She tilted her chin up. “The rogue Impyrean Diabolic murdered our beloved Emperor today. It will be known by all.”
Tyrus drew a breath.
“Won’t it?” Cygna said, her voice hard. The Diabolics at my side stirred ominously, and Tyrus threw them a wary glance.
He swallowed hard, and said, “As you say, Grandmother.”
“And your Diabolic will be the fire sacrifice at your coronation. A fire sacrifice in the truest Helionic sense.”
Tyrus clenched his fists.
“Love or power, Tyrus?” crooned Cygna. “I know what choice I’ve made time and again. There’s only one choice for a true grandson of mine.”
And then slowly, painfully, Tyrus dropped to his knees before her, gazing up at her with his calculating eyes. “Whatever it is you wish, Grandmother.”
She smiled like a great satisfied cat as he drew her knuckles to his cheeks.
Cygna spoke, “Hail to the Emperor.”
Their positions were totally inverted, the new Emperor on his knees and his treacherous grandmother above him, regarding each other with the same eyes, watchful and cynical, totally lacking in love or trust. They’d both tried and failed to kill each other using Randevald, and merely destroyed Randevald instead. Now this unholy alliance would carry forward, and this was how Tyrus’s reign would always be. None of his lofty ideals or great plans would take shape under Cygna’s iron fist, for she would be the true power.
I watched this with an empty heart, still acutely aware of the electrodes in my neck: evidence that my alliance with Tyrus had always been a lie. All I regretted was that I hadn’t seen the true Domitrian nature in time to save Sidonia.
49
I WOKE back in the corrals. Or so I thought, until I heard the humming of the force field about me, and saw the bright lights glaring down from above.
I sat up slowly. Tyrus stood on the other side of the force field, his arms folded. He’d been waiting for me to wake up.
My neck stung. My hand flew up, and I felt a healed incision there. I sneered. As if extracting the electrodes now meant anything!
“I found it hard to trust you early on,” Tyrus said quietly. “I didn’t have the heart to tell you that later, when I wished those electrodes had, in fact, dissolved.”
“And then you used them again.”
“You would have killed me.”
“I still will.” I rocked to my feet, vibrating with anger. “I hate you with every fiber in my being.”
Tyrus gazed back at me steadily, unmoved, untouchable. “I know what you think of me. I know what happened with Sidonia. I saw the bodies in Elantra’s villa. The Pasus family brays for justice. Grandmother has ordered them banished to their system—so they don’t do anything rash.”
“You knew they were dead before that,” I spat. “You plotted it!”
Tyrus sighed, then leaned forward, setting his forehead against the force field that separated us. “Nemesis,” he said, and I heard the fatigue in his voice, the roughness, and steeled myself, for he meant nothing to me now. “I swear to you. It was Grandmother, not me. Think. She wanted to turn us against each other, so she planted that seed of doubt in your mind. She hoped you would kill me. Who else—”
“If you didn’t plan it, why did you tell Elantra to use me as the Anointer?”
“I didn’t.”
“You told Elantra of the assassination plot! And of the means!”
He straightened, jaw squaring. “I told her nothing. I had no assassination plot against Randevald, not yet. I intended to follow through on our plan: to betray Cygna’s overtures of alliance so I could do away with my grandmother first. She was always the greatest threat, not Randevald.”
“So you had no wish to see Sidonia dead? You said I’d choose her life over mine, yet you didn’t choose her life over mine. You wanted to break my bond to her.”
He let out a breath through his teeth.
I closed my eyes. “Her death is the end of everything for me. I’ll never recover. It would have been better to die with her.”
“Of course you will recover,” Tyrus said harshly. “You lived through this once before.”
“I didn’t suspect you that time.”
He slammed his palm against the force field. “I love you,” he said fiercely. “Nemesis, you are the single truth of my existence. I would never hurt you like this.”
