Reaching a metal stairwell at the farthest edge of the final alchemy room, we headed up through level after level, our boots thudding against the rickety steps. The whole thing shook under me as we walked, making me nervous that we might plummet to our deaths at any moment. I didn’t dare look down; I could feel how high up we were, just by counting the balconied floors we’d passed. All around that last alchemy room, there were elevated walkways with doorways branching off, surrounded by rusting balustrades that looked over the activity below.
At the second to last floor, Lazar led us down the unsettling walkway that clung to the wall of the lab’s structure, and we came to a doorway. He pushed it open and ushered us into a cold, gloomy corridor.
After five more minutes of walking, we came to a halt inside a small foyer with a single door in the center. Lazar walked up to it and knocked gently. If I hadn’t been pretending my hands were tied, I would have reached out and grasped for Navan’s hands, needing his comfort before we headed in to see Orion. There was no way we were going to leave that room without a fight, and I just prayed it was one we could win.
“Come in!” Orion’s voice roared, making my heart stop.
Lazar flashed us a look, as if to say, “Don’t make me regret this.” I didn’t plan on it, not until the moment he realized there was more to my idea than I’d told him.
Opening the door, Lazar made a show of shoving Navan and me into the room beyond. It was large, starkly furnished, and windowless, giving the entire space an unnerving atmosphere. Just as Orion liked it, no doubt.
The coldblood in question was pacing at the far side of the room, his hands behind his back, while his guards stood around looking awkward. The only one who seemed to have any kind of wits about him was Ezra, who was leaning casually against a filing cabinet, his eyes narrowing as we entered. If the battle for the rebel base, or the global broadcast, hadn’t been enough of an indication of my and my friends’ presence on Earth, this was the final sliver of proof. He looked about as pleased to see Navan and me as I’d expected.
Orion, however, hadn’t even looked up at us. He seemed distracted, muttering to himself as he paused beside his desk to check on a comms device, which was updating him on the status of the battle. Evidently, he was waiting for Queen Gianne and Queen Brisha to arrive. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him he was going to be sorely disappointed if he expected the latter to show up. Brisha was a lot of things, but, like the rest of the coldbloods, she wasn’t immortal.
“Chief Orion, the queens’ armies have retreated for now,” a voice crackled through. “The Fed soldiers who didn’t retreat have been killed or captured. The base will soon be solely in our hands again, sir.”
As the words drifted across to where I stood, I felt a pang of loss for our allies. They’d been following orders, trying to win back Earth for the humans it belonged to. They’d known it was a dangerous task, but they’d done it anyway because we’d promised to put up the shield and use Stone’s powers to help. Now, all of that had fallen away, and they’d been the ones to pay the ultimate price for our failure. If we were to stand any chance of clawing back our footing in the fight for Earth, we needed to get Stone back—we owed that much to our Fed allies, not to mention the frightened humans who still had no idea what the hell was going on.
“Chief Orion, I’ve brought prisoners,” Lazar said proudly, but Orion didn’t even bother to cast him a glance. He was too preoccupied with what the comms device was relaying.
“Why are you here, Lazar?” he snapped. “You should be on the roof, administering the second batch of energy elixir to our ambaka. If you don’t, he will start to flag, and he will die, and then where will we be? You will leave us exposed to the Fed scum who are waiting, right out there, hungry for their moment to strike at us again!” He jabbed a finger upward, though he still didn’t turn to look at Lazar.
“I was on my way back from fetching the next batch when I happened upon two intruders, Chief Orion,” Lazar explained.
Finally, Orion turned. As he took in the sight of Navan and me standing before him, his eyes widened, then narrowed a split second later. I couldn’t properly gauge his expression, until a peal of laughter rippled from his throat, sending a shiver of fear up my spine.
A grin spread across his cruel, snub-nosed face. “Lazar, you have surprised me. Here I am, scolding you like an unruly child, paying you no attention, when you have brought me the best gift I could have wished for.” He turned his gaze toward us. “I have been longing to get my hands on the pair of you since our last unfortunate encounter.”
