Wait a minute.
I spun around and stared at the building. The base was huge, at least twenty feet on each of the twelve sides, with engraved metal designs spiraled along the surface. Maybe Hiram wasn’t at the clock but inside of it.
Closing the distance to the base, I slowly walked around, searching for an opening. My gloved fingers brushed along the rough metal surface, weathered with age and rust. On the side leading to the Sixth Chime, I found a door whose grooves and seams blended into the design.
Hesitantly, I pushed on the handle. It was unlocked. That couldn’t be normal.
My heart thumped uneasily, but I peeked my head in. The faint scent of oil and soft hiss of steam escaping from pipes and valves reached me. The only light inside trickled in from the twelve clock faces high above, so I waited a moment to give my eyes time to adjust.
A network of pipes and conduits crisscrossed the space, carrying steam and compressed air to power the clock’s machinery. Which made sense since the Epoch Clock was built before aether technology was advanced enough to power it.
“Hiram?” I whispered, then cleared my throat and spoke it a little louder to be heard over the grinding gears. “Hiram? Are you here?” I took another step inside, and the heavy metal door closed behind me with an ominous click.
The hiss and clank of the pipes added a rhythmic undertone to the symphony of moving parts, eliciting the feeling that I was trapped in a living, breathing mechanism. The ticking of the pendulums was like a giant metal heartbeat going off every second with tense half-beats of silence between.
“Is anyone here?”
Nothing but the whirs of cogs and gears answered me.
I started to turn around, but a dark glint on the floor caught my eye. I crouched down and studied the specks of dark liquid on the ground. Hesitantly, I touched one spot with my gloved finger, and the lace came away red. It was blood...and it was fresh.
My pulse sped up at the thought of Hiram being injured.
I held my skirts in my hands, careful not to let any of them get caught in the gears around me, and took a few more steps and the pathway narrowed to a black catwalk with stairs leading up. The smell of old metal and oil grew stronger, along with a charred stench, almost like when I’d accidentally burned a hole in the rug at home with Papá’s aether lamp. I wrinkled my nose and stopped. Tilting my head back, I looked up and found that the winding staircase went all the way to the top, weaving between a complex network of gears, levers, and weights.
“Hiram?” I called again.
A groan sounded in the distance, almost drowned out by the noise of the clock, and I froze. I hadn’t imagined it, had I?
“Hiram, are you in here?” Heart pounding in my ears, I stood and listened for another sound to prove I hadn’t imagined the first.
No answer came except for the sound of the Epoch Clock, and dread pumped through me. If I was right and Hiram was here, then something was wrong. Otherwise, he would’ve responded. He wasn’t the kind of man to make me worry needlessly.
Unless...it wasn’t Hiram here at all. Maybe I was in here with someone else. I pulled out one of my concealed knives and clutched it to my side.
Despite the foreboding silence that made goose bumps crawl across my skin, I couldn’t leave until I confirmed who the voice belonged to. The stair rail, not nearly as smooth as the outside, was almost harsh under my lace gloves, but I gripped it tightly and forced myself to keep climbing. Above me, twelve brass pendulums swung rhythmically with an almost hypnotic precision while gears of various sizes spun and meshed with one another in harmonious choreography.
When I reached the first landing, I looked around. A few boxes that didn’t match the rest of the decor littered the limited space as if someone was storing things inside the Epoch Clock.
I made my way around the sealed boxes, weights hanging in the air, and the rotating gears and continued to the next floor. In the brief moments between ticking, another groan came from somewhere above me.
“Hiram?” I said it louder this time.
“Poppy?” an exhausted voice whispered so quiet I almost missed it. A dark shape, different from the wheels and boxes slumped against the far wall of the next landing.
That one word confirmed all my worst fears. “Hiram!” I rushed across the narrow catwalk and dropped to my knees by his side. Tears filled my eyes, and my heart squeezed in my chest. “What happened?”
“Poppy, you have”—he wheezed in a breath and his eyes fluttered—“to go.”
“Who did this to you? Was it Meridian Eliver? What happened?” I held his face between my hands, but even in the dark I could tell he was pale, much too pale, and his cheeks were cold under my touch. There was something wrong with the way he was lying, as if he’d fallen in that position and hadn’t been able to get up. As I ran a hand over his chest, the now all-too-familiar feel of warm blood squished between my gloved fingers.
“Not safe.” He grimaced, and my heart twisted at the pain lining his face.
“Save your breath. I’ll get help.” I started to stand, but the faintest pressure on my hand urged me back down. Hiram was holding my fingers. Seeing him like this broke something inside of me.
“No.” Hiram’s fingers tightened just barely around mine, but his eyes told me what he wouldn’t.
I was too late.
“Please don’t leave me.” With shaking hands, I ripped off the under layer of my skirt and pressed it against his chest to slow the bleeding.
He winced at the pressure but looked at me again. “You have to go and don’t come back.”
“No.” Tears streamed down my face. “Don’t ask me to do that.” I wasn’t strong enough to carry him down the stairs, and I wasn’t sure he’d survive being moved. All I could do was go for help, but I couldn’t leave when he was watching me like that—like I was the only thing he wanted to see for however long he had left.
For a moment, we looked at each other and the world around us faded, leaving just Hiram, me, and the knowledge that my time with him was slipping away as surely as if I were in the past.
“I can’t stand the thought of losing you.” With my free hand, I traced the faint scar on his left temple, down his jawline, and to his lips—lips that would never curve into that lopsided smile again. I’d never see the dimple that appeared when he tried not to laugh or that chipped tooth that somehow made everything seem all right in the moment.
The ticking of the clock was a cruel reminder that his heartbeat was slowing.
Hiram raised a trembling hand to my cheek and placed it there, the touch soft and faint. A sprinkle of sunlight fell on him from the clock faces above, making his blond head glint like a halo.
His gaze met mine, and despite the pain he was in, something like peace filled his expression before his eyes slid shut. His hand fell from my cheek and thudded against the ground.
“No!” I screamed the word and clutched his hand. “Hiram, please. Please be all right!” Sobs racked my chest and carried through my whole body, making it feel like I was coming apart at the seams. “Please,” I whispered brokenly.
Tears streamed down my face as I pressed my forehead to his.
But it was too late.
Hiram was gone.