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I remembered the Witchwood arrow, lying at the bottom of a ditch, and my heart constricted. “I know,” I whispered. “But I have to try. I’ve come this far. I’m not giving up now. ”
“If Machina has stolen your brother, he must be waiting for you,” the old man said, leaning forward. “He wants you for something. I can feel the power in you, my girl, but it will not be enough. The Iron King is a master of manipulation. He will use you to further his own schemes, and you will not be able to resist. Go home, girl. Forget what you have lost and go home. ”
“Forget?” I thought of my friends, who had sacrificed everything to see me this far. Puck. The Elder Dryad. Ash. “No,” I murmured, a lump forming in my throat. “I can never forget. Even if it’s hopeless, I have to go on. I owe everyone that much. ”
“Foolish girl,” the old man growled. “I know more about Machina than anyone—his ways, his power, the way his mind works—and yet you still will not hear me. Very well. Rush to your doom, like everyone who came before you. You will see, as I did, far too late. Machina cannot be defeated. I only wish I’d listened to my councilors when they told me as much. ”
“You tried to defeat him?” I stared, trying to imagine the frail old man fighting anyone and failing. “When? Why?”
“Because,” the old man explained patiently, “I was once the Iron King.
“My name is Ferrum,” the old man explained into my shocked silence. “As you no doubt noticed, I am old. Older than that whelp Machina, older than all of the iron fey. I was the first, you see, born of the forges, when mankind first began to experiment with iron. I rose from their imagination, from their ambition to conquer the world with a metal that could slice through bronze like paper. I was there when the world started to shift, when humans took their first steps out of the Dark Ages into civilization.
“For many years, I thought I was alone. But mankind is never satisfied—he is always reaching, always trying for something better. Others came, others like me, risen from these dreams of a new world. They accepted me as their king, and for centuries, we remained hidden, isolated from the rest of the fey. I realized, beyond a doubt, that if the courts knew of our existence, they would unite to destroy us.
“Then, with the invention of computers, the gremlins came, and the bugs. Given life by the fear of monsters lurking in mach