Pellin’s confession hung in the mist of the vault like poison gas. Vorath’s white-hot blade dropped an inch, the blazing metal singing against the air. His broad face darkened from frantic concern into lethal calculation. “Explain that, boy. Before I separate your tongue from your palate.” “He means,” Tazien cut in, launching herself forward and planting her heel directly atop Pellin’s silk slippers with sickening force, “that mere words cheapen our devotion! Isn’t that right, my little mechanical blossom?” Pellin gasped, wheezing from the impact. The truth vapor made his pupils dilate like black glass, but the agony in his toes seemed to briefly tether his runaway brain. “I—it was a sham—we made an agreem—” “A spiritual covenant!” Tazien roared, loud enough to rattle the ledger she had shoved behind her corset. She grabbed Pellin by the front of his ruffled cravat, shaking him until his teeth clacked. “He’s delirious with passion, Vorath! He says *fiancée* is too sterile. We are soulmates. Two cogs in one gearbox. Now shut your poet mouth, Pellin, or I will break your nose for romance.” Pellin blinked dazedly. “You smell like cheap chimney soot.” “Poetry!” she barked. Vorath’s mouth tightened until his scar dragged upward. The glowing thermal-blade hummed, heating the vault air until Tazien’s silk skirts smelled of scorched thread. “Soulmates.” The word sounded vile in his deep baritone, like he was tasting stagnant bilge water. He took three heavy strides across the rubble, his colossal frame blocking the shattered doorway. Relief never crossed his features, replaced entirely by disgust. “You are a child,” Vorath said, glaring down at Pellin as if the boy were a particularly repulsive grease-beetle. “And you possess the spine of an overcooked leek. To speak of soulmates while dragging her through a ventilation shaft barefoot?” “I climbed the shaft!” Tazien yelled. “He barely squeezed his fat ego through the grate!” “Quiet, little one,” Vorath rumbled, his voice dropping into that unbearable, suffocating warmth that made her old brawler skin itch with guilt. He pulled off his heavy crimson officer's mantle and draped it aggressively over her bare arms, swaddling her like an invalid infant. “The boy’s mind is muddled by noxious gases. We will discuss his suitability after the celebrations tonight. If he fails to honor you properly at the high table, I will throw him down the Crater shaft myself.” “I would welcome the fall,” Pellin muttered into the rug, slowly passing out from the after-effects of the vapor. *** Three hours later, the Great Hall of the Spire of Prisms was drowning in champagne, brass flutes, and brass-trimmed arrogance. The annual Grand Gala was the crown jewel of the crater elite. Thousands of aristocrats and high-tier engineers milled beneath the sweeping ribbed arches, their silks rustling over the hiss of subterranean thermal pipes. Tazien walked stiffly, trapped inside an emerald velvet gown with enough whalebone boning to serve as siege armor. Vorath marched three paces behind her like an executioner attending a coronation, his hand resting on the pommel of his dress rapier, radiating an aura so hostile that noblemen cleared ten feet of floor space around them. Pellin limped at her side, clutching a glass of seltzer and looking profoundly green. “You stomped my third metatarsal,” Pellin hissed through a glued-on smile. “You almost confessed our entire fraud to an armed butcher,” she hissed back, scanning the high galleries. “Count your blessings and keep your glass full. Where is the Proctor?” “Seated at the dais, looking smug.” Pellin took a sip. “The ledger from the vault proved the old man is siphoning boiler energy, but without the seal of the Central Council, we can’t arrest him. And your hulking ‘brother’ won't let us near the platform anyway.” Tazien looked up toward the vaulted ceiling, seeking the familiar orange warmth of the brass chandeliers that powered the hall’s ventilation scrubbers. Her boots froze against the polished malachite floor. Suspended eighty feet above the revelers, three massive clusters of mineral clusters hung on brass chains. But they weren't radiating the soft, steady amber of vent-fuel. They were pulsing. A rhythmic, sickly violet luminescence rippled through the facets, thrumming at a frequency that made her molars