I still didn’t understand what I was seeing until the Impyrean fortress appeared on the viewer, with the time stamp of the day before.
No.
Then it exploded.
I lurched to my feet, almost tumbling off the platform at the sight. “No!”
No, no, no. The word echoed through my mind, and it wasn’t real, it wasn’t happening.
But it played before my eyes, cruel and vivid, the fortress crumpled in on itself, sending debris spiraling out above the familiar gas giant I’d seen every day of my life with Sidonia.
I was seeing my home destroyed—Sidonia’s home destroyed.
“No,” I croaked, and I thought of the Matriarch not answering me when I’d tried to contact them.
I thought of the Impyreans not answering me.
More images of more destruction, old families and new, all powerful, cut down at the root in a sneak attack, and the Emperor’s proud face soon replaced the images, his sharp-eyed gaze seeming to cut into my very soul. Cries and shouts followed the images. In the distance, people curled over with grief. Others shook with sobs. Some sat stone-faced. Some, like Senator von Pasus, looked around smugly, exempt from the carnage by imperial favor.
All I could think was, This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. . . .
“Some of you lost whole families,” the Emperor announced as the last images faded, “and I assure you, they brought their fates on themselves. Those of you who came here as proxies for your relatives leave here as powerful figures in the Empire. And you will remember, forever, the misguided blasphemies that brought your families to this point. I trust you will forever regard with gratitude the Emperor who chose you for this high rank. If you do not, well, we can always have another demonstration like this, perhaps with different people in attendance and you on the screen.”
I felt like the world was going to dissolve around me, because this wasn’t real, it had to be a nightmare I could wake up from.
The Emperor concluded his speech with talk of a gala—a gala to celebrate the sudden rise in rank of so many young Grandiloquy. I could barely understand him, and I wasn’t rousing from this dream.
If I didn’t shake it off soon, I’d have to believe that the Emperor had killed the Impyreans.
I’d have to believe he’d done it.
He’d killed them all.
Including Sidonia.
19
IMPOSSIBLE. It was impossible. I sat in my villa, sending transmission after transmission that wasn’t being answered. I ignored my Servitors and just tried to wake from this awful nightmare.
I was sending another transmission when Gladdic walked in. I hadn’t heard the intercom.
“Sidonia, I am so sorry.” There were tears on his face.
I looked at him, at this stranger I felt I had never met before. I sent another transmission. This time, they would answer.
“I had no idea this would happen. My parents knew beforehand, but they told me nothing,” Gladdic went on. “I would have warned you. I swear it. Please believe me. I’m here for you.”
“Quiet. It’s some sort of game. It’s not true,” I growled at him. “You’re interrupting me.” No answer to the transmission. I sent another.
“Listen to me. I’m a senatorial heir,” Gladdic said, drawing toward me, his eyes searching, urgent. “One day I’ll be able to make decisions for myself, and when that happens, you’ll have an ally in the Aton family. You’re not alone—”
“I don’t care about the Aton family. You’re talking nonsense. Senator von Impyrean is ally enough for me.”
“Your father is dead. You are Senator von Impyrean now. I’m sorry.”
“I said quiet!”
He was irritating me, because he was actually standing there, suggesting what I’d seen was real and the Emperor had actually destroyed the Impyrean family while I was away. That Sidonia had died, and here I was, here to protect her, to be a sacrifice in her place, and it was for nothing. I couldn’t be alive if Sidonia was dead. It didn’t work that way. I’d know it somehow. I would feel it if she was dead. I would know. The universe could not look and feel normal if all reason for its existence was gone.
“Please, you’re distressed.” Gladdic’s hand was on my arm, trying to tug me from the panel. “You should rest. We can talk about . . .”
“Unhand me.”
The words came out of me harshly, and suddenly I looked at this creature with absolutely no patience or desire for his opinion.
