Read Chapter 29: The Meteor's Heart

The fortress shook around them, stone dust raining from the vaulted ceiling as Elias pressed his back against the wall. The French guards had them split—MacReady and Sable on the far side of the corridor, pinned behind a collapsed support beam, while Elias hugged the shadows near the chamber door.

"Mister Thorne!" Sable's voice cut through the crack of musket fire. "If you've got a plan, I'd dearly love to hear it!"

The door to the meteor chamber stood twenty feet away. A pale blue light bled from beneath its seam, humming with a frequency that made Elias's teeth ache. He'd felt that hum before—once, in a dream he'd never told anyone about.

"Suppress them," he shouted back. "Thirty seconds."

MacReady grunted from behind the beam, his pistol barking twice. "Thirty seconds, Captain, and then I'm afraid I'll be taking requests from the Almighty."

Elias ran.

Low, fast, boots skidding on wet stone. A ball whistled past his ear, close enough to tug at his hair. He hit the door shoulder-first and it gave way with a groan of tortured hinges, and then he was through, and the world went silent.

The chamber was vast, a cathedral carved into the heart of the floating fortress. And at its center, suspended in a lattice of brass and glass, hung the meteor.

It was smaller than he'd imagined—no larger than a cannonball—but it pulsed with an inner light that turned the air around it thick and heavy. Elias felt the weight of it pressing against his chest, a gravitational pull that made his blood move slow and strange in his veins.

The weather control device.

The Priest's words came back to him: *They've harnessed the sky itself, Captain. They mean to make a weapon of the wind.*

Around the meteor, field emitters stood like sentinels—eight of them arranged in a perfect circle, each one crackling with arcs of pale energy that met at the meteor's core. The field they generated was invisible but unmistakable. Elias could feel it, a tautness in the air, a pressure against his skin.

He stepped forward and the field pushed back.

A warning. A promise.

Getting to the meteor would require disabling the emitters, and the emitters weren't just guarded by physics. Two French officers in heavy greatcoats already had their carbines raised, tracking his movement as he entered.

"Stand down," the taller one said. "You're in the presence of something you don't understand."

Elias drew his cutlass. "Then educate me."

The taller officer fired. Elias rolled, felt the ball tear through the hem of his coat, and came up inside the officer's guard. The cutlass took him across the chest—a messy, brutal stroke that sent him sprawling. The second officer got a shot off before Elias closed with him, and the ball clipped his shoulder, spinning him half around with the shock of it.

Pain bloomed, hot and angry. Elias gritted his teeth and lunged forward anyway, driving the pommel of his cutlass into the officer's temple. The man crumpled.

From beyond the door, the sound of fighting shifted. Sable cried out—a choked, wet sound that made Elias's stomach drop.

He started toward the door, then stopped.

The field emitters hummed, impatient. The meteor pulsed, patient.

He could hear MacReady shouting Sable's name. The sharp, desperate edge in his gunner's voice was something he'd never heard before.

But if he went back now, if he didn't disable the field, everything they'd bled for would be for nothing. The meteor would be tested against London. Thousands would die. And the sky-war would grind on until there was nothing left but ash and pride.

Elias pressed his hand to the emitters' control panel. A console, brass and glass, with a lattice of keys that defied easy understanding. He'd seen similar workings on Royal Navy ships, but these were French-made, maddening in their logic.

Behind him, through the door, the fight raged on. Another shot. The sound of steel meeting steel.

"Captain!" MacReady's voice, ragged, desperate. "Captain, I can't—"

Elias closed his eyes. The ring on his finger felt warm against his skin, a reminder of all the things he'd lost and all the things he still owed.

*Save your friends or disable the field.*

The question hung there, brutal and simple.

He thought of Amelia. Of the way she'd looked at him in the quiet moments between battles, her eyes holding something that might have been hope or might have been betrayal. The fleet she'd served. The family he'd lost. The crew he'd built from the wreckage of his disgrace.

He thought of London. The towers he'd climbed as a boy. The Thames, grey and constant. The people who had no idea that the sky itself was about to turn against them.

MacReady screamed.

Elias made his choice.

He tore his hand from the console and ran for the door.

The corridor was chaos. Sable lay crumpled against the wall, one arm twisted beneath her at the wrong angle, blood pooling beneath her shoulder. MacReady had thrown himself across her body, his cutlass up, holding off two more French guards as a third reloaded.

Elias hit the nearest guard like a cannonball.

They went down together, Elias's weight carrying them into the far wall. He smashed his elbow into the man's face, once, twice, and then he was up and moving toward MacReady.

"Get her clear," he shouted.

"Captain, the field—"

"I said get her clear!"

MacReady didn't argue a second time. He hooked his arms under Sable's and dragged her back along the corridor toward cover, leaving Elias alone with the two remaining guards.

The first one came at him with a bayonet. Elias caught the barrel with his cutlass, twisted, and drove his boot into the man's knee. Something gave with a sickening pop. The guard went down screaming.

The second guard had found his courage and was advancing with grim determination. Elias straightened and raised his cutlass.

"Last chance," he said, his voice hoarse from the smoke and exertion. "I don't have time to make this clean."

The guard lunged.

Elias was faster. The cutlass took the man across the wrist, sending his carbine clattering to the floor. A second stroke, and the guard was down—bloody but alive, clutching his arm and staring up at Elias with wide eyes.

No time to waste.

Elias turned back to the chamber. The field still hummed beyond the door, the meteor pulsing with its terrible, beautiful light.

Then something moved in the shadows at the far end of the corridor.

Elias froze.

She stepped out of the darkness like a memory given form, her blonde hair loose around her shoulders, a French service revolver in her hand. Amelia.

"Don't," she said.

Elias didn't lower his cutlass. "You said we had to stop them."

"We do." She walked toward him, and the revolver never wavered. "But there's something you need to understand first. About the meteor. About what it actually is."

"Then tell me."

Amelia stopped within arm's reach. Her eyes were pale and steady, and Elias thought he could see something like grief flickering behind them.

"It's not a weapon, Elias." Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "It's a signal. And it's already been sent."

The words hit him like a physical blow. "What?"

"The meteor doesn't control the weather. It calls it. Calls *them*." Amelia's jaw tightened. "The faction that seized the convoy—they're not planning to destroy London. They're planning to *summon* something. Something that's been sleeping in the sky since before the war began."

From somewhere deep in the fortress, an alarm began to sound. A deep, resonant klaxon that vibrated through Elias's boots. The chamber beyond the door began to glow brighter, the meteor's pulse quickening.

"Hollis never found transport to the fortress," Elias said slowly. "You arranged the resupply stop. You set the whole thing up."

"I set the stage." Amelia's revolver lowered slightly. "But the actors are still in motion. The convoy will reach London in two days, and if we don't stop it, we don't just lose a city. We lose the sky itself."

MacReady called from behind them, his voice tight with pain. "Captain, whatever you're about to do—"

Elias looked at the glowing chamber door. Then at Amelia. Then at Sable, bleeding out on the stone.

He turned back to the chamber.