Ezra, meanwhile, was scowling at us. “I say we kill them immediately, before they can cause any more trouble than they already have.”
“No, no, no, dear Ezra. I want to savor the moment. Now that I have them in my grasp, I want to properly avenge my beloved,” Orion replied, his tone ice cold. “I won’t rush this; she wouldn’t have wanted me to.”
“The longer you leave it, the more chance you give them to find a way to escape,” Ezra urged him impatiently. “Kill them this minute and be done with it. Pandora wouldn’t have wanted you to make a show out of it, for Rask’s sake—she’d have been on my side. If she were here right now, she’d be screaming at you to get the job done!”
Orion flashed his right-hand man a severe look. “Yes, well, she isn’t here, is she? And who is to blame for that?” He turned back to me, shaking off Ezra’s words. “Now, would you suffer more if I made you watch me kill Navan? Or would you suffer more if I made Navan watch you die first?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Navan staring straight ahead, his mouth set in a grim line. This was us, sticking to the plan… no matter what we were feeling inside. There was no way Orion was going to break us. Not this time.
“I know who I’d get the most pleasure out of killing,” Orion mused, “but this isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it?” Ezra muttered, gaining another sharp look from his leader.
“I think we’ll execute—”
A knock at the door cut him off, his gaze lifting in irritation. His expression shifted slightly as two soldiers entered.
“Queen Gianne and her guards have arrived, Chief Orion,” one of them said. “They are awaiting your permission to enter.”
“Well, don’t just stand there. Let them in!” Orion barked, his mood changing instantly. As a pleased smirk tugged at the corners of his lips, he flashed me a knowing glance, telling me that he’d get to me soon enough. “Today is definitely looking up.”
For you, maybe, I thought angrily, realizing things were slipping more out of our control with every moment that passed. There was no way we could take on Orion, Ezra, and the rebel guards as well as Queen Gianne and her guards. This was not the plan, and I couldn’t think of a single way to salvage it. Glancing at Navan, I could almost see the cogs whirring in his mind, but it didn’t look like he’d come up with anything, either.
As the guards pushed Navan and me to one side, Queen Gianne strode into the room, with Aurelius at her side. The gnarled old coldblood looked somewhat worse for wear, bearing a new scar down the left-hand side of his face. It still looked purple and livid, as though it hadn’t been made too long ago. I loathed the sight of him, my mind instantly jumping to thoughts of Seraphina, and what he might have done to her since we saw them at the wedding. I hated him for ruining her life. The guilt of it still rested heavily on my shoulders, even though I knew there was nothing more I could’ve done, in the end.
“Queen Gianne, what an absolute pleasure to see you here,” Orion purred, gesturing for her to take a seat in the chair opposite his desk.
“I think not, Orion,” she spat, not bothering to conceal her disgust. “I would prefer to stand in the face of a turncoat, so as to avoid being stabbed in the back.”
Orion smirked. “I wouldn’t do such a thing, Your Majesty.”
“You know, it strikes me as peculiar that you would refer to me in such a respectful manner, when you
do not agree with the position I hold,” she mused, her silver eyes boring into Orion’s very soul. “It would seem you still have a scrap of loyalty in there somewhere.”
“To Vysanthe, always,” he shot back.
“I imagine we are both tired of killing our own people,” she continued, holding the attention of the room, “although I feel no remorse for destroying those disgusting shifters you appear to have allied yourselves with. I suppose you had no other options, or else you wouldn’t have turned to them in desperation.”
I wanted to call her out for being a hypocrite, given her own alliance with the Titans. She was no different than the rebel leader standing in front of her.
“I would not call them allies, Your Majesty. They are more of a workforce,” he said casually. “At least my hired hands are loyal.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
He grinned. “I think you understand my meaning perfectly well, Your Majesty. We may not get all the news from Vysanthe, but we catch snippets here and there. It seems you have been a particularly naughty girl.”
