“I didn’t.”
Tyrus and I had discussed our plan. We were going to officially reveal ourselves as a pair at the gala, but I wanted to reveal our connection to Neveni early.
“In fact,” I said to her, “Tyrus Domitrian and I are now involved.”
“In-involved?”
“Yes.”
“Romantically?”
“Yes.” He’d given me a description to recite, so I did it, hoping I looked sincere. “I was with him for five days of blissful courtship on the Alexandria—”
“With Tyrus? Crazy Tyrus Domitrian?”
“Yes, and we’re attending the gala tonight. If you’d like to come—”
“His uncle killed your family!” she shouted. “I was afraid you’d been killed too! What are you doing, Sidonia? Are you insane? You think I want to go to a gala and dance around all night with those people?”
She burst into tears.
I stood there utterly out of my depth in the face of her torrent of emotion, her anger and fear and sorrow. She’d always been eager to latch onto me in the past for all the opportunities I gave her at court. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she’d react any differently today, yet now it seemed obvious that of course, she would.
I hadn’t thought to place myself in her shoes.
I simply hadn’t had enough empathy to do so.
“I’m sorry, Neveni.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry. I don’t understand you! Your family is dead. Don’t you feel anything?”
“Of course I do.”
I could tell her how it hurt me, how I thirsted for some relief to the pain of losing Sidonia. I could tell her of my deadly fight with Enmity when I’d sought the Emperor’s blood, of the true nature of my deal with Tyrus. I could tell her these things and maybe she would understand, but these weren’t all my secrets to share anymore. They also belonged to Tyrus, and I had no right to assume such a risk for both of us.
So I tried another tactic. “Come with me to the gala,” I urged her. “Perhaps it will take your mind off your mother being dead.”
But my words, my attempt at sympathy, just upset her more. “Just leave me be. I don’t want to go to some sun-scorned gala. Don’t you realize what it’s celebrating? It’s celebrating the murder of the people we love!”
It was true. That was the purpose of the gala. I dropped my gaze, unable to meet her anguished expression.
“Oh God,” Neveni sobbed, “all I want is to go home. My mother is dead and I clearly don’t even have a friend here anymore! Go back to your new love affair with Tyrus Domitrian. I hope he makes you really happy, Sidonia. Some loyalty you have to your parents!”
She ripped away from me and retreated into her bedroom.
I stepped back out into the hallway, blinking at the stark lights glaring down at me from the ceiling outside the visiting Excess quarters. I’d finally declared myself something more than I’d always thought, more than a mere Diabolic, but there was a great gulf of understanding I had to surmount before I could truly step into the role of a real person.
In uniting with Tyrus, I’d just forfeited Neveni as an ally for good. I’d lost the closest thing I had to a friend.
25
AS I WAITED for Tyrus’s attendants, I did push-ups in my villa, relishing the burning pain of my muscles being used again. I knew exercise meant risking undoing the hard work the Matriarch had devoted to disguising me, but all I could think of was my weakness in the fight against Enmity. I never wanted to feel so useless again. The physical activity provided a glorious relief from my thoughts, which swirled with apprehension over the course ahead of me. Whenever I wasn’t thinking of the dangerous venture I was about to undertake with Tyrus, my thoughts took a darker turn, toward Sidonia.
Donia smiling at me that first day in the lab, the feel of her heartbeat against my palm, the first moment something cracked open within me and the capacity to love poured in . . .
The very thought of her made me wish for death, so I tried not to think of her. Exercise helped.
So I was all the more annoyed when the intercom sounded through my villa: “Employees of Tyrus Domitrian to see Sidonia Impyrean.”
I shoved myself up with one push of my hands against the floor and stalked to the doorway. There, I saw my Servitors had already opened the doors, as they had to do automatically whenever a representative of a royal paid a visit to someone of lesser rank.
