Silence fell between them. All Cy could hear was Moxie's fast breaths, the sidhe's low growling, and the rapid beat of his own heart. Cy tried to move, but his limbs wouldn't work right and the pain was excruciating. Black winked in and out of his vision. What the hell had happened to him? All he could recall was blood pooling around him and a silky, condescending voice - this sidhe's voice. Oh, God. Did Moxie know? He fought the lethargy in his limbs, even managed to move his right arm, only to find that he was bound to the worktable.
Finally, the sidhe said, "You would claim a hybrid as one of your own?"
Moxie didn't hesitate. "I would walk through hell and back for this man. Hell yes, I claim him. He's mine."
The sidhe laughed. The dark, enchanting sound seethed with bitter mirth. "I don't like you, Morgan Daxia, but I can see why he does. Without the presence of other fey to fill his needs, your fire must have drawn him like a moth to a flame. Pity that it also burned his wings."
Moxie started to speak, but the sidhe cut her short. "What we've done here is evil, Morgan."
"We saved his life."
"Not a kindness, I think." The sidhe's footsteps, soft as a fall of autumn leaves, receded as he approached the door.
"Then why did you do it?" Moxie called after him. She was angry, but beneath that was a trepidation that was painful to hear.
The door opened with a rush of sultry evening air. It was starting to rain, and the raindrops clattered on the metal skylight with a sound like rivets hitting the floor. "Because," he finally said, his voice so low that Cy could barely hear it over the rain, "I felt his faerie blood and recognized its cadence."
"What does that--" the door shut "--mean." Moxie huffed and muttered a few choice insults about the faerie's anatomy and what he should do with it. Then she holstered her gun and approached the worktable, her steps hesitant. "Cy? Are you awake? Please be awake, baby."
Cy turned his head toward her. The movement was difficult and exhausting, and it reawakened the agony in his skull that had been starting to abate. Moxie was as lovely as always, but he could see the strain tightening of her jaw and the shadows beneath her eyes. Sweat pasted her short, cinnamon hair to her face, and the normal smudges of machine oil that marred her tanned skin were streaked with blood. The blood looked hideously bright through the red haze covering Cy's vision. He tried to speak, but only succeeded in worsening the stinging pinpricks around his mouth. Another drop of blood slid down his cheek.
Moxie winced. She disappeared from his line of sight then reappeared with a small set of copper scissors. "Just a moment," she whispered. Cy stared at her as she snipped the threads sealing his lips. The horror of it made his heart race, and the threads hurt as she pulled them out. "I'm sorry, baby," she murmured, picking out the stitches. "It was the only way to... to..." She bit her lip then dragged it out through her teeth. When she finally spoke, the words tumbled out of her. "It was the only way to keep your lips where they should be. Your jaw and cheekbone were shattered. Raine, that awful sidhe, couldn't fix them. He tried, baby. God, we tried, but finally..." She leaned over him in a hug that wasn't a hug, squeezing her eyes shut as she touched his hair. "I made the replacements out of copper, so they won't burn you. And there's no risk of infection. Raine saw to that. And you're just as beautiful as always, although I know you won't believe me. You never could see how handsome you are." She broke off and pressed the heel of her hand to her lips. Her fingers were crusted with dirt and blood. "I couldn't lose you, Cy. You were dying. I couldn't... You were
dying."
Cy's eye widened as he saw the tears glittering down on her cheeks. Moxie didn't cry. Ever. The closest he'd seen her to tears was three years ago when the government executed her parents. He couldn't remember what they had done, but he had a flash of Moxie sitting on her parents' bed, gripping her mother's metal-working goggles. Her eyes were dry as bone while her sister lay sobbing beside her. Even then anger had overridden her grief. That was Moxie. Stronger than anyone had a right to be, and stronger than Cy by far.
He tried to raise his hand to brush her cheek, forgetting for a moment that he was bound--why was he bound?--and the movement made his vision swim in streaks of red, copper, and brown. He couldn't feel his left arm, and his second left arm, that small, tender extra limb that was his faerie defect, felt just as numb. "I love you," he tried to say, but broke off into a fit of coughing so excruciating that darkness flowed over him and stole his words away.
* * *
Cy woke to the bitter scent of coffee spiked with whiskey. The red haze still covered his vision, and he realized as he opened his one remaining eye that the other had been lost--and replaced. He shuddered and was surprised that the movement didn't hurt. The agony that had wracked him was almost gone. That braider, Raine, must be a miracle healer, he mused.
"Cy?"
He turned his head. Moxie had drawn up a chair to his right and was sipping coffee, clutching the cup as if her life depended on it. Her face and hands were clean now, but the shadows looked like dark smudges beneath her eyes. Her mechanic's spectacles with their multiple lenses on thin metal arms were pushed haphazardly up into her hair. She looked exhausted. She took his hand, unbound now, and pressed the back of it to her cheek. Her skin was petal soft and sticky from tears. "Stay with me this time, baby," she whispered.
He gave her a wan smile. The left side of his mouth felt odd sliding across his new metal teeth. "I'll try," he croaked then fell into another fit of coughing. He tensed, expecting it to hurt, and it did, but it was nothing he couldn't handle.
