Years Before.
The estate was built to intimidate.
Not decorated to intimidate, built for it, the architecture itself expressing the Hammerian philosophy in stone and height and the specific spatial language of a place designed to make everyone inside it aware of the distance between themselves and the man who owned it. Wide corridors.
High ceilings. Rooms that were larger than they needed to be because needing things was for people who couldn't simply have them.
Plum had grown up inside it the way plants grow inside wrong conditions, sideways, finding whatever light was available, adapting without being asked whether adaptation was something she wanted to do.
She was sitting in the kitchen when her father walked through.
She had cookies, moon cookies a secret recipe her mother use to make. Not many, she'd learned to be careful about how many she had in visible locations, had learned this the specific way children learn things in houses like this, which is by understanding the consequences before fully understanding the rule.
But she had a few and she was eating them with the focused pleasure of someone for whom this particular thing was straightforwardly good in a life that had limited straightforwardly good things.
Metal looked at her.
He was built the way Hammerian men were built, large, dense, carrying the specific physical authority of someone whose abi ran in the muscles rather than around them. He looked at Plum the way he always looked at Plum, which was with the expression of someone who has received a result that doesn't match their expectations and has been receiving this result for long enough that the surprise has curdled into something less forgivable.
"Again," he said.
Plum stopped chewing.
"You know your sister's outside," Metal said. "Up before sunrise. Runnin' drills."
He looked at the cookies.
"And you're sittin' in here."
"I was hungry," Plum said.
"You're always hungry." He moved through the kitchen without stopping, the observation delivered as fact rather than cruelty, which was somehow worse than cruelty. "You eat like you're storing for winter. You cry like the world is ending every time something goes wrong. You're soft, Plum. Everything about you is soft."
Plum looked at her cookies.
"Your sister's gonna be a warrior," Metal said.
He paused at the doorway, didn't look back.
"You..."
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A short breath through his nose.
"You'll make somebody a wife. If he ain't too particular 'bout what he's lookin' at."
He left.
Plum sat in the kitchen with her cookies and the specific silence that falls after someone has said something that was intended to land and has landed.
She didn't cry. Not yet. She'd learned to wait until she was somewhere the crying wouldn't be seen, which meant her room, which meant finishing the cookies first because she was genuinely hungry and being sad about something didn't make the hunger go away.
However this time she couldn't hold back the tears.
She ate the rest of the cookies because they were delicious.
Then she went to her room and cried with her head under her pillow.
Outside, in the estate's training yard, Einstera ran.
She had been running since before Plum woke up. She would be running after Plum went to sleep. She ran with the focused intensity of someone who had decided running was the most important thing she could do and had structured her entire existence around improving it.
Metal watched a far
"She's always out there trainin' to run," he said once, more to the air than to anyone else. "Ain't like speed's the most important thing."
He shifted his weight.
"But she's a Morpher. Guess it suits her."
A low chuckle.
"Wouldn't surprise me if she's fixin' to outrun me one of these days."
He never asked why she ran.
He never asked why she had decided, at an age when most children were still deciding what they liked, that the ability to move faster than anything that might chase her was the single most necessary skill she could develop.
He never asked because he didn't want to know the answer.
And because on some level he already did.
The call came on a Tuesday.
Metal was in his study when the communication device activated and Pyraz Hammerian's voice filled the room with the specific pleasantness of someone who has calculated the exact register of friendly that makes a threat feel like a favor.
"Metal," Pyraz said. "My old friend. How are things."
"Pyraz." Metal's voice was flat. "What do you want."
"Want." Pyraz sounded wounded. "I want nothing but the best for you. For all Hammerians. You know that." A pause. "Though I'll admit it's been difficult lately. To watch."
"Watch what?" Metal Said.
"Your situation." The pleasantness adjusted slightly, not less warm, more pointed. "It's hard, you know. Within the Hammerian empire. When everyone knows that you, Metal, the so-called strongest of all Hammerians, allowed your wife Velmora to escape." Another pause. "With your daughter, no less. It's quite pitiful, if I'm being honest. Which I always am, with old friends."
The temperature in the study changed.
"Pyraz," Metal said quietly. "Choose your next words."
"Of course, of course." Pyraz's voice didn't waver. "I'm not here to wound you. I'm here because I know how to fix it. That's what friends do."
Metal said nothing.
"The Wig family has spoken," Pyraz continued. "The Cat Lady family, you know them, they have certain connections, they're in contact with Mr. Ebby himself. He has quite a collection. Remarkable work, genuinely. But he's missing something specific." A pause for effect. "Blood of the Trinity. Scytherian genetics. Pure line. If you were to provide him with one of your daughters.."
"No."
"he would personally see to the restoration of your name within the empire. And it benefits all of us, Metal. The success of all Hammerians is will determine if we will have their full support in taking control of Dragon Hive."
"I said no." Metal stood. "If I do this the underground organizations get their hands on Scytherian genetics. The Tabashi family. The Razors. They'd have creatures with my daughters' bloodline running through them. That's shameful to the Hammerian name."
"Well." Pyraz's tone was perfectly reasonable. "It's not like we're asking for a boy. Just take your little round.."
"Don't." Metal's voice dropped to something that didn't need volume. "Don't mention my daughter's name."
Silence.
"I'll need time to think about it," Metal said.
"Of course," Pyraz said warmly. "Take all the time you need, old friend."
The call ended.
Metal stood in his study and looked at the wall for a long time.