A flurry of men and women poured through, their hair twined elaborately about the Domitrian six-star sigil tattooed on their heads. At the very front was a man who clearly wasn’t an employee, but rather a member of the Excess taken into the Domitrian house due to his loyalty. He still had his hair, and he’d colored his skin in stripes like some odd animal. He gave a trilling laugh at the sight of me.
“Greetings, Senator von Impyrean. I am Shaezar nan Domitrian.” He dipped ostentatiously to his knees and caressed my knuckles against his cheeks. I wanted to pull back straightaway from his soft, perfumed grip. “We’ve been sent by the Successor Primus to attend to you in advance of the gala.”
“So I understand. What preparations do you have in mind? I already know how to dance.” Although I’d struggled at times to learn it under Sutera nu Impyrean, that had merely been because I’d been undergoing muscle reduction at the same time. Now I was perfectly confident I wouldn’t falter a step.
“That’s not His Eminence’s concern,” stated Shaezar delicately. “He wishes you to be sufficiently bejeweled and ornamented as befits a partner of the Successor Primus.”
“I have jewels.”
He raised thin eyebrows etched with tattooed golden lines. “His Eminence seems to think you may need assistance choosing the proper ones for this occasion.”
Because Tyrus knew what I was now. I sighed. “Very well. Let’s get this over with.”
I thought it would take an hour at most, but the attendants hustled around me well into the afternoon, fussing over every strand of my hair, mending each split end, weaving in shades of gold, light brown, and darkest scarlet into my raven locks; then all my hair was arranged into small braids for optimal flow during the dancing. I found myself watching the attendants, perplexed to see the sheer amount of time that could be expended on something so fundamentally unimportant. As a Diabolic, I was attentive to small details, yet I wouldn’t have noticed one way or another if someone had split ends.
Perhaps Grandiloquy noticed details such as this that I did not. The attendants unveiled tray after tray of elaborate jeweled headdresses, brooches, and necklaces that would have been too heavy for Sidonia’s neck.
For all the Emperor’s efforts to confiscate hidden weapons, items such as this could be wielded quite easily against an opponent. I studied the necklaces, imagining the effect they’d have if swung against someone’s skull.
Of course, weight wasn’t an issue. The gala was going to take place in a ball dome, a zero-gravity environment, which enabled the Grandiloquy to bedeck themselves even more than usual without even requiring an exosuit. These same attendants would pick the jewels now and then garb me with them in the minutes before the gala began.
They whispered and murmured among themselves, paying little attention to my preferences, especially when they figured out I was just pointing at random to certain items, eager to get this over with. It wasn’t an attempt to be belligerent: everything they presented to me looked alike. When I tried pointing at the largest, most sparkly items instead—figuring those were the right ornaments for the partner of the Successor Primus—Shaezar laughed.
“Too gaudy for you, Senator von Impyrean! Those are for Grandeés of lesser rank trying to prove a point.”
Apparently, I had poor taste. My other suggestions were laughed off just as readily. Two attendants undressed me so they could tend to my skin, injecting glow just below my eyes and above my jawl
ine, then adding additional pigment to the skin beneath my cheekbones. They even added highlights and shades to my nose in such a way that when I beheld it in a mirror, it gave the illusion of being straight, the bump barely visible.
Under their ministrations, my skin was rubbed with scented oil as beauty bots lasered away every last blemish. They chose a delicate silken gown, stark white and optimized for maximum flow and ripple in a zero-gravity environment. Because the shoes were designed solely for zero gravity rather than walking, they were elaborate wraps that trailed tassels of gemstones. I examined the impractical implements, recalling Sutera nu Impyrean’s instructions regarding these: the trick was not to swing them so hard the tassels would injure someone, or even myself.
Unless I wanted to injure someone.
The last additions were a series of jeweled loops for my arms and thighs, the elegant magnetic steering rings used for navigating the ball dome. Angling them in different positions to each other achieved the effect of pushing one’s body around in the air.
“Would the Grandeé like a massage to relax before the event?” inquired Shaezar nan Domitrian solicitously as the attendants packed up to move my jewels closer to the ball dome.
