Aria POV
I wake up in a moving cart with my hands tied again.
For a second, I panic—thinking Lyanna's men came back to finish what they started. But these ropes are different. Cleaner. And the men driving the cart wear the royal colors.
"Where are you taking me?" My voice comes out rough from smoke damage.
"Prince's orders," the guard grunts without looking back. "Workshop."
Right. The deal. I prove I can fix his war machines or I die. No pressure.
My burns throb with every bump in the road. My lungs still feel like I swallowed fire. And I'm pretty sure I have a concussion from falling off Kael's horse. But none of that matters because I have exactly seven days to build a medieval trebuchet or get my head chopped off.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
The cart stops outside a massive stone building. Smoke pours from chimneys. I hear hammering, shouting, the roar of furnaces. The royal weapons workshop.
Guards haul me out of the cart—not gently. My legs barely hold me up. One guard laughs. "Good luck, witch. You'll need it."
They shove me through the doorway and I stumble into chaos.
The workshop is enormous. Dozens of men work at stations—some hammering metal, others sawing wood, a whole group bent over plans and drawings. The heat is suffocating. The noise is deafening.
And every single person stops working to stare at me.
"That's her?" A massive man with a scarred face steps forward. He's holding a hammer bigger than my head. "That's the witch who thinks she can teach us our jobs?"
"I'm not a witch." I straighten my spine even though everything hurts. "I'm an engineer. And yes, I'm here to fix your catapults before they get your army killed."
Silence. Then laughter. Loud, mocking laughter that echoes off the stone walls.
"An engineer!" Scarface wheezes. "That's rich! Women can't be engineers. Women can barely lift a hammer!"
"Then it's a good thing I don't need to lift hammers. I need to do math." I scan the room, counting the workstations. Twelve men. All of them looking at me like I'm a dancing monkey. "Who's in charge here?"
"I am." An older man steps forward. He's thin, with gray hair and cold eyes. Master Garrett, my brain supplies from Aria's memories. Head of the royal engineers. Hates women. Hates change. Hates everything that threatens his position. "And I don't take orders from condemned criminals."
"Good. Because I'm not giving orders. I'm making you an offer." I meet his glare without flinching. "Your siege weapons have a failure rate of sixty percent. Your catapults can't hit targets beyond three hundred yards. And your current designs will crumble against Rothwyrd's limestone walls." I pause. "I can fix all of that in one week. Or you can keep failing and blame it on bad luck."
Master Garrett's face turns purple. "How dare you—"
"I dare because I'm right and you know it." I turn to address the whole room. "Show me your current catapult design. Now."
"We don't answer to you!" someone shouts.
"Then answer to your prince." A new voice cuts through the workshop. Cold. Sharp. Absolute authority.
Prince Kael steps out of the shadows near the back wall. How long has he been standing there? His face is covered in soot. His hands are bandaged. But his gray eyes are focused entirely on me.
"Master Garrett," Kael says quietly. "Show her the designs. That's an order."
Garrett's jaw clenches. But he can't refuse a direct command from the crown prince. He jerks his head toward a table covered in scrolls. "Fine. But when she fails, I want it on record that I opposed this madness."
"Noted." Kael doesn't take his eyes off me. "You have the floor, Lady Aria. Prove yourself."
No pressure. Just my life hanging in the balance.
I walk to the table, forcing myself not to limp. The engineers part like I have the plague. I unroll the largest scroll and study their catapult design.
Oh no. Oh, this is bad.
"This is why you're failing," I say, pointing to the main support beam. "Your fulcrum is positioned wrong. You're trying to use a basic lever system for a projectile that weighs two hundred pounds. The physics don't work."
"The physics are sound!" Master Garrett snaps. "That design has been used for fifty years!"
"Then you've been failing for fifty years." I grab a piece of charcoal and start drawing on the back of the scroll. My hands shake but my mind is clear. "You need a counterweight system. A heavy weight on one side, your projectile on the other. When you release the weight, it pulls down and launches the projectile up and forward. The ratio needs to be roughly one hundred thirty-three to one for optimal force."
I sketch quickly—the A-frame support, the swing arm, the sling that will hold the projectile. It's a basic trebuchet design, something that won't be invented in this time period for another hundred years.
"This is witchcraft," someone whispers.
