Who shall it be?

Remora nodded. “It seems entirely likely that I have done more research on the subject of Seraph half-breed mortality than most people have access to.”

Bones’s eyegleam shifted colors as he digested her announcement. After a long, silent moment, he said, “This … displeases me.”

His honesty surprised a smile to her lips. “It displeases me, as well, though I will admit that I took a bit longer to come to terms with my reaction.”

Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders. “Part of coming to terms with it means that I had to decide what I would do with the rest of my life. I could spend what little time I have left moping about things I cannot change, or I can do something important. Something that matters.” She glanced at the quietly waiting Thumper, its metal chassis gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight.

“Starbirth was real, Bones. I’m convinced the Seraph had something to do with it. Furthermore, I can prove it. I know I can.” Her shoulder throbbed, reminding of the Thumper’s trial run. She leaned back, pulling Bones’s coat away from her chest, grimacing at the blood-darkened makeshift bandage he’d used to wrap her left shoulder. She wiggled the fingers on that hand, pleased when they all responded despite the resulting hot thrill of pain along her collarbone.

“But,” she said, pausing and giving Bones a hesitant look, “I cannot do any of this if people know about me. About these wings. Lady Remora Windgates Price has the money and resources to unveil the truth behind Starbirth. A penniless half-breed Remora is powerless.”

“I understand,” he said. His outstretched hand flattened, the feather no longer pinched between his fingers. The barest flicker of wind lifted the tail end of the feather, causing it to skitter toward the edge of his palm.

Remora leaned forward just before it flew away, closing his hand back over the feather that he’d kept safe since the very first night she met him. His metal fingers curled around the black and red feather, forming a cold cage around it. Her hand felt warm against his fingers. “I trust you to keep my secret safe. Thank you.”

She met and held his eyes for a moment, then released his hand and leaned back. “Now, to fix the Thumper and try again.”

Bones’s eyegleam flickered. “Again? Would it not be wiser to wait? Hackwrench seems a competent cogsmith. He could assist you.”

Remora scoffed, finding her discarded corset on the ground behind her. The whalebone clattered against the metal inserts and she turned away from Bones before dropping his trenchcoat and deftly fitting the contraption around her torso. Bones may have disrobed her out of necessity earlier, but that was hardly an excuse for not maintaining her modesty now that she was awake.

“I am convinced that it is just a power issue. I can tweak the feedback loop to shunt more of the energy to the grounding rod and it’ll be fine.” She paused, allowing her wings to stretch once more before binding them against her back. “Probably.”

“I … am uncomfortable with this course of action,” Bones said.

She laughed, affixing the right shoulder strap carefully across her back and tucking the wing beneath the stiff leather backing. The left strap was completely useless, split by the Thumper’s beam, but thankfully the reinforced metal plates sewn into the corset’s body had shielded much of the initial blast.

“You worry too much, Bones. What is the worst that could happen?”

He sighed a metallic sigh. “I have compiled a list of catastrophic outcomes, but I believe your question was ill-advisedly rhetorical in nature.”

She sucked in a breath and pushed the lower button on the corset’s side seam. With a hiss of escaping air and the whir of moving gears, the side-stays spun and tightened, fitting the undergarment to her form. Her wounded shoulder protested again, but she ignored it for now. Keeping her secret was far more important than any superficial wound. She could treat it properly back on the ship.

She slipped her arms into the sleeves of her dress, lifting the bodice to its proper placement. The dress itself was ruined, of course. A jagged burn line running across the torso and over the shoulder, sporting an unattractive bloodstain. Still, it was better than nothing.

She stood, lifting Bones’s trenchcoat. When she turned to give it to him, she saw that he’d spun so that he was not facing her while she dressed. She blushed a little, thinking of how much effort he’d gone through to bind her wound. “Thank you Bones, your gentlemanly behavior is much appreciated.”

He turned and accepted his coat, pulling it on in a smooth motion. He slipped the feather into one of his pockets, buttoning it shut after.

Remora picked up her pack, removing a few rolled up sheets of paper, a sharpened stick of graphite, and her travel toolkit. It took only a moment to find and adjust the power parameters of the feedback loop. She set it lower than she thought necessary, just to be safe.

Standing, finger over the power switch for the Thumper, she couldn’t help but feel a slight twinge of concern. It would work, of course.

Bones walked closer and handed her a large leaf from a nearby tree. “If you insist upon testing, at least test on this first.”

