Brand’s thumb slipped from the ignition hammer, the metallic clang echoing sharply in the sudden silence. The Guild squad exchanged uneasy glances, rifle barrels drifting downward. Gold ink from the palace was unmistakable; ignoring it invited a headsman's axe rather than a courtroom fine.
Brixen broke the wax with an audible snap that cut through the whirring of Garrond’s cooling valves. He shook out the roll, angling the radiant calligraphy against the twilight. King Aerion’s own signature certified Lady Loria Veldt-Skall’s patent for an 'Aetheric Conduction Field Generator,' conferring absolute immunity and jurisdiction over regional mechanical works.
Brand’s jaw went slack as he stared down the seal, then tilted his gaze up toward Loria. Her soot-streaked cheeks and wrench-calloused thumbs offered a jarring contrast to the imperial charter. The veteran officer stood frozen, mouth slightly parted.
Then, with a sigh that seemed to deflate his entire being, Brand lowered his rifle. The movement was a signal. In an unbroken ripple, every officer lowered his rifle. They doubled forward at the waist—not honoring Garrond, whom they had arrived to chain, but formalizing absolute deference to Loria, whom they had planned to hang as an impostor.
Loria, still perched precariously on Garrond’s shoulder, felt a peculiar sense of vertigo. This wasn't how she'd envisioned her grand reveal. No dramatic monologue, no triumphant unveiling of her genius. Just a stiff butler and a glowing piece of paper. She glanced at Garrond, his own suit vents now steaming with the controlled hiss of a perfectly balanced cooling system. His visor stood open, dark eyes round behind soot-flecked lashes as he stared at the butler's tray.
Vondra, however, had no such deference. Her face was a grotesque mask of fury, blotchy and twisted. “No! This cannot be!” she shrieked, her voice cracking like dry kindling. “A fake! A forgery! That imbecile cannot possibly possess such a thing!” She lunged back toward her private transport, skirts catching on the cobbles.
Inside the cabin, the step-sister huddled against the velvet cushions, arms crossed tight over her chest. Her skin gave off only a faint warmth, a steady pilot light rather than a wild bonfire. Vondra groped past her knees, hunting the hidden brass lever tucked beneath the upholstery.
“No, Mother!” the girl shouted, shoving the woman's clutching hands back. “Stop! You’ll crack the seal!”
Vondra slapped her aside, clawing for the lever. “The parchment is worthless tallow! Overload, girl! Split their armor! Crack your ribs and burn them down!”
Her sister did not combust. She exhaled, locked her elbows, and aligned her wrists just as Loria had drilled into her behind the boilers. A dry snap cracked across the flagstones. A needle-thin jet of prismatic heat punched straight out from her knuckles.
The beam speared into the carriage axle. Iron sheared, the painted wheel collapsed inward, and the cab tipped with a deafening splinter of lacquered birch. Vondra tumbled out backward onto the gravel, silk petticoats tangling around her boots as the cabin flattened into scrap.
“You… you turned on me?” Vondra gasped, staring at her daughter with a betrayal so deep it bordered on madness.
The girl leaned out from the wreckage, brushing dust from her cuffs. “You built me to explode. Loria grounded the current.”
Garrond, after a moment of stunned silence, moved. His suit’s heavy gait was silent now, his movements fluid and precise. He strode over to the crumpled annulment paper that Vondra had waved so triumphantly moments before. With a decisive, tearing motion, he ripped it in half, then again, and again, until it was nothing but a pile of worthless scraps that he let drift to the wind.
Garrond reached up, metal fingertips clinking softly against her cheekbone to wipe away a smear of black grease. “Loria Veldt-Skall,” he rumbled, steam whistling softly from his gorget. “My brilliant engineer. My wife.”
He pivoted toward the wreckage where his mother-in-law scrambled in the dirt. “Vondra Veldt. For assault upon an imperial patentee and fraudulent contract tampering, I exercise my peerage rights over this district. Your trade warrants are revoked, and your family warehouses are seized under Crown receivership.”
Vondra’s shriek pierced the quiet, but Brand had already snapped his fingers. Two guards hoisted her up by the elbows, pinning her wrists behind her back with cold iron cuffs. She kicked wildly as they hauled her past the gates, her curses dissolving down the valley road.
Garrond watched her go, then turned back to Loria. Steam drifted lazily between them from his exhaust valves, smelling faintly of heated brass and kerosene. His eyes, though still awestruck, held a hint of uncertainty. He gently set her down. “Loria,” he began, his voice softer, more vulnerable than she’d ever heard it. “You are now a Royal Architect. You hold unimaginable power. The world is yours. Are you certain… are you certain you still want to stay with a beast like me?”