“Call me ‘girl’ once more and see how quickly your head will roll from your shoulders,” she replied. “As for the Titans, they were mercenaries, not allies. They did their job, they were paid for their services, and then I dispensed with them, sending them back to their planet.”
“I heard they got bored of following orders and started to head for your territories, forcing your hand to provide a hefty payout.”
Queen Gianne glowered at him. “You have misheard. Northern propaganda, no doubt. You were Northern once, weren’t you?”
He smiled. “It wouldn’t be polite of me to say.”
She was so caught up in her discussion with Orion that she hadn’t even noticed Navan, Lazar, and me at the side of the room, clustered where the guards had shoved us. Orion was holding every bit of her attention, as enraptured by her as she was by him.
“I must admit, I’m surprised to see you actually on the field of battle,” Orion continued, puffing out his broad chest. “It’s been years since we’ve met on such intimate terms, hasn’t it? Back then, you weren’t the ferocious creature I see before me—back then, you wouldn’t have dared to set foot on a battlefield.”
“My presence here has very little to do with this wearisome skirmish,” she explained, smiling coldly. “I came to Earth so that I might be the very first person to use the immortality elixir. I have heard whisperings that you’re almost at completion, and that you possess something we do not.”
Orion frowned. “What makes you think that?”
“The lengths you have gone to keep your base hidden. You must have done something with the Kryptonians’ blood that we have neglected to do, and I plan to discover what that thing is.”
“Humans, Your Majesty, not Kryptonians.”
Gianne’s cheeks reddened. “Whatever they are, I know the value of their blood.”
“Human blood alone won’t work, Your Majesty,” he said. “After all, if we had already cracked the elixir’s formula, do you think your army or your sister’s would still be standing?”
“A ruse, no doubt, to put me off the scent.”
“No ruse, Your Majesty.” He glanced toward the door. “Speaking of your sister, do you know if she will be joining our discussions? I should hate to have to repeat myself.”
A glitter of glee shone in Gianne’s silver eyes. “You shall be waiting a very long time if you expect her to join us.”
“And why is that?”
“It would seem you are right in saying not all the news of Vysanthe reaches you here,” she purred. “My sister is dead. She was assassinated by one of my spies, although her stubborn little army refuses to surrender to me, even without a leader… not that they ever had much of one to begin with.” She took a sharp breath inward. “Anyway, it’s nothing but a fleeting annoyance. They will bend to my will one day, or they will be wiped out, whichever comes first.”
A knock sounded at the door, and a guard poked his head around. “There is another visitor for you, Chief Orion.”
Before the rebel leader could reply, a figure strode into the room, barging past the guard.
Queen Brisha had arrived.
Chapter Eight
The room went silent as Queen Brisha made her entrance. Everyone looked shocked, but nobody more so than Aurelius and Ezra. Aurelius I could understand, considering he’d probably been the one to orchestrate the assassination at Gianne’s request, but Ezra’s shock was less clear. Perhaps he’d hoped to only have to deal with one Vysanthean queen.
“No… you can’t be here. You aren’t her!” Gianne yelped, her tone adamant. “My sister was killed. Aurelius told me so—he heard it straight from the assassin’s mouth, didn’t you?”
Aurelius nodded, his face dumbfounded. “You are correct, Your Majesty. The assassin told me so.”
“I was even given a lock of your hair as evidence. You are an impostor, a shifter!”
Queen Brisha smiled at her sister, a hint of smugness lingering beneath the surface of her calm demeanor. “I merely allowed your assassin to believe they had poisoned me,” she said evenly, waving her hand. “I used a simple ‘sleeping death’ tonic that made it appear as though my heart had stopped. I wanted to lull you into a false sense of security, dear sister. You have always been a little too overconfident.”
“Liar! You are not who you say you are!”