She took the leaf from him with a smile. “Thank you, Bones!”

For a moment, he did not release his grip on the leaf. “Do not take this assistance as concurrence.”

Her grin widened. “I would not dream of it.”

He released the leaf, but stayed standing next to her. She smiled to herself as she reached over to the Thumper. She was lucky to have a companion such as Bones.

A button press and the Thumper thrummed to eager life. The ground shook even more noticeably this time, but the Thumper’s head lifted and rotated without a problem. The first purple beam shot from the Thumper’s eye into the distance, much paler than the first beam had been. Remora dangled the leaf into the path of the next beam, which struck the thin surface without even a sizzle.

Remora clasped her hands together.

It worked!

When the beam reached her, it struck against her ribcage, harmless as any beam of light.

It really, truly worked!

The rumbling beneath her feet grew more pronounced and she flung out her hands to keep her balance.

As the Thumper’s head began its third rotation, she saw the grounding rod begin to glow faintly red. It was overheating.

Quickly, she leaned forward and turned off the machine. The rumbling stopped immediately.

“Is it supposed to do that?” asked Bones, eyes on the smoking grounding rod.

“Probably,” she said, seating herself and unrolling one of the papers. A detailed map of the known world spilled across her lap. Carefully, she picked up a tool from her toolkit and began measuring against the horizon.

“You are plotting a course?” Bones asked.

She nodded, peering down the arm of a tool. “Triangulation,” she said. “If I take readings at several different places, marking the precise angle and direction of the beams at each one on this map, I should be able to find all of the pieces.”

“All of the pieces of what?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she answered, lifting her eyes to meet his. “But whatever it is, it’s important, and that purple crystal is a part of it.”

On the plus side, that means you get another installment next Tuesday!

Carefully, Remora plucked the tiny purple crystal from its setting in the locket, heart beating faster. Such a fragile thing, to hold so many of her hopes for the future. She bit her lip.

Please, let this work.

Alchemy was the difference between pure engineering and cogsmithing. The Thumper was just a dumb device until she added the source and the focus. She unscrewed the vial from the Thumper’s underbelly, checking its contents carefully. The sun shone through the red liquid, sparking odd highlights from the fragment of starshard already in the phial.
“Is that blood?” asked Bones.

She nodded. “Mine, actually.” Every cogwork aparatus needed a liquid to bind its pieces. Saltwater and pure water were the most common liquids, but those wouldn’t do for this purpose. She was seeking something far more specific, and for that, she needed to considerably narrow down the scope.

This was another reason she hadn’t wanted Serena or Montgomery here. Bones simply looked uncomfortable, but either of the other two cogsmithers would have been aghast at her use of human blood.

Remora knew she was right, though. Cogsmithing was one of the few things she was actually good at, and this felt right to her. It wasn’t as if there was an established formula for the Thumper that she could follow. She had to trust her instincts.

She took a deep breath and dropped the purple crystal into the vial. Exhaling, she watched the shard sink slowly through the blood until it fell to the bottom, nudging against the starshard fragment already inside.

“Are you sure about this?” Bones asked.

“Yes. And no.” Remora screwed the vial back into the Thumper’s belly, giving it a final pat before straightening and giving Bones a smile. “This is the fun part.”

Bones looked less than convinced. She turned away from him, biting her lip as her breath shortened.

Please, please let this work.

She flicked aside the safety catch from the Thumper’s activator, thumb hovering over the wide red button for a fraction of an instant before she pressed it.

The Thumper hummed and she felt the ground beneath her feet vibrate. Pebbles kicked up and skittered down the side of the hill. The Thumper’s head lifted and began to spin in a counterclockwise circle. The humming deepened and she felt her chest tighten.

A soft click announced the Thumper’s eye clicking on. A beam of violet light shot into the distance, striking a cloud to the southwest. The cloud swirled and vanished.

It’s working! It’s working!

Remora couldn’t breathe.

The Thumper’s head continued to rotate. Twice more the purple beam was released. Once to the west. Again, almost due north. When it faced her, the eye flickered to life. The light caught her in the ribs and drew its way across her waist, the smell of burning cloth reaching her nose an instant too late.

Too much. The power was too much! She lunged forward to turn off the Thumper, the beam traveling up between her breasts to trace a jagged and uneven line across her shoulder before she managed to push the button.

