Page 4 of Fated to the Wicked King

“No, sorry.”

I picked up a mechanical linkage and held it closer, squinting. “I wore out the only one I had from all the calibration experiments so far. It’ll be near impossible to create another one from scratch.” I tossed the scrap metal back onto the table with a clink on top of a cluttered pile of papers, glassware, and haphazardly arranged gadgets.

The rest of the tower might be well-organized, but in my lab, I was a bit more lax about tidiness.

Chez moseyed across the floor, his wide purple eyes focused on the scrawls on the wall.

One side of the glassed-in clock tower was always filled with chalky scribbles of complex equations, formulas, hurriedly scrawled notes, and often smudged or partially erased sketches of the multiple evolutions for all my fantastic inventions.

My latest one would be my grandest ever.

With its sophisticated complexities, the machine had taken me almost eight months to build. It wasn’t like I had an entire team to assist. Now, it was only lacking one final component. I was so close, I could taste it.

Chez’s ominous tone was careful, as if he was wary of triggering me. “Does he even know what you’re building? Or how close you are?”

Feigning boredom, I examined my nails. “Of course not. I haven’t seen him in…” I trailed off, not even bothering to count. I slid a narrow-eyed gaze at Chez. “You haven’t told anyone, right? Not even the Duchess? You swore you would keep my secret.”

He huffed. “Of course, darling. I thrive on secrets. I find them absolutely delicious.” Hopping up onto a wonky stack of pallets, he made himself comfortable, stretching out. “Though I thought you had reached what you called ‘a stable phase’? Could you not hurry it along? Why haven’t you tested it yet?”

“I just…” Dropping my gaze, I clenched my fists. “I can’t yet. I need—to be sure that it’s safe enough. These are delicate components, intricate configurations, and I have to… I just have to…”

“You have to…what?” Chez’s eyebrows rose. “Are you worried about your swapped heart?”

“No, I—I mean, yes, of course, there is a potential risk there to journey on a borrowed heart. There’s no guarantee one way or another. But…” I bit my lip before loudly explaining with a confidence I didn’t have. “I just need to make sure there aren’t any other adverse side effects. This is highly experimental, very advanced theoretical physics. I’m tampering with the boundaries of time and space here. It’s—it’s complicated. And I don’t want to hurt anyone—” again, I almost said.

I furrowed my eyebrows at the odd feeling of familiarity, my heartbeat quickening. What did it mean?

My chest tightened once more.

Another slight complication.

For everything that I knew about science and this mystical otherworld, I could not for the life of me remember anything about where I had come from. Nor did I, in fact, have any recollection whatsoever of who I even really was.

Two

GRWM

Iwas a scientist. I knew that much.

I had a knack for physics, chemical substances, tinkering, and understanding the workings of machines.

I wasn’t entirely sure when I had arrived on Wünder. I was simply found near-death in the frozen wastelands, and upon waking, had discovered that I had none of my episodic memories.

Ironic that I could self-diagnose which type of amnesia I had when I couldn’t even remember my real name.

All these months later, and I was still no closer to remembering. My theory was that my identity might be wholly tied to my location. That the only way to remember was to return to my world. It was a hypothesis I had yet to test. Either way, I was sure I couldn’t wait to get out of Wünder, couldn’t wait to finally get home. Surely…

I clenched my jaw, straining to remember—something just out of reach, familiar but elusive. But the harder I concentrated, the more it slipped through my grasp.

There was something in my forgotten past. A threat? A warning? I hadn’t ever had a flash of memory come back to me, not in fragments, nor in split-second moments. I had absolutely no clues.

Shaking my head to clear it, I pushed my sleeves up in determination. I set to repairing a broken, smaller timepiece, if only to reassure myself that there were some clocks I could fix. “By the way, could you find me another brass mainspring?”

“Eh? What happened to the last wretched thing I found for you?” Chez shot me a suspicious look before his expression cleared. “Don’t tell me you’ve been going to Tulgey Woods again. That place is dangerous.”

“It’s not like it’s a long journey. The rabbit-hole tunnel is right by the foot of this tower. Besides, I needed to fix that early warning system I’d installed for them. I’m the only engineer anywhere remotely close, and you know that Jabberwocky doesn’t stop for anyone. Otherwise, more creatures would have been gobbled up.”

“Didn’t those flowers almost eat you the last time?”