Brisha twisted a strand of hair around her finger and showed Gianne where the lock had been removed. “But I am, Sister. I have played you for a fool, as always.” A cold laugh bubbled from her throat. “I knew you would be more willing to put forth all your resources into the elixir if you thought the war was at its end. I just needed to be out of the way first. You see, my spies are far more competent than yours. It was their intel that led me to Earth. I had spies watching every single corner of our planet, on the surface and beyond the atmosphere, listening out for information and seeking it at any cost. You were too focused on your silly war to notice that I had eyes everywhere.”
I realized, with some certainty, that the Rexombra spy we’d found on our ship hadn’t been Gianne’s spy at all—she’d been working for Brisha. If that was the case, how had Gianne found Earth?
“No… we were the ones who found this planet!” Gianne said. “My loyal servant, Aurelius, told me that the perfect species, whose blood is ideal for the immortality elixir, resided here.”
Brisha flinched at the mention of a loyal servant. I guessed Pandora’s betrayal was still weighing heavily on her mind. Even so, she shook it off quickly, focusing her attention back on Gianne. “As always, Sister, you are behind the times. I have known of their blood for a long time, though my spies could not discover where they lived until very recently. Truly, I am surprised you managed to find your way here without simply following in my footsteps, as per usual.”
“You are the one who always follows what I do! It has always been the same, ever since we were children. You would look at the things that garnered me praise and copy them—you have never had an original thought in all your life!”
“You wouldn’t know wisdom if it smacked you in the face, Gianne, which it just might if you keep harping on like that,” Brisha fired back sourly. “You’re just envious because you wouldn’t see your army following behind a dead figurehead, out of sheer loyalty.”
“They knew you were alive. Otherwise, they never would have followed you!”
“No, they didn’t. Only my closest circle of military advisors knew,” Brisha said gleefully.
It was like watching a game of tennis, listening to the back-and-forth bickering sisters, my eyes following the turn of each speaker. It was both hypnotic and grating to hear them sniping at one another, though part of me still preferred Brisha. Even in this argument, she seemed like the more reasonable of the two, not that that was saying much.
“Enough! I will put an end to the royal line right here and now!” Orion bellowed, silencing the
sisters instantly.
As they turned toward him, looking shocked, I realized all might not be lost after all. Soon enough, Orion would either want to see us alone, or there would be further chaos with the queens—as soon as one of those moments arose, we could seize it and spring for Orion. I had no idea when that moment might happen, but I cast a knowing glance at Navan, mouthing “be ready” to him and Lazar. All I could do was try to account for every possible outcome and make sure we were ready to strike, no matter what.
Although, I had to be honest, seeing all of our enemies in the same room together, at long last, was enough to make anyone feel like they were in over their heads. All this time, we’d been dealing with different factions on separate occasions, with a bit of overlap here and there, but now every single world had collided—Gianne, Aurelius, Brisha, Orion, and Ezra. All we needed was a resurrected Pandora, and the picture would’ve been complete.
It was Gianne who spoke to Orion first, her tone irritated. “Is that the true purpose of your supposed ‘truce?’”
“If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have decimated your armies while my weapon had you all frozen,” Orion replied. “As you can see, I did not. I asked you here for a parlay instead.”
“So, what is it you had in mind for this negotiation, then?” Brisha asked, her eyes narrowing. I couldn’t believe that neither of them had bothered to look toward the corner of the room, where we were standing. They’d been talking about my blood, without realizing I was in the room with them. Although, at this point, I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to see us or not.
“My dear queens, it is pointless for us to continue spilling the blood of our own kind, on foreign soil, no less. We might not see eye-to-eye on all things, but on that we can agree, correct?” Orion replied. “Vysanthean life is precious. All Vysanthean life. Isn’t that why all of us are seeking the true formula to the immortality elixir? To protect our people?”
Brisha grinned icily. “You are only saying that because it is your rebel blood that has been spilled most freely on this battlefield. You don’t wish to fight us with an army in a weakened state, and you wouldn’t dare do so without a functional immortality elixir. That would be your only advantage—as you are asking for a truce, I can see you have yet to crack the code.”