She fell backward as the humming stopped, vision spinning. She could smell burnt flesh now, along with the cloth.

Her last thought before passing out was that she had to come up with some way to make sure Hank never found out about this. She’d never live it down.

* * *

Remora woke with the sun in her eyes and the breeze tickling across her cheek.

Something was wrong.

Her hands clutched at the blanket thrown over her and she sat up, gasping in pain as her shoulder protested.

She glanced down. That was no blanket. That was a jacket. Bones’s trenchcoat.

Her breath rattled through her chest, full and unencumbered.

Her eyes widened. One hand dropped below the trenchcoat and traced her ribcage.

Her corset was gone.

Alarm froze her heart and for a moment her vision spun dizzily. Her corset. She had to find her corset, before someone saw her.

“Remora, be calm. You are safe here. I had to remove your corset to survey the damage.” Bones.

Remora froze, eyes focusing on him. For the first time, his ticker body was completely bare before her, thin metallic rods bound together in a parody of the human form. Solid bars mimicked a ribcage to protect his cogsmithing source.

Normally, she would have been fascinated. Normally, she would have asked to look closer, asked him a thousand questions. Right now, her body trembled with the need to run.

Had he seen? How could he not have seen?

He must have noticed the panic in her face. “You are safe,” he repeated.

One of his hands lifted, fingers curled around something. Dozens of tiny gears in his joints spun as he extended his arm toward her. She leaned away, shaking her head.

The fingers unfurled, revealing her worst fears.

A feather.

The wind tugged at the treacherous thing, but Bones snatched it back before it could fly away. The vane of the feather caught the light, shimmering red against maroon. The soft fluff of afterfeather at the base of the shaft was a dull black.

“You know,” she said, her voice hollow.

He nodded.

She pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her forehead into her thighs, not caring that her shoulder screamed at the motion. She forced her closed eyelids against the smooth fabric of his coat until she no longer felt the need to cry.

Freed from their normal prison of her corset, a tiny pair of cherub wings, no longer than her forearm, lifted and arched over her back.

She didn’t have to look back to know what Bones saw. One wing was completely black. The other was only half black, the sooty base of the wing giving way to sleek red and black feathers like the one that Bones held in his hand.

It was over. The moment anyone found out about this, she was ruined. Magnus Price did not have wings. Nor did her mother. Remora hadn’t even needed to do much research into genetics to learn what that meant. Her mother was unquestionably her mother, which meant that Magnus Price was not her father. Therefore, the final heir to the Price fortune wasn’t even truly a Price.

Moments passed in silence, a slight breeze tickling her wings. Sensitive after so many years of being tightly bound beneath her corset, her wings felt each tiny wind eddy and drift, twitching like a cat’s tail.

Bones said nothing.

She lifted her head. Bones wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he inspected the feather in his hand, staring at it intently.

“I’m a half-breed Seraph bastard,” she said. A knot in her chest tightened. She’d never actually said the words out loud before. The wind ripped them from her lips and danced away with them before she could call them back.

“This feather,” he said quietly, “was from the prison cell in Westmouth.” His eyebeams shifted from the feather to her face, no sign of judgement or derision on his face. He was just … Bones.

The tightness in her chest loosened slightly. She swallowed past it.

She felt bold, reckless. Bones already knew her secret. The thought that anyone knew, she could say these words to anyone at all, made her throw caution to the wind. “Every Seraph half-breed in recorded history has died suddenly on their twentieth birthday, assuming they did not die before that.” She said. Another thing she’d never said out loud.

“You are going to die,” said Bones, eyes flashing a vivid yellow. She’d startled him.

“My birthday is in seven months,” she said. She took a deep breath, her fists knotting in the fabric of his trenchcoat. “I am going to die in seven months.”

Word on the twittersphere is that the Choose: Volume 1 books are arriving at their new homes!

What do you think? Do you like them? Good quality? Anything you’d want to change for the second volume?

I’m especially curious to know what you thought of the Homage and Poll Archive sections of the book. Thumbs up, thumbs down?

If you’ve not actually read the text yet, you might not realize how much work went into editing and improving the story itself. This isn’t just a copy/paste from the website; a lot of work went into making it polished and professional. Steve Hall kicked in a good chunk of time and effort doing the copy editing for it, as well (thank you again for that, Steve!)

The paperback and eBook versions of Choose: Volume 1 are now available for purchase from Lulu.com.