“I’ll relax well enough if you leave me in peace for an hour. I assume we’re done?” At his nod, I asked, “How much do I pay you?”
He shook his head. “This is Tyrus Domitrian’s treat. I’ve never seen the Successor Primus smitten. Not with anyone, but it seems you have won His Eminence’s heart.”
“Yes, he’s . . . we’re very enchanted with each other,” I intoned, hoping I sounded convincing. Then I mercifully freed my hand from Shaezar’s perfumed grip.
His behavior seemed odd, so fawning. Even as the important personage, Sidonia Impyrean, I’d never been treated in such a manner.
But Shaezar nan Domitrian was just the first to react to my new elevation to love interest of the Empire’s Successor Primus. He wouldn’t be the last.
26
THE BALL DOME was tucked into the embrace of Langerhorn Reach, one of the long, curving pylons. The Dome resembled the Great Heliosphere, with a mass of open windows looking out onto space and private chambers for Grandiloquy branching off the larger whole. The crystalline material was more decorative, somehow, glistening in the light and casting glowing prisms about us.
My Servitors and Tyrus’s attendants carried the clothing I’d don. They dressed me in the private waiting chamber off the ballroom floor as the dome detached itself from the larger structure of the Valor Novus.
The ball dome propelled itself away from the Chrysanthemum, shaking lightly with the gravitational forces as it moved to a more picturesque location in the six-star system for dancers to enjoy as they cavorted. Soon the ball dome settled into orbit around the smallest of the six stars, just by a purple and effervescent pink gale of nebula dust, with a view of a gas giant and its eight moons, all starkly beautiful things to provide an endless array of scenery against the vast darkness of space.
The opening strains of music pervaded the air to tell the first dancers to take their positions. That would naturally be the Emperor and his latest courtesan, a cousin of Senator von Canternella. I moved into position at the great one-way window of my chamber and held on to the ornate bars ready for me.
And then the gravity was deactivated.
A shock jolted through me at the sensation of lightness, like every cell in my body was floating upward. My braided hair drifted up in fine tendrils about my head, the rippling fabric of my gown like an underwater plant bobbing in the garden lakes.
And then out in the center of the great dome, two figures glided in from different directions. The Emperor and the Grandeé Canternella. Malice surged hot and poisonous in my veins as I watched him, this man who’d killed Sidonia. Their hands reached for each other, and then they clasped together with practiced ease as a slow, enchanting melody filled the air.
To take my mind off visions of vaulting out there and tearing out his rib cage, I forced myself to study their technique as dancers. The Emperor and the Grandeé swirled in circles about each other, and then twitched their arms to propel themselves back, almost in unison. They both wore flowing gowns that gave them a look of flower petals opening to the sun, and a steady stream of globular pools of effervescent light began to bob through the weightless air toward them.
One trick of zero gravity, Sutera nu Impyrean had warned me, was avoiding bumping into the scenery. Floating ripples of light, even floating pools of wine, served as pleasurable decorative touches, but they could easily ruin expensive gowns and cause embarrassment if an unwary dancer blundered into them.
Whoever had released the bubbles of fire did so carefully, though, and as the Emperor and his partner’s dance picked up its tempo, they were well clear of the fire spheres.
And then the glass began to slide up before me. The second tier of dancers was being summoned to the floor—the Successor Primus and his partner.
Me.
I felt uneasy because Tyrus and I had not practiced the movements of dancing in zero gravity. This was a significant moment, revealing myself as his partner and confirming any rumors that had begun circulating about us, and I didn’t wish to make a fool of myself now.
But there was no time to second-guess my course. Tyrus caught my eye from where his own glass partition had slid open, his short, coppery hair floating about his head, his white garb twining in tendrils about his muscular body. And then we both dove out, Tyrus in a graceful fall, me in a flip through the air. The walls of the crystalline ball dome circled in my vision as I flipped and turned.