vibrate. It was a cold light. A dead, hungry light that smelled of pulverized bone and wet stone. “Pellin,” Tazien whispered, the hair on her arms rising. “What now? More romantic poetry?” “Those aren’t Pyre-stones.” He squinted upward. His aristocratic smirk vanished instantly, draining every drop of color from his face. “That’s... that’s crystallized marrow from the deep trenches. Resonant lures. Pure Shard-bait.” “He lured more than just the brass,” Tazien said, the realization slamming into her ribs like a lead pipe. “He hung out bait for the whole trench.” Across the floor, Vorath had been cornered by a delegation of city magistrates. He was nodding politely, though his knuckles were white against his scabbard, his sharp gaze constantly flicking back across the gathering to track Tazien. He was watching her. He was always watching her. She saw the Proctor rise from the high dais. The scholar resembled an assassin more than an academic now. His velvet robes were pinned back, revealing an iron pneumatic bracer concealed beneath his left sleeve. His hand reached into his cuff, sliding free a slender brass tube coated in black lacquer. He wasn't aiming at the nobles. He was aiming straight at the back of Vorath’s head. “Vorath!” Tazien screamed. The music swelled—a deafening crash of cymbals from the brass orchestra. Her voice was utterly swallowed. Action overtook thought; contemplation was for scholars and corpses. She hiked up the emerald velvet skirts, kicked off her embroidered slippers, and sprinted bare-soled across the parquet floor, dodging dancers and spilling silver trays of wine. “Out of the way! Move, you useless peacocks!” Vorath turned at the sound of the commotion, his brow furrowing as he saw his delicate charge barreling toward him like a rabid alley dog. *Pfft.* A tiny click echoed from the balcony. A sliver of black glass whistled through the steam-haze. Tazien leaped, reaching out with an arm weighed down by useless lace, trying to swat the needle from the air. She missed by an inch. The needle struck the side of Vorath’s neck with a sharp, wet thud. The giant never cried out. He staggered, his boots skidding across the polished stone. A dark, necrotic purple vein spider-webbed across his throat, racing toward his jaw. His scorching blade fell from his numb grasp, clattering loudly against the tiles. “Taz...” he wheezed, his massive frame folding at the knees. He collapsed against a banquet table, bringing down a cascade of glass goblets and silver platters. “Vorath!” Tazien slid to her knees beside him, hauling his dead-weight upper body against her lap. His skin was freezing, cold as grave-dirt, air catching raspy and thin behind locked teeth. The paralysis curse was locking his muscles into stone. His grey eyes, wild with an agonizing, mute terror, locked onto her. Before she could reach for her concealed boot-knife, a voice boomed through the hall, artificially amplified by brass acoustic funnels. “Treason!” the Proctor shouted from the balcony, his arm outstretched, pointing a trembling, righteous finger down at Tazien. “Lady Nysella has poisoned the General! Look upon the butcher’s handiwork! She struck down our protector with the Coil's own venom!” The hall erupted into a frenzy of screams. Aristocrats scrambled over each other toward the grand bronze archways, trampling silk and glass alike. Imperial guards drew their steam-pistols, aiming them squarely at Tazien’s chest. “Drop the weapon! Step away from him!” “You idiot!” Tazien roared at the guards, shielding Vorath’s paralyzed body with her own. “Look at the ceiling! Look at the chandeliers, you blind fools!” She didn't need to shout. A subterranean groan tore through the foundations of the Spire of Prisms. Above them, the three violet chandeliers flared with a hideous, blinding radiance, pulsing in deafening unison with the deep-vent tremors. The sound was like a thousand glass bells shattering at the bottom of a well. *BOOM.* The reinforced bronze double-doors at the rear of the room bowed inward. Rivets sheared off, shooting across the hall like bullets. *CRACK.* The metal ruptured. A black, scythe-limbed tide of Shard-Wraiths poured through the breach, their translucent mineral carapaces shrieking as they smelled the bait, flooding the floor in an avalanche of ravenous glass.

The Crystal Gala Trap