“But you’re going to sacrifice me!” I shouted at him. “You agreed to it as soon as Cygna wished it! And you were perfectly fine with electrocuting me to protect yourself. Why should I believe anything you say? You pledged your love for me and so easily threw it away. Why shouldn’t I believe you’d kill Donia if it suited you? ‘We Domitrians aren’t ones to share.’ You said it.”
“I am human. Was I jealous of your bond to her? Yes. Did I hope you’d choose me over her? Yes, I did! But I did not murder her! Grandmother knew we’d turned on her. She knew it as soon as you spoke to my uncle in front of the Diabolics. So she acted first. You must believe that.”
I threw my hands over my face to block him from my sight, because suddenly I couldn’t bear to see him—the one I’d loved, the one who’d destroyed me. So many feelings and wonders had opened themselves to me these last months, and now they burned to ashes in my heart, because they’d all been the steps leading to this betrayal. Whatever he said, whatever he once planned, he still meant to kill me. I couldn’t believe anything he professed, knowing I would be the sacrifice on the altar of his power.
“Leave me,” I said, my voice feeling very distant. “Go. I can’t even look at you.”
He was silent a long moment, then said in a tight voice, “I won’t inflict myself on you, Nemesis. I will stay away. It may be safer for you, anyway.”
I turned away, pain tearing me open. How dare he speak of my safety, when he planned to kill me!
“The coronation will be in a month,” Tyrus said distantly. “I will have you kept as comfortable as possible until then. Don’t fear for yourself. I’ll plan for us both—”
My voice was a rasp. “I want nothing from you.”
“Nemesis . . .”
There was real pain in that word, but he said nothing else, just let it dangle there in the thick silence.
Then, “Sidonia loved you. I saw that with my own eyes. She would have laid down her life for you.”
“That doesn’t justify her murder.”
“It’s not a justification. It’s an appeal, Nemesis—an appeal to do what you do best. Survive.”
And then Tyrus, the Emperor-to-be, left me alone among the animal pens, in the only place on the Chrysanthemum capable of holding a Diabolic.
Time passed slowly in the pens, surrounded by the animals. Food and water were dropped through the ceiling—fine foods, better than any prisoner warranted. A mechanical voice would chime in and ask if I wanted to shower, and then water would pour down on me from above if I said I did. A slot in the floor served as the washroom, another as a washbasin. When the sensors detected my weariness, a plush cushion rose from the floor. I never slept on it. I preferred the hard ground. At night, I dreamed of Sidonia and Deadly. I also dreamed, to my horror and self-loathing, of Tyrus.
I dreamed of him touching me, and awoke despising my heart for its betrayal.
At some point, Tyrus sent assistants down to try giving me creature comforts, but I made it very clear that I’d kill any of them who came near me.
I had no intention of basking in any luxuries, however small. I deserved none. I’d failed Donia, and I’d loved the one who might have murdered her. I wanted nothing but to pass the remaining days before my sacrifice at Tyrus’s coronation without feeling or thinking. There was nothing else for me now. No vengeance to drive me this time—not when it was Tyrus I needed to destroy. I wanted to hate him, but I felt empty inside.
Tyru
s seemed to sense it would insult me to visit again. He stayed clear. His assistant, Shaezar nan Domitrian, did arrive to inform me of the imminent coronation—and my imminent death.
“Is Tyrus eager to claim his crown?” I said coolly.
“I—I wouldn’t know. The new Emperor has been very scarce. Busy, I think, with preparations. Is there anything whatsoever I can get you to pass your last day?” he said, hanging back warily from the force field now that he knew what nature of creature I was.
Cygna had likely followed through on her plan to spread word that I’d been the murderer of the Emperor, so I had no doubt Shaezar feared me now and wondered at Tyrus’s insistence on my comfort.
“I want nothing.” Then I reconsidered. “Actually, yes. I do need something of you.”
