The Diabolic

  And then her harsh, bitter laugh.

  Laughing.

  Laughing!

  I hurled myself at her, but a bolt of energy tore me down to the ground, resounding through every cell in my body, and the Grandeé Cygna loomed there, weapon still raised, her hawk-like eyes on me.

  “This was you, wasn’t it?” I screamed, rage boiling up within me. I staggered to my feet, facing her, and the room was darkening until all I could see was her cruel, ruthless face. “You were behind this!”

  Cygna’s eyes narrowed. “Fool, do you think I would try to poison a Diabolic? I know whose work this is, and it’s not mine. A dead Sidonia Impyrean, a dead Elantra Pasus . . . Two birds, one stone. Very convenient for my grandson.”

  Her . . . grandson . . .

  My body froze.

  “No,” I said.

  Cygna tilted her head. “I knew he wouldn’t sacrifice you, but I wondered how he’d manage the situation.” Her thin eyebrows rose as she looked over the carnage. “Now I know. It seems he chose to allow the Impyrean girl to die in your stead.”

  “No,” I breathed.

  “A dead Sidonia Impyrean means a certain Diabolic can step into her place.” Cygna’s voice throbbed with malice. “And of course, it’s only natural this Diabolic would avenge her master’s death, so Tyrus could wipe his hands of Elantra without my realizing he’d engineered her death. . . . Or so he thought. Really, it’s quite insulting he thought he could deceive me. I invented this maneuver.”

  “You’re wrong.” Waves of heat and cold swept over me, but my mind was turning inward, turning around those words. I buried my bloody hands in my hair, a memory resounding through my brain.

  He unsettled me somewhat, the way he spoke of choices, Donia had said to me. I don’t think he’s optimistic we can transition back to me being Senator von Impyrean without a lot of difficulty. . . .

  So perhaps . . . perhaps he’d taken another course.

  He asked Elantra to use me as the Anointer, knowing just what questions and revelations would follow. . . . So he could reveal to her that he still loved me without outright initiating the conversation. That led to Elantra’s resolve to kill me. And when she questioned him, he showed her just the poison he knew would work on Sidonia but not on me. He knew the anointing ceremony: that a pattern would need to be applied in just the way that would require Sidonia’s help. After all, a Diabolic wouldn’t know an anointing ceremony. Sidonia would have to come help, and the poison could be hidden in the oil so easily. . . .

  And if Elantra killed Sidonia, I could remain Sidonia. If I killed Elantra, he wouldn’t need to marry her. It wouldn’t seem to be his fault, not to me, not to Cygna. It was . . . It was just like Tyrus. A brilliant, cunning scheme.

  Cygna circled Elantra’s body. “He must never have intended to wed her. He didn’t realize I was testing him. He failed.” She propped her hands on her hips, and her lips curved in a lethal smile. “I would seek him out and punish him for this, but I would never dare rob a Diabolic of her revenge. The family will convene for a meal after services. . . . Perhaps I’ll see you there?”

  She moved to the door, and I didn’t try to stop her. I felt frozen in place, filled with ice, numbed. Elantra’s villa was quiet and still around me, sunlight spilling in the window over the blotches of blood on my gown, on the floor, and the broken body nearby. And in the next room . . . The next room! The girl I’d been created to protect. Now dead.

  A great, piercing pain stabbed at my chest. I balled up my hand and pressed it to my collarbone, choking.

  And all I could think of was Tyrus’s vow to Sidonia.

  Nemesis will live. That, I swear to you.

  He’d sworn that to her.

  Sworn it.

  Tyrus spoke with such conviction because he’d known he could make it happen.

  He’d made it happen by sacrificing her life for mine.

  48

  I WANTED it to be a lie.

  I wanted to believe it was all Cygna’s deception.

  But any way I looked at it, I couldn’t disbelieve Cygna. I couldn’t push away my certainty that this had all been Tyrus.

  I’m not a gentle soul by any means. I long ago accepted that there would be blood on my hands . . .

  I must live with this, Nemesis, so I will. I will live with it.

  Tyrus could live with the death of an innocent. He refused to sacrifice me. I was the one thing he dared not lose. So . . .