"This is engineering." I finish the sketch and spin it around to face them. "Build this. Test it against your current design. Whichever throws farther and more accurately wins. If I'm wrong, I'll walk back to the execution platform myself."
Master Garrett studies my drawing. His expression shifts from anger to confusion to something that might be grudging respect. "This... could work. In theory."
"It will work. I've built similar systems before." In 2024, for my master's thesis, but they don't need to know that. "I need timber for the frame. Six hundred feet of rope. Iron pins for the joints. And a space outside to test it."
"Absolutely not!" Garrett slams his hand on the table. "I won't waste royal resources on a woman's fantasy!"
"You'll waste them on my order." Kael steps closer. His presence fills the room like a storm. "Lady Aria will have everything she requests. Master Garrett, you and your men will assist her. Anyone who refuses answers to me personally."
The threat is clear. Obey or face the crown prince's wrath.
Garrett bows stiffly. "Yes, Your Highness."
"Good." Kael looks at me. "You have seven days. Don't waste them."
He turns to leave but I call out before I can stop myself. "Your father—is he alive?"
Kael pauses. For just a second, something flickers across his face. Pain, maybe. Or exhaustion. Then it's gone, replaced by his usual ice. "He lives. No thanks to the people trying to kill him."
"And the note? The one that said—"
"Is none of your concern." His voice goes deadly quiet. "Focus on your work, Lady Aria. Your life depends on it."
He walks out, leaving me surrounded by hostile engineers and impossible expectations.
I take a deep breath and turn back to Master Garrett. "Right. Let's start with the timber measurements. I need—"
A young apprentice bursts through the door, gasping for air. "Master Garrett! Emergency! The test catapult in the north yard just fired on its own!"
"What? That's impossible! It's not even loaded!"
"It is now, sir! And it's aimed at the princess's chambers! It's going to fire in sixty seconds and we can't stop it!"
My blood turns to ice. The princess's chambers. Where I'm supposed to be recovering. Where anyone looking for me would search first.
This isn't an accident. This is another assassination attempt.
And whoever's behind it just made a fatal mistake—they assumed I'd be in that room.
"Can you disarm it?" I demand.
"The release mechanism is jammed! Nothing we've tried works!"
I'm already running for the door. "Then we don't disarm it. We redirect it."
"Are you insane?" Master Garrett chases after me. "Even if we could move it, the trajectory calculations alone would take hours!"
"Good thing I can do them in my head." I burst into the yard and see the catapult—a massive, creaking monster aimed directly at the palace's east wing. The arm is drawn back. The rope is stretched tight. And there's a boulder the size of a small car sitting in the basket.
Forty-five seconds.
I sprint toward it, my engineer brain calculating angles, force, distance. If it fires now, it'll punch through the stone walls and kill everyone in that wing. But if I can shift the base by just fifteen degrees...
"Help me move it!" I scream. "Now!"
Three apprentices rush forward. We grab the wooden base and PUSH. It's so heavy. Too heavy. The mechanism creaks ominously.
Thirty seconds.
"It's not moving!" someone yells.
"It has to move!" I put my entire body weight into it. My burns scream. My muscles tear. But slowly—so slowly—the base begins to shift.
Twenty seconds.
"More! Push harder!" My vision goes dark at the edges but I don't stop. Can't stop.
The base swings. Five degrees. Ten. Twelve.
Fifteen seconds.
"That's enough!" I release the base and stumble backward. "Everyone RUN!"
We scatter as the catapult fires with a sound like thunder. The boulder launches into the air, arcing high over the palace walls. For one horrible second I think I miscalculated—that it's going to hit the palace anyway.
Then it sails over the east wing. Over the entire palace. And crashes into the forest beyond with a earth-shaking BOOM.
Silence.
Master Garrett stares at me, his face white. "You... calculated that trajectory in under a minute."
"Like I said. I'm good at math." My legs give out and I sit down hard on the ground. Everything hurts. But we're alive.
Then I see it—a piece of paper tied to the catapult's release lever. I crawl over and read the words written in elegant script:
"Strike one: failed. Strike two: failed. But we have six strikes left, witch. And eventually, you'll run out of luck. Sleep well.
—The ones who sent you here"
My hands shake so badly I drop the note.
The ones who sent me here. Not the ones trying to kill me. The ones who SENT me here. To this time. To this body.
Which means someone from my time—from 2024—is in this medieval world. And they're trying to murder me before I figure out why.