If it was true, if Sidonia was dead—I could hardly stand to think it—but if it was true, I had no use for him. I had no reason to make nice. If it wasn’t true, then how dare he say it was, how dare he try to pull me from the panel.
“Sidonia—” He tugged at my arm.
I snapped.
I launched up and drove my fist into his face. The crunch of his nose shattering beneath my blow filled me with such satisfaction that I stalked after him when he yelled out, and then I tangled my hand in his hair and hauled him toward the door.
“What are you doing? What are you doing? Stop! Stop!” Gladdic screamed, fighting my grip.
I thrust him outside.
Gladdic clutched his bleeding face, looking at me with shock.
“If you come back, I’ll kill you.” With those words, I closed the door behind him.
Then I sent another transmission to the Impyrean fortress.
No answer.
No answer.
I hadn’t slept in five days, and the truth was beginning to edge into me, gnawing noxiously at my insides, strangling my throat. The Servitors milled about like the mindless automatons they were, going about the simple household tasks of keeping my clothes fresh for the next time I wore them, keeping up appearances. I remembered to order them to walk Deadly. Despite all the training and discipline I’d instilled in the canine, it took several of the Servitors to haul him out with them, to bring him back.
Otherwise, my thoughts were disorganized, chaotic.
I found myself standing in the center of the room, looking about dazedly. Gladdic’s blood had left thick blotches across the carpet. I stared at them.
Everything felt surreal, wrong. Different.
I stepped out of the villa into the great sky dome, four of the suns pouring light down from overhead, and I gazed up at them until they made my eyes sting. I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
“Sidonia.”
I was ready to kill this person, whoever it was, but then the sight of Neveni broke through my insanity. Her eyes were bloodshot.
“I’m Viceroy of Lumina now, Sidonia,” she whispered to me.
I just stared at her.
Her lower lip wobbled. “I called home. She’s dead. The Emperor sent in troops and they killed my mother, just like that. He appointed me Viceroy in her place, but I’m forbidden to return to Lumina. I asked because—because I wasn’t sure what to do. But I have to stay here. Who ever heard of a Viceroy overseeing a planet remotely? Viceroys aren’t Senators. Their job is where they govern. And . . . and how am I going to explain to the Excess who elected my mother that I’m taking her place? I’m seventeen. It’s a joke. The office isn’t even supposed to be hereditary.” She blinked at me. “And you’re Senator von Impyrean.” She broke into hysterical laughter, and I just gazed at her. “Senator Sidonia von Impyrean!”
That’s when I knew with absolute certainty: this was no nightmare, no hallucination. The Emperor had done it. He’d killed Sidonia. He’d killed the Matriarch and the Senator, and he meant to replace them with the girl in his possession. Me. He wanted me to be the next Senator.
“What do we do?” whispered Neveni. “My God, what do we do?”
I closed my eyes, the heat of the suns hot against my skin. Now I was a Diabolic without a master. Without a reason to exist. It was a great cosm
ic joke that I’d come here to save Sidonia and instead doomed her. She was meant to be the proxy Senator. She’d been meant to live. But I had lived instead.
Not for long, though.
I was through. No more fake smiles, fake courtesies, no more pretending to be something soft and weak. I would shed all pretenses and wreak as much vengeance and destruction as I could before the Emperor cut me down.
“I’m going to kill the Emperor.”
I realized I’d spoken aloud only when Neveni gasped. My eyes flew open, and I saw her looking around, horrorstruck.
“You can’t say that aloud. It’s treason! They’ll take you away!”
I seized her and yanked her to me. “If you repeat my words to anyone,” I whispered to her, my hands squeezing so hard around her shoulders I knew it had to hurt, “I’ll crush your skull. Do you understand?”
Neveni’s mouth dropped open. She nodded quickly. “I won’t. I won’t tell.”
It occurred to me that I should kill her the way I did Sutera nu Impyrean. It would be so easy, one twist of her neck. If I didn’t, she might warn them.