  So . . .

  Here it was. Something he had been willing to sacrifice.

  Sidonia was lying on the bed now. I folded Elantra’s sheets over her and closed her dark eyes. Her skin felt cold. She’d grown ashen, and I looked upon her for a long while, trying to understand how the Donia I’d known who’d lived and breathed and gazed at me with such life could now be this wax figure unmoving before me.

  I stepped into the shower and washed off Elantra’s blood. I donned one of Elantra’s gowns. It wouldn’t do to attract attention to myself by stumbling through the halls of the Valor Novus looking like the perpetrator of a massacre.

  The massacre was one still to come.

  A fog hung about me as I moved out into the sky dome and threaded through the crowds returning from the Great Heliosphere. I made myself think of Neveni, of the warning she’d given me once that I’d so readily disregarded.

  Tyrus may be the enemy of your enemy, but he is still a Domitrian. Never trust them. Not any of them. They are a family of killers and liars. He may not have deployed that Resolvent Mist—but he still brought it with him. What does that say about him?

  He’d brought that Resolvent Mist knowing how dangerous it was because he knew the power of a threat, the power of death averted. He was clever and calculating enough not to simply toss that Resolvent Mist aside or leave it on the ship.

  And then he’d kissed me as we rose from the curve of Lumina. . . . Pain lanced through me like a fatal stab wound.

  It was the oil that told me everything. I respected Tyrus too much to believe him capable of such a mistake, to believe he could accidentally reveal his feelings for me . . . to believe he could accidentally reveal the correct poison for Elantra’s use.

  My head pounded and the lights about me seemed to blur. I reached the presence chamber just as Cygna stepped out of it. She caught my eye but did not make any gesture of greeting. Instead she drew aside a few of the Domitrian employees waiting there.

  The Emperor’s Diabolics were not guarding the door.

  Cygna was clearing a path for me, but I didn’t understand their absence. I stepped right through the door into the presence chamber. My eyes adjusted to the dimness within the chamber, and I saw them all—Tyrus, Devineé, Salivar, Randevald—dining and drinking, streams of vapors languidly touching the air about them. Hazard and Anguish lurked unobtrusively against the distant wall.

  Another curiosity. They were too far to intervene if I made my move.

  But I didn’t. I came to a halt as soon as they spotted me.

  Their conversations fell silent. All of the Domitrians stared at me with open astonishment—Tyrus’s ex-lover and an intruder. I was vaguely aware of the security bots buzzing in toward me, the only guards in the room alarmed by my presence.

  “Sidonia?” Tyrus said. He took one look at my face, then shot upright. “Sidonia, what’s wrong?”

  What a clever actor he was! Sidonia’s dying face burned before my eyes, and I just stared at him across a distance that now felt unfathomable.

  He’d honestly believed he could engineer Sidonia’s death and I wouldn’t see his hand in it. Of course he had. If Cygna hadn’t come, if she hadn’t spoken, I never would have considered the possibility that it was his doing.

  But now that the possibility had been suggested, it was the only one that made sense.

  You’ll choose her life o
ver your own. But I do not choose her life over yours.

  It was something a Diabolic would do—murder one innocent person for the sake of the person they most loved. I could understand it because I would have done it, but I could never forgive it.

  I knew my role as Sidonia’s Diabolic: to avenge this hideous betrayal. To tear out his heart as he’d torn out mine. To rip him apart. My vision blurred from not blinking, and then I had to look away because even now I could not kill Tyrus. Cygna might have cleared the way for me, but I was not her weapon. I was not even my own.

  Someone had engineered Donia’s murder, and it was going to be avenged, but I would act as Tyrus himself might have done: indirectly. I threw myself to the ground, to my hands and knees, prostate before the Emperor’s authority. “I must make a confession to you.”

  “What is this?” demanded the Emperor, rising to his feet.

  “Your Supreme Reverence, I have news of a plot against you.”

  Tyrus stiffened, and the Emperor held up his arm when his Diabolics prepared to spring on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I grew aware of Cygna moving through the doorway and coming to an abrupt, startled stop when she saw me on the floor. No doubt she’d expected to find me already standing over the corpse of her grandson.