A beauty bot was an odd request from a Diabolic assassin, I was sure. I had no nefarious intentions, though. I programmed the machine to strip me of the camouflage I’d worn since leaving the Impyrean fortress. An hour later, no longer was my hair colored, but I was the blank creature of white-blond hair and pale skin I’d been when I’d come into Donia’s life. But for my still-reduced size and damaged nose, I appeared the twin of the late Enmity.
I didn’t sleep very much. The late Emperor Randevald’s manticore was several pens down from mine, and I found myself observing the wretched, neglected creature, listless now that it had no owner to unleash it in the arena for its blood sports. Beyond that were other monstrosities, all like me, all created for the pleasure of human beings.
I would be glad to leave this life.
The day of the coronation, the handlers who trooped in to retrieve me were Domitrian employees. Tyrus dared not send Servitors I could outwit, or security bots that could do nothing but kill me. They held electricity guns, ready to stun me if I refused to move of my own accord. I had to survive until I was sacrificed.
I rose to my stiff legs and waited as they encircled my pen, as they aimed the guns at me.
“You’re to accompany us to the Great Heliosphere,” spoke one of them, a frightened-looking young employee whose head gleamed in the light, the six-star sigil of the Domitrians stark and fresh on his head.
I held my arms out, but no one moved to handcuff me. That was a surprise. I began to walk in the familiar direction, and the employees all kept a wary distance from me.
I knew it would be simple lashing out and seizing one of their guns, turning it on the others. I did not.
It wasn’t until the raucous noise mounted in my ears, the cheers of those in the Great Heliosphere preparing for the coronation of the new Emperor, that it washed over me, my sense of purpose.
I could do very little to hurt Tyrus, but I could do this: die passively at his unwilling hands. It was the cruelest blow I could strike at him and the only weapon left in my arsenal.
So I would die and I would not fight back and Tyrus could live with that until the end of his reign.
50
THE VAST, decorated crowd within the Great Heliosphere parted, and all had their hair in effervescent halos, their clothes made of glowing material implanted with light. Their faces were stenciled with the Domitrian sigil of six stars. I was escorted between them toward the vicar.
Tyrus stood on a dais above the crowd with his hair grown long and shaped in a corona of light about his head as befitted a new Emperor, looking every bit the leader of a galactic Empire.
I stared up at him in the unblinking fashion of a Diabolic, ready to die here before him.
Grandeé Cygna stepped forward, bedecked in her finest. “The murderer of my son, Emperor Randevald, will serve as the fire sacrifice to launch this glorious new era in our history!” She raised her hand for the employees to haul me closer.
I did not fight as hands seized me from behind, driving me forward, down to my knees. My eyes found Cygna’s Diabolics, Hazard and Anguish, standing off by the window. They were just near the slot in the wall leading to the small, coffin-size container that would be my last home, ready to force me in if I resisted them. I could see from here that it was clear crystalline glass. I would be stuffed inside and launched into the brightest star.
“Does the condemned have anything to say?” spoke Cygna.
I met Tyrus’s eyes and remained silent. He appeared a great, gleaming statue so far above me, so removed, I wondered that I’d ever touched his flesh, seen his smile. He looked as remote as the void of hyperspace.
“Long live the Emperor,” Cygna said, and nodded to her Diabolics.
They crossed over to me, prepared to seize me for the final journey into my tomb.
At that moment, Tyrus raised both his hands, and the room dropped into silence. Cygna looked at him sharply, and I knew this was a deviation from procedure.
“Grandmother,” Tyrus said, not looking at her, “my dearest mother to my mother, and the great root from which so much of my family has sprung—” He leaned down toward her and drew her up to his side, her hands in his. “Do you recall how once you vowed to the Living Cosmos that upon my ascension, you would launch yourself into a star?”
She stared at him a moment; then a smile pulled at her lips. “Things were very different then, Your Supremacy.”
“Yes, yes.” Tyrus drew her knuckles to his cheeks, holding her gaze with his pale-lashed, calculating eyes. “But we mustn’t offend the divine Cosmos by scorning our vows.”
The blood rushed up in my ears. I saw Cygna’s face going very pale.