"Here," Moxie said, offering him her whiskey-spiked coffee. Cy made a face. He hated that sludge she drank, but he pushed himself up on his elbow and reached for the ceramic mug. He froze, staring at the limb. His left arm was gone, replaced by a complicated mess of gears, pistons, and copper plates. I shouldn't be able to move this, he thought in a detached sort of shock, even as he flexed his new fingers. They were slender metal bits with rolling joints and rubber tips. A symphony of rods moved with mechanical precision as he clenched his fist. He glanced further up the arm. A large cylinder and piston apparatus traversed the outer side of the elbow, joining the upper and lower parts to help lift the heavy forearm. His shoulder was less a shoulder than a complicated set of joints that allowed mobility while also protecting a small vat of diamond glass. Blood gleamed dark red inside it, filling the vat completely. Tendrils of rubber tubing, pulsing with blood, extended from the vat and embedded themselves into the flesh at the base of his neck. He felt a pulling from the arm, something just this side of pain, as if it were slowly drawing out his innards through those little rubber tubes. He lay back, gripping his stomach with his flesh hand, trying not to throw up.
"It distills the steam it needs to run from your blood," Moxie said softly.
"How is that possible?" Cy rasped. He tried to close his eyes, but of course, the left one would never close again. He wondered how he was supposed to sleep.
"I don't know," she said in that same soft tone, "but Raine said it made sense." She laughed without humor. "To him maybe, but not to me. The steamers assured me though that your blood will replenish itself as you breathe. Raine concurred, although he wasn't too happy about it."
"I think I'm going to be sick," Cy said.
Moxie rose quickly, set her coffee aside, and reached toward him. "Let me help you."
"No."
She flinched as if he's slapped her, but in that moment he couldn't bring himself to care. "What else?" he said.
"Cy--"
"What. Else." His teeth ground together. Bile rose in his throat from the sharp, metallic taste of copper.
"Your eye. Your shoulder. Half your ribcage, and part of your skull. Raine made the skin regrow over the metal bones in your face," she said quickly. "He rerouted some blood vessels so the skin wouldn't die."
Cy laughed bitterly--as if he cared what he looked like--then pushed himself up. He was shirtless and his breeches were stained with blood. The left pant leg was ripped off, the skin beneath burned. It would scar, but at least his leg was whole. Gingerly, he touched his left side with the hand that could feel, knowing what he would, or more precisely wouldn't, find. His faerie arm was gone. Rippled plates of metal covered his rib cage from his arm down to the edge of his stomach. Ironic that he had lost this last faerie part of him and there would be no scar, while on his right side...
Rage filled him. He was suddenly, irrationally furious. Furious at his mother who had lain with a sidhe and yet hated the sight of her half-sidhe son. Furious with Moxie for saving a life that wasn't worth living and for not being able to bring herself to even mention his faerie arm. Enraged at the world that thought hybrids like himself should be put down. What was so wrong with him that no one could see the person inside the trappings? Someone who had never once purposely hurt another soul? Why couldn't they see him for who he really was?
"What happened?" he hissed.
"You don't remember?" Moxie's hand shook as she picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. She offered it to him again and he met her gaze with a glare. Her charcoal eyes showed hurt, remorse, and even a little fear.
"Moxie," he growled. "Just tell me."
"I don't know, Cy!" she cried. She slammed the mug down and hot liquid splashed across her hand. She cradled her burnt hand against her chest but made no move to tend the wound. "Auggy and one of his men brought you home. He wouldn't say what happened, just that you'd been attacked and left for dead, and the building was set on fire around you. The flames took your arm. We couldn't save it; we had to amputate. And your other... It was sheared off completely, like it had been taken as some kind of sick trophy. There was so much blood--"
Cy swung his legs to the side and jumped from the worktable. Ugh. His left leg hurt like hell. He wondered why the sidhe hadn't healed it, or his smoke-burned lungs for that matter. He was taller than Moxie by a hand's breath. He looked down on her now, and he knew his anger showed plainly in his one remaining eye. "You can't even say it," he rasped. "Even now, after everything we've been through together, you can't even say that I lost my faerie arm, the one part of myself that was still fey. I'm fey, Moxie. As much as you like to pretend that I'm fully human, I'm not. I'm a half-breed, and you've made me into even more of an abomination. A faerie with a metal arm. It's disgusting. Unnatural. There are reasons--" He broke off, biting his tongue. He'll hate you for what you've done, Raine had said, and in that moment he was right. But Cy couldn't say that, not to Moxie. He loved her. Even as he hated her, he loved her.
"You still have your voice," she whispered. "Even now, as hurt as you are."
"And yet you stand against it."
She lifted her chin. "Only because I'm used to it. And because I love you."
He growled at her. He'd never wanted to hit a woman, but right then he did and that scared him. He turned on his heel, grabbing up the coat he had left on her workbench the day before. The metal arm was stronger than it should have been and ripped the worn leather. He stared at the tear, but shrugged the coat on anyway, covering that cursed bit of steam technology, that thing that made him into something he wasn't. The coat was long enough to cover his ruined pants. He strode toward the door, ignoring the pain of his injuries.
Moxie ran after him. "Where are you going? Cy!"
"Out," he said.
"You can't. You're hurt. Cy, please!"
He turned toward her, gazing at that beautiful face, those dark eyes that he loved so much, and sighed. "I need to be alone right now, Moxie. Can you understand that? I need time to... adjust. I'll be back. I promise." Then he left, shutting the door softly behind him and walking out into the rain.