  “A plot?” said the Emperor. “What manner of plot?”

  “Your Supreme Reverence—” Tyrus tried.

  “I’m not Sidonia Impyrean,” I shouted over him. “I’m Nemesis dan Impyrean, a Diabolic of the Impyrean household. I’ve been conspiring with your nephew, Tyrus, to deprive you of your life.”

  “Sidonia—” said Tyrus sharply.

  “No, no, let her go on,” said the Emperor, triumph blazing over his face. He pointed to the Servitors. “Get my niece and her husband out of the way. The rest of us will stay. I will hear everything.”

  The drooling Salivar and Devineé were led away by the Servitors. Tyrus started toward me—but Hazard blocked his way.

  “You—you don’t understand,” Tyrus said, looking around, at a loss. “I think—I think perhaps she’s gone mad. Let me talk to her!”

  “You were mad once as well,” the Emperor drawled. “I always listened to you.”

  “Sidonia,” Tyrus said, an edge creeping into his voice, “please—”

  “Don’t even say that name!” I bellowed at him, my heart in my voice. “Do you think I’m too stupid to see your hand in what happened?” I felt like I was being torn in two, and grief seemed to blind me. I could see nothing, notice nothing but the pain inside me. “Sidonia is dead. She’s dead, and it was your doing, I know it was!”

  “Wait a minute, she’s—” began Tyrus.

  “My son.” Cygna spoke coolly as she joined the Emperor’s side. “This is a most grievous accusation. Who knows what my grandson has planned? Before he can act, I recommend his immediate execution.”

  I looked up at her. Yes, she’d expected me to kill him right away. Now her face was full of tense lines—because I had not done so. I was not her tool, and I hadn’t come here to play into her hands.

  “And Your Supreme Reverence,” I spoke, “the Grandeé Cygna is a conspirator too.”

  Cygna jerked. “Absurd!”

  “She’s been in on it from the start,” I said softly. Two birds, one stone.

  “She lies!” Cygna cried. Sheet-white, she whirled on the Emperor. But her son’s reaction would not comfort her. He now wore a maniacally pleased expression: all his dreams had come true at once.

  She stepped back from his smile, lifting her hands as though to shield herself from an oncoming blow. “My son—you cannot credit this! After all I’ve sacrificed for you, would I ever betray you?”

  Tyrus laughed again, a sluggish and strange sound. He seemed to have given up on lying his way out of this. “Grandmother, it’s no use denying it.” He looked up at her, a sudden, expectant gleam in his eyes. “We have been found out. Our schemes are all for naught.”

  Cygna made a choking sound. “Why, you—”

  Tyrus smiled, his eyes very cold, and I knew what he was doing. My accusation had neatly joined Cygna’s fate to his, whatever it was. He would not be destroyed without seeing her meet her fate too.

  “Hazard, seize my nephew,” ordered the Emperor, his gaze still fastened avidly on Grandeé Cygna. “As for you, Mother—I intend to take your suggestion. You may act before I can stop you. There is no reason to let you leave this room.”

  Cygna gasped. “Randevald, what are you saying?”

  He bared his teeth. “Left to yourself, you will no doubt find a way to wriggle out of conviction. No, I’ll give you no chance to scheme with your allies. You will die here, now, for this shameful attempt on your own son’s life. And once you are dead, Tyrus will be persuaded to testify publicly to your guilt—and anything else I wish. Anguish?” He snapped at his Diabolic. “Kill her.”

  Anguish and Hazard did not move.

  The Emperor tore his gaze from Cygna. Tyrus, frowning, looked over too.

  “Anguish!” The Emperor leaned forward. “I said, kill my mother!”

  From where I was kneeling, bleak and empty, I saw Anguish cast a look toward Cygna. That look . . . it held a question.

  Hazard’s bright blue eyes moved to her as well.

  Neither obeyed the Emperor.

  I caught my breath. Why—Hazard and Anguish were looking to Cygna for instructions.

  They weren’t the Emperor’s Diabolics.