Something stayed my hand.
I shoved Neveni away from me and stalked off, an emptiness in my heart that I knew would linger until my final breath.
As soon as I made the decision to kill the Emperor, the frightening sense of disorientation fled, leaving a stark, direct path before me.
I would kill the Emperor. I would do it today. Immediately afterward, his Diabolics would turn on me and I would die. My life would be measured in mere hours, not even days, and I accepted it.
As soon as I formulated my plan, I knew how I would do it. I could kill the Emperor because I had surprise on my side, and I knew enough of the court’s layout to complete my grim mission.
I’d observed enough to notice the Emperor’s patterns. After meeting with his advisers, the Emperor liked to relax for several hours. He always proceeded down a narrow corridor toward his lounging room. That’s where I’d approach him. Just outside the lounging room. I’d twist my face as though I were in tears. I’d drop to my knees like a terrified girl and shake my shoulders as though overcome by sobs. I’d plead with him as the helpless new Impyrean heir—as the meek and timid Sidonia—to please hear the words I could barely whisper between sobs.
The Emperor, certain he’d vanquished the Impyreans, certain he had a malleable, weak girl on his hands, would wave away his Diabolics and step forward to hear my words, ready to relish every tremulous syllable over my lips as I pleaded . . . for what? What would he hope for? For a sign I feared him, or perhaps for a sign I was desperate for his favor?
It didn’t matter. All I could think of was that day in court when he’d had Leather skin herself alive and the way he’d avidly watched my face. He was a man who took pleasure in the suffering and terror of others, or perhaps of young girls in particular. Either way, I’d dangle a promise of just what he enjoyed most.
And then I’d have him. I would drive a dagger into him. If he was close enough and his Diabolics far enough, I’d aim for a lethal spot that would give him several minutes of agony before his inevitable death. If I didn’t have that luxury, his aorta would do.
The privy council chamber was just meeting when I slunk into the corridor. I’d always imagined the last hours of my life in wait for death would fly by as I drank in every last minute of existence, yet now time seemed to stretch on into eternity.
I wondered if Sidonia had ever received her answers to those questions she had about the meaning of life and the reason for existence, if not in an afterlife, then as some chemical burst in the brain moments before death. She told me people sometimes saw a light before they died, one that seemed to offer all the answers to all the mysteries of the cosmos. I hoped she saw it. I wondered if she was afraid. I wondered . . .
The thought squeezed me like a clamping fist.
I wondered if she thought of me, if she had a moment to wonder why I hadn’t been there to protect her.
Then the door slid open, and out prowled Enmity, surveying the corridor. In the half-light, she moved like a great tiger.
Her gaze found me. “Senator von Impyrean, what are you doing here?”
We stared at each other, and I had no excuses.
She’d always suspected me. Now I was about to prove her suspicions had been right. I was her enemy. And in moments, I would be the death of her or she would be the death of me.
20
“I MUST WAIT,” I told her, giving her one opportunity. “I need to speak with your master.”
Enmity’s eyes narrowed. “No. You’ll leave this place. At once.”
I could kill her and everything would still go according to plan. The Emperor would emerge from that chamber if Enmity didn’t return to raise an alarm. I’d be frightened, hysterical, and he’d demand to know where Enmity was. I’d stammer an excuse—and kill him, too.
“Did you hear me? I said withdraw from here, Senator von Impyrean,” Enmity said, moving toward me in a ripple of muscle, her eyes an icy, fathomless blue. “Go at once or I’ll remove you.”
I was going to kill her master. By the end of today, even after she crushed my skull, tore the skin from my bones, and pulverized what remained of me, her master would still be dead. Just as Sidonia would still be gone. This great awful emptiness inside me would consume her, too.
Death wasn’t always a cruelty. I would have died a thousand times rather than outlive Sidonia. So I would do Enmity a kindness and kill her now.