He’d practiced this all his life and I’d only seen vids of it, but physical activities had always been effortless for me, and controlling my zero-gravity plunge proved the same. Just as I neared the center of the great dome, Tyrus reached me and caught my wrists, and together we floated downward in a ripple of stark white fabric, flashing jewels, his eyes intent on mine as the world moved around us.
I couldn’t see anything but him, yet I felt thousands of eyes upon us, intent, questioning, surprised, seeing the Impyrean heir and the imperial heir together. And then Tyrus and I both twitched our arms to activate the magnetic steering rings, and he released one of my arms to spin me against him, to dip us both. Up was down and down was up, and my hair swirled in my face and the gown rippled like white fire. Tyrus’s skin glowed in the light of a floating bubble of actual fire that skimmed so close a hot draft brushed my neck.
And then the next tier of dancers were summoned to the floor, and Tyrus and I floated up to the Emperor and Grandeé Canternella.
The Emperor’s skin was a pale white today, without so much as a freckle, his blond hair casting him like a wraith against the scarlet garb he and his partner wore. He and Grandeé Canternella drifted toward us, and Tyrus’s grip clutched me tighter as we found ourselves in a circle at the center of the vast dome, prisms of light from the outside stars dancing about us along with the globs of fire. A gas giant swirled below us and a stark purple nebula formed a sky above us.
“Grandeé Impyrean,” spoke the Emperor as Grandeé Canternella peered at us inquisitively. “How ravishing you look tonight.”
I felt myself choking on a sudden rush of aggression. My grip tightened on Tyrus so hard he visibly winced, and then he squeezed my hand once in warning.
“Doesn’t she, though?” Tyrus said airily. “She wished to take to her chamber in mourning, but I said to her, such beauty cannot be left to spoil in isolation.”
The Emperor smiled indulgently. “It’s about time you attended an imperial gala, Tyrus. I was surprised at your choice of partner for this occasion. . . .”
The words rested uneasily on the air a moment, and I clenched my jaw. Yes, he was surprised Tyrus had taken an Impyrean to a gala celebrating the destruction of the Impyreans, among others.
“But now I see you’ve ch
osen a partner who dances most magnificently,” the Emperor finished.
As he spoke, all I could think of was how close he was to me, how easily I could propel myself to him, abandon this charade, and splinter his skull. I didn’t see Hazard. I didn’t see Anguish. I was one of the only recently disgraced Grandiloquy here. The others would only be permitted to dance after the Emperor had retired for the evening. He wasn’t so foolish as to put himself in arm’s reach of those whose families he’d recently killed.
As Tyrus’s partner, I was the sole exception. His mistake.
I could kill him now.
I could kill him now.
Tyrus seemed to sense my feeling, or maybe he could feel the tension in my body, because suddenly he was burying his head in my neck, his breath sweet against my skin, his arms wrapping around me, strong and steadfast. I knew I could break them in a moment, and as he propelled us from the Emperor with a lighthearted farewell, I seriously considered it.
“Don’t,” he said.
“He’s right here,” I rasped in his ear. “Right here!”
“And then what?” His pale eyes leaped up to mine. “You will die and his vision of humanity will continue to flourish, especially once a civil war erupts as the Grandiloquy rise against the Empire falling into the hands of a madman.”
Tyrus cupped my cheek, then moved his grip to the back of my neck, urgent. His touch felt rough against my skin, his hands calloused from whatever physical exertion had shaped his musculature. “This is the first step of a series,” he said, very low. “You will get exactly what you wish in the end if you are patient, and it will be for the best for all of us. Please trust me.”
I thought of Enmity’s body in that pen, and the words that had echoed in my head since then. I am more than this. I am more.
Stiffly, I nodded, then permitted him to move me farther from the Emperor. As we spun, his gaze fixed intently on mine. “Justice will be done,” he said quietly. “For Sidonia—and for all the rest, too. For the entire Empire.”