  They were hers.

  They were hers just as they’d been the day I spoke with the Emperor, when I tried to cast suspicion on Cygna. Anguish had forced me from the room and Hazard had detained the Emperor—for Cygna’s sake.

  She’d known Tyrus and I were plotting against her.

  Now Cygna’s face twisted with disgust. “Randevald, how dare you doubt me? I chose you over my other children—every time, I chose you. And today, despite your perfidy, I chose you again—this time over my own grandson, a boy who could have outsmarted you in the cradle. I thought to serve him to you on a platter, and what do you do? You turn on me. All these years—why, I even neglected my own safety, ordering my Diabolics to protect you instead of me. Oh, dear.” She paused, smirking, as the Emperor’s face slackened with comprehension. “That’s right, I never told you. Their bond was never to you, Randevald. They are mine. But despite all my sacrifices, what is my reward?” She spread her hands. “You order my death! I see we are at an end. Hazard, Anguish, dispose of this traitor.”

  Hazard vaulted toward the Emperor, and in one movement reached out and swiped him to the ground. Anguish leaped down to smash the nearest security bot, dodging the beams of the other bots and taking them down next.

  The Emperor roared in shock as he found himself on the ground, at the mercy of his own Diabolics. Tyrus stumbled back from the pandemonium. I surged to my feet, moving toward him . . . To do what? I didn’t know. To protect him, to hurt him?

  I didn’t make it that far.

  Tyrus’s gaze swung toward me, alarm on his face. He flicked his finger.

  And suddenly electricity spiked through me, driving me to the ground. I hit the floor, every cell in my body vibrating, and collapsed there, stunned. The electrodes.

  He’d said they dissolved. They never had. They’d been there all along.

  He’d never trusted me.

  I’d imagined myself betrayed before. But now, as I gasped wordlessly, I knew the true agony of betrayal. It seared like fire along my sinews, merciless.

  Moments or minutes later, I managed to turn my head and take in the scene. The Emperor was gaping at his mother, the woman he’d never understood until this moment. Then, with an ugly crack, Hazard snapped his neck.

  Randevald slumped, dead.

  A thick, piercing silence descended over the chamber. Then Cygna pointed to me. Hazard and Anguish were on me in
moments, grabbing my arms, hauling me up between them. I didn’t fight. What fight could I put up? If I resisted, Tyrus would only reactivate the electrodes. I just stared as Cygna crossed the distance to Tyrus.

  The two pale-eyed Domitrians surveyed each other like foes over a devastated battlefield.

  “So,” Cygna said. “That was your plan with all that talk of an alliance. You were going to betray me to my own son.”

  “Yes,” Tyrus said coolly. “But it seems you acted first.”

  “Of course I did. I will always be one step ahead of you. I suspected you were maneuvering me into a trap. So I sprang mine first. It seems your unbonded Diabolic does love you. I thought she would kill you. She had every cause. Yet she could not manage it.”

  “You missed the incident just now.” As Tyrus glanced toward me, some emotion flickered over his face. True pain.

  I touched my neck, feeling where the electrodes must be buried.

  “And now here we are, at an impasse,” Cygna said. “For you see, Randevald is dead, and we stand in need of an Emperor. I cannot take the throne myself, so I need someone of the blood to do so.”

  Tyrus looked toward Cygna’s pair of Diabolics, poised to cross the room and kill him in a heartbeat.

  “You were clever to try to destroy me, Tyrus,” she said. “Because you were correct. I am the worthiest in this family to rule. I did so through your grandfather, and for years, I did so through my son. And now, I will either do so through you, or you will die right here and the Empire will have to content itself with a drooling imbecile on the highest throne. . . . I’d rather it were you. So many problems would ensue if I placed Devineé there now, what with the entire Grandiloquy speaking of her brain injury, but no one will challenge your claim.”

  Tyrus laughed. “And how can we possibly ally now? I intended to see you dead. My uncle would have followed in short order afterward. You know this.”

  “Ah, but I also know how clever you are. Clever enough to fear me.”

  He stared hollowly at the woman who’d killed his parents, killed much of his family. “Yes.”