I bowed my head, forcing my shoulders to shake, making sobbing noises issue from my throat, hiding my face with one hand. The other clutched the dagger hidden in the folds of my dress.
“I said leave!” Enmity reached for me.
That’s when I buried the dagger into her side.
I was a fraction too slow to drive it through her aorta. She moved at the last moment, a full-strength Diabolic with all the muscle mass I no longer had. All trace of calmness instantly snapped away from her expression, and she thrust me with irresistible force through the air, and the wall of the corridor rushed up to my face.
My head cracked with an explosion of stars against the wall, but the pain didn’t faze me. I neatly rolled over to my feet and turned to face her, and found Enmity surveying the blood hemorrhaging from her torso.
She balled up her left hand into a fist and jammed it against her side, digging a knuckle into the wound to stanch the bleeding. Then she looked up at me. “So I was right. There is more to you.”
“Yes,” I said. “You were right.”
She exploded toward me. I dodged and slashed at her with the knife again.
It drew a jagged gash across her cheek, but she snared my arm and wrenched it behind me, twisting at my ligaments. I yelled out reflexively, my prickling fingers dropping the knife; then I jammed my heel back into her instep. Her foot crunched and she roared in pain. I whirled about and slammed her across the face with my fist, sinking one punch after another into her, then kicked her away from me.
She stumbled, still clutching a hand over her bleeding side. “You’re too fast,” she said breathlessly. “You’re no person!”
“You know exactly what I am.”
She blazed toward me and I aimed my punch at her side—but she anticipated that and whirled around at the last moment, rocketing her elbow into my face. My nose erupted in pain, and my balance flew out from me. The world upended as I careened backward. I kicked my legs hard enough to roll upright again, but Enmity was already on me, a mass of muscle and driving fists. Knuckles pounded my cheek, splintering pain through my skull. Blood blinded me, stinging my eyes, but I remembered where her legs had been and crushed my boots into her knees, feeling her kneecap dislocate with an ugly crackle.
Enmity aimed the momentum of her fall right at me, elbow first.
The elbow shattered my ribs as it
hit me with her full weight behind it, and this was where my loss of muscle began to count.
She was heavy, heavier than I’d been prepared for, and her weight crushed me down into the ground as her fists began to slam madly into me, sending nauseating pain into my ribs, and then the world became a blinding blur, whirling and teetering, and when I found myself on my stomach, trying to push myself up, I could not. My arms gave out.
And then I saw boots shuffling before me, Enmity dragging herself on her one knee to limp before me. Her hand tangled in my collar and hoisted me up, but my legs wouldn’t hold.
“How fascinating,” she said, her fathomless blue eyes in mine. “You’re a Diabolic who’s undergone a very effective body modification. Whose are you?”
I bit at her arm and tried to jab at her eyes with my fingers, but my hands couldn’t connect where I wanted them to, and she shook me, shouting, “Who is your master?”
“It’s Sidonia Impyrean!” I shouted back at her. “It . . . was.”
The words rang in the air between us, and I felt like I was crumpling, decaying, and some emotion traced the Diabolic’s bloody face. It couldn’t be pity. We weren’t made for that. But it was something. “I understand.”
She released me in a heap on the floor, and I lay there as she leaned over to pick up my dagger. The knowledge that I hadn’t killed the Emperor settled in my brain, but through the blinding pain and despair, I couldn’t feel anger about that.
It wasn’t revenge I’d wanted, I realized then.
It was an end to the gaping void that was an existence without Donia.
Enmity knew it too.
She staggered over to me in a blurry haze and lifted the knife above me, the blade catching the light. I would be dead in mere moments and I was ready, I was grateful.
“Enmity!”
The voice rang out in the narrow corridor, and hasty footsteps beat their way over.
“Enmity, what are you doing to Senator von Impyrean?”
“This isn’t Sidonia Impyrean, Your Eminence,” Enmity said, not moving. “This is a Diabolic who intended to attack the Emperor.”