They had been entangled with each other since years even if those interactions were minimal.

Things had gone worse between them over the years but a few memories had always been etched closer to his heart, where he protected them with everything he had.

He waited for her to look at him or to atleast acknowledge his words.

Evelina didn’t look up. Instead, she pulled a graphite pencil from somewhere and a crumpled scrap of parchment from her pocket.

"The pressure-to-volume ratio is the problem," she muttered, her pencil scratching furiously across the paper, "If Victor’s boiler isn’t reinforced with a double-lap seam, the PSI will exceed the safety margin before we even hit the primary aquifer. We need to calculate the thermal expansion of the copper versus the iron."

Ace froze. He stared at the side of her face, his mouth slightly open.

He had just poured his heart out, offering a bridge across so many misunderstandings, and she was... she was... she was more interested in doing math.

"Evelina," he said, his voice flat, "I just said something..."

Evelina’s eyes narrowing as she drew a complex diagram of a valve, "But the thunder won’t explode and level half the North if the relief spring is too weak. We have a 12% margin for error. That’s too high. I need to get it down to 4%."

She continued writing and filling the page with various calculations.

Ace stared at the scribbles on the page, symbols and numbers that looked like an alien language. But he wasn’t even interested in trying to understand them.

He just felt the familiar sting of being ignored yet as he watched her, something strange happened.

Although irritation had taken root in his heart, a helpless smile quirked the corners of his mouth.

He shook his head, "You’re doing it again," he whispered.

"Doing what?"

"Being the most frustrating woman in the world," he said. He didn’t say it with his usual bite; it was a surrender.

He had cut his heart open and forced himself to recall the memories of their childhood that he had buried deep within.

On their wedding night, he had treated her like a stranger as if they shared no history.

And now, she did not care about his feelings.

It should have irked him. But he realized that... whether this woman cried for him or made him cry, everything had some sort of effect on her even though he wouldn’t ever admit that.

The storm outside reached a peak, the wind screaming like a wounded beast, but inside the tent, the air had stilled.

Ace didn’t speak again because he didn’t want to break her concentration. He simply sat there, his chin resting in his hand as he watched her.

The firelight from the small heater played across her features, highlighting the coolness in her eyes and the smudge of graphite on her cheek.

He watched the way she bit her lip when a calculation didn’t balance. He watched the way her hand moved with confident strokes. And the way she had a little frown every time she made some mistake.

He was utterly mesmerized.

The heat in the tent was stifling, the dust was everywhere, and they were trapped in the middle of a wasteland, but Ace realized he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

If the storm lasted forever, he wouldn’t mind as long as he could stay right here to watch her.

Evelina finally paused, her pencil hovering, "Why are you being so quiet?"

She turned her head to look at him, and for a second, their eyes locked. The Iron Duke didn’t look away.

"Nothing," Ace said, his voice a low note, "Just keep going. I realized I’m right where I want to be."

"In the middle of a wasteland?" She raised a brow.

He continued looking into her eyes as he smiled, "Mm, right in the middle."

In the center of the cavernous hall of the Alvarez Smithy stood a creature of the new world: the first steam pump.

At twelve feet tall, the machine was a skeletal tower of blackened steel and polished copper. Massive pistons, as thick as a man’s waist, sat ready to strike, while a set of reinforced valves snaked around a central boiler. It resembled a hibernating beast, rather than a tool.

To the master smiths and Victor Thorne, it was a miracle.

"The seals are holding at 150 PSI," Victor whispered, his eyes bloodshot and frantic. He hadn’t slept in seventy-two hours, his fingers constantly tightening bolts he had already checked a dozen times, "But the deep stone... it’s harder than the maps suggested. If the pressure drops even a fraction, the kickback will shatter the main cylinder."

Evelina stood before the machine, her hand resting on am iron strut. She almost feel the weight of the thousands of Heart-Wrecker points that she had struggled to earn and the sheer audacity of her own ambition coming into fruition.

"It won’t shatter... for now. It has to work," Evelina said, her voice cutting through the hiss of the cooling coals.

Ace stood behind her, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at the iron monster and his wife with an undeniable sense of respect, "The horses are ready for the transport," he said, his gaze shifting to Evelina, "But the people at the Well of Sorrows... they might not be ready for this."

Evelina looked at him, bewildered, "Why?"

"They’re at their breaking point," he said solemnly.

The Well of Sorrows that Ace mentioned was the heart of the North’s suffering. Once a bustling oasis where three trade routes met, it was now a graveyard of cracked earth and bleached bones.

Since the time the drought had hit, this place had suffered so terribly that the original name of the village had long disappeared with the dust. The villagers cried, day and night, saying that they must have sinned in some way to incur God’s wrath.

The countless many losses and tragedies made refer to the place by the name ’Well of Sorrows’.