyone better to get lost in my head with, and when he stalks forward to wrap me up in his arms, I breathe him in deep.

He smells likeus.

All of us.

He holds me there for a long while, letting me rest my temple against his chest as I stare out over the city. From up here, it’s so easy to believe we’re untouchable, floating through the clouds, a bird and her bear.

The sun’s rays have only just begun to reach us when he finally speaks. “I’ve been working on something,” he says, releasing me only to pull a sheet of paper out of his pocket. One of the edges is frayed, as if he’s yanked it out of one of his sketch pads.

Taking it in my hands, I unfold it, eyes drinking in the dark ink. “Are these the clock parts?” I recognize them from my hours of trying to make this puzzle fit back together. I study the drawings, which are precise and very unlike his normal style, and glance up in surprise. “Wow.” It’s almost like an instruction manual. “These are so good, Remy.”

“I took a mechanical drawing class last year.” He shrugs, green eyes flitting over the skyline. “I was trying to, like… work backwards and see what was missing. Those ancient manuals you had weren’t complete even before they got all old and torn and stained to shit.” He tips his head toward the hatch. “So I studied the actual components up here. One of the principles of the class was that we needed to be able to break things down into individual pieces so that whoever’s looking at the parts can figure out how to get them together.”

I drop my gaze to the paper again, not allowing myself to be distracted with the way his fingers reach out to catch a fluttering lock of my hair. The thing about the clock is that it’s unnecessarily intricate. Probably places with mechanisms as ancient as this one have already gutted the heart of their clocks and implanted something more reliable and modern.

The thought makes my brain scream with an immediate, visceralno.

“Wait,” I say, squinting at the ink. I point to a specific spot, not recognizing the component. “What’s this? It wasn’t in the original diagrams–or what you could see of them.” I’d memorized every visible, usable inch of that old musty paper, and this was one of the few parts of the strike chain that was legible.

He steps up beside me, ducking down to look. “Yeah, I looked at that for a while, but didn’t understand what it was. This little cover here,” he guides his finger over the section, “doesn’t even look like it belongs. It should look like this–” He points to a different drawing, a screw with threads, not rounded. “I’m not a mechanic or anything, but if I had to guess, it’s fucking the whole thing up.”

My brain spins, much like the pieces of the clock, one gear after the other, clicking into place. I push past him, heading for the hatch door. Once I’m down the ladder, I grab the flashlight off the floor, bending into an awkward position to beam it into the spot Remy had drawn.

Everything in this room is dark, making the parts sometimes virtually indistinguishable from one another, but getting at anything from this angle was always off-limits to me. The space is too cramped, barely enough room beneath it for someone to maneuver. But even at a distance, the more attention I pay to it, the more I suspect Remy might be right.

Something is jamming up the gears.

Something that doesn’t belong.

Excitement pumps through my veins as I get down on my belly, taking a series of slow, calming breaths. If I could make it through the elevator alone, then this should be a cinch.

Without giving myself the time to panic over it, I begin belly-crawling beneath the machine, pulse thrumming with a confusing mixture of emotions. There’s the thrill of finding the problem, but also the quick, nervy thing that always arises when I’m in cramped spaces.

Behind me, I hear Remy approach, the wood beams hard and rough against my knees as I push myself closer.

“Hand me that screwdriver,” I ask, straining to extend a hand toward my feet. “Flat head. The big one.”

The sound of Remy picking through the tools is faint under the pounding of my heart.

Tick-tock.

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