“Surely you are joking,” she said, her voice like ice.
Hazard and Anguish realized at the same moment that Tyrus was not. Abruptly they released my arms and jolted forward—
“Now,” said Tyrus, still staring into his grandmother’s face.
The employees who’d come armed with electricity guns for me turned them on Hazard and Anguish and fired. The two Diabolics shouted out but charged forward, fighting the glowing currents. Their bodies hit the employees who tried to stop them, enveloping them in light as well, but employees continued to throw themselves in their path with the sort of devotion no Excess had ever shown the Grandiloquy.
And then Anguish and Hazard were on the ground, the bright, forking plumes of electricity making their bodies vibrate, dozens of employees scattered on all sides of them, already dead of the same currents that had only disabled the Diabolics. Shouts and screams swelled about me, and I turned to see the crowd writhing with movement. More employees were lashing out at Grandiloquy with energy weapons, with blunt clubs, pulling them down to the ground. Some of the aggressors were Grandiloquy, the finely dressed elites of the realm unveiling their hidden weapons and taking down targets they’d clearly chosen beforehand, clubbing the backs of heads, shooting them down with energy beams. But mostly, the aggressors were Excess. And then I saw a familiar face with a fresh Domitrian sigil tattooed on his head, and my heart gave a lurch.
That was Neveni’s father taking down Senator von Farth, pinning him to the floor. I threw a glance to the side and saw a woman I recognized as another Luminar bringing down Senator von Canternella.
Luminars. What were Luminars doing here posing as Domitrian employees?
Tyrus observed it all from his dais above the room as Cygna screamed and shouted for it to stop. The employees swarmed in and tended to those disabled by Hazard and Anguish, and others swiftly restrained the limbs of the unconscious Diabolics.
No one touched me.
And then the flurry of activity, so carefully planned, was over and fully half the room of the greatest people in the Empire lay on the ground at the feet of the other half. Over them stood some familiar Grandiloquy—Rothesays, Amadors, Wallstroms. The surviving heirs of Senator von Impyrean’s faction. The others who stood with their chests heaving with exertion, triumph blazing on their faces, were those Luminars posing as employees.
Tyrus must have smuggled them here for this strike.
&n
bsp; Slack now, unresisting with shock, Cygna permitted Tyrus to take her hands again. He himself did not look triumphant so much as exhausted—a person who had just outmaneuvered a longtime foe, yet gloried not at all in it.
“Grandmother,” he said very softly, “you murdered my mother. My father. My sister. My cousins. My uncles. My aunts. And yes—the late Emperor, your own beloved son.” Tyrus reached out and touched her cheek, like he was marveling at a work of art. “Did you truly believe I would allow you to rule through me like an adder waiting to strike if I disobeyed?”
“I should have left you to die in space,” breathed Cygna.
“But you did not, because you were considering betraying my uncle. Then you attempted to destroy me instead—so here we are. At the moment before your own fire sacrifice.”
I stared up, stunned out of my stupor, to see the terror on the face of this woman who’d never feared anything.
She stumbled down from the dais, lurching away from him, and cast an urgent look around—seeing her Diabolics and allies unconscious at the feet of Tyrus’s allies. He’d organized this coup in the weeks since she’d sided with him over her own son.
“I regret defiling one of our most sacred spaces with this violence,” Tyrus said, “but I had to strike in the single place you would never anticipate.”
“You ally with Excess over Grandiloquy!” Cygna cried, looking about the room in horror, as though she beheld an abomination.
“I ally with those who seek progress over those who enforce stagnation,” Tyrus said simply. “I ally with those willing to fight for a future rather than resign themselves to oblivion. And now I give you a choice. You will go to your death, but you will have a chance to repent.”
“Repent?” Cygna’s voice was a whiplash.
“I am the royal Domitrian heir. I know you care for our bloodline and this Empire, so make a confession for the sake of our family before you go to your death.”
“You wish me to make life easier for you before you kill me?” she said acidly.