by Laura Lam
They strode back to the command center in silence, but it was almost comfortable. When the doors opened, Rhea’s eyebrows rose. “You changed your mind.”
Nyx lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
Ariadne grinned. “So, you’re coming?”
“Yeah. Looks like you’re stuck with me, kid.”
Rhea mouthed thank you to Eris. Nyx pretended not to see.
Ariadne started chattering. “I’ll help you fit the Pathos. It’s just a very, very small incision in your cerebrum, takes five minutes with a laser—”
“Great,” Nyx says dryly. “So, I just got a chip out of my head and now you’re putting another one in.”
Her hand went to the back of her head where the scar was hidden beneath her hair. Since Ariadne couldn’t leave the Temple, she’d hidden a bot in a flower delivery for Rhea in the Pleasure Garden. That little bot had acted as her hands as she performed the surgery through the vid-screen. Rhea had held Nyx’s hand the whole time. You’re doing so well, she would say. Almost done.
It took every ounce of effort Nyx had to keep from screaming.
“This one connects to the cerebrum, not the cerebellum,” Ariadne told her. “It won’t mess with your motor functions.”
“Not sure I find that reassuring.”
“You shouldn’t,” Clo said, spinning in the pilot’s chair. “You’ll have people chattering in your head. And you can turn it off at will, but Kyla will yell at you if you do.”
Eris rolled her eyes. “Stop being so dramatic.”
“It’s not dramatic to prefer the deep silence of my own fluming thoughts.”
Kyla passed around the Pathos. “Cloelia will deal with it. Her favorite pastime is bitching; her second favorite is complaining.”
“And her third is threatening people with knives,” Clo said.
“I thought you also liked fixing engines. Where does that rank?” Rhea asked with a friendly smile.
Clo opened her mouth, but Kyla interrupted. “I’m going to put in a call to Sher and give him an update,” she said to Eris. “I’ll head back to Nova to see if there’s anything else on this alleged truce, or further rumors about Damocles. I’ll send you all a full mission brief from there.”
“You’re probably sending us all to our deaths,” Nyx muttered.
“You ought to talk to Eris about that,” Kyla said. “She’s used to me sending her to her death, and yet here she stands.” To Eris and Clo: “I’ll be in touch.” With a last look at the women, Kyla headed back to the bridge toward the docking bay and her ship.
When the stomp of Kyla’s boots faded, Clo rose from the pilot’s chair. “Good. Now that she’s gone, we can blast music and drink like pirates before we all die.”
“There’s no alcohol on this ship, remember?” Rhea interrupted. “The Legate saw it as a weakness.”
“What he calls weakness, I call liquid courage.”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “Can we at least begin discussing this suicide quest? Fit Ariadne’s new chip into my brain?”
Ariadne held up the tiny rod and examined it proudly. “It’s more beautiful than I imagined it would be. Did the engineers manage to improve the range? I sent over my newer design.”
“Sher and Kyla have newer ones in testing,” Clo said. “Ours should reach the whole planet, and if we’re in orbit. If you somehow end up on the other side of the galaxy from us, we might have a problem.”
“Oooh, that’s impressive. We’re like a team,” Ariadne said, then smiled. “Can we have a team name?”
“No,” Eris and Clo said at the same time.
Nyx sighed. “This is going to be the longest mission of my life, isn’t it?”
“Enjoy the next ten hours,” Eris said with a smirk. “Longest Mission Ever starts at moonrise.”
Rhea, who had been staring out the window at the stars, turned to look at them all. “Then I want to enjoy what might be my last ten hours of freedom.”
20.
RHEA
Two years ago
Breathe in, breathe out, Rhea told herself.
Stare up, don’t blink too often. Keep still. Keep silent.
She couldn’t see them, but she could hear them. The clink of silverware as the soldiers ate. The murmur of conversation that she strained to follow, to file away in case she needed it. Footsteps, music. Laughter. She smelled the food, tantalizingly sweet.
Rhea was hungry, but she hadn’t been allowed her dinner. Damocles had been too angry, had thrown the food onto the floor. Rhea should know better. Push him too far, question a little bit too hard, and he resorted to stunts like this.
A finger brushed the bare skin of her stomach. A Tholosian soldier picked up a sweet molded into the shape of a warship no bigger than a child’s ear. She heard the wet, sucking noises as he chewed and swallowed. The noise was all around her. There was no escape. She wished she could close her eyes, but she had to keep them open, had to stare up at the brilliant reflections of the chandelier above that left dancing spots in her vision.
The soldiers were in a fine mood. The Tholosians had emerged the victors of the Battle of the Garnet. Many of their own had died, but gloriously, in battle. A tribute to all the Gods. More of the Evoli had fallen. Rhea had listened to Damocles tell her the details, relishing how they made her uncomfortable.
They’re our enemy, Rhea dear, he’d said. There’s no use in caring for those who aren’t ours.
She let her mind drift away from the heightened emotions of those around her, away from the image of her naked body offered as a literal platter. She dreamed of escape, of retribution, of revenge.
“Nyx?” one of the soldiers asked. “You’re not eating.” Male. His words barely reached Rhea. She was imagining racing through corridors, jumping onto a ship, shooting out into the stars, and never looking back.
“This doesn’t bother you?” came a low, almost gravelly voice. Rhea set the daydream aside, coming back to the polite, lavish nightmare.
She glanced to her right. A young soldier, probably no older than her, in full military regalia. Smooth brown skin covered with dark twining tattoos. So many thorns. So many deaths. Medals clustered the cloth over her left breast.
Nyx Arktos-33.
The Arktos cohort had yielded some of Tholos’s deadliest soldiers. She was so good, they’d given her a first name. She’d earned a special commendation for her battle. Damocles himself had set that ribbon around her neck. She should be a bottle deep into the wine, arms thrown around her fellow soldiers. Yet instead, her back was straight, her plate empty, her wine glass still full.
Nyx looked at Rhea’s exposed body not with pity, not with desire . . . it was an emotion Rhea couldn’t place—and if there was one thing Rhea excelled at, it was reading others’ moods.
Their eyes locked. Rhea had Nyx’s attention, it seemed. And Nyx had Rhea’s in turn.
“Why should anything bother me?” the male soldier asked. He was as merry as Nyx was somber. “Come on, Nyx. We’re celebrating.”
He reached over Rhea’s body, the side of his hand grazing her nipple. Rhea blinked, slowly, desperately picturing that ship taking her into the stars. Far away from there.
The soldier took another delicacy from her flesh.
“For you,” the soldier said to Nyx, with an elaborate bow. “For saving my ass out there on the battlefield.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m good.”
“Come on. Look, it’s still warm from her skin.”
Rhea counted the crystals above her.
“I said no.” Nyx’s voice was sharp, dimming the laughter around her. Silence grew longer.
“Suit yourself,” he said, and popped the food into his mouth.
Nyx didn’t stay long, but for the rest of her time there, she made sure Rhea could meet her eye, if she so chose. And she didn
’t eat one morsel of food.
Once Nyx left, Rhea went back to dreaming of escape.
But she started to realize that maybe, with the right kind of help, it might not be so impossible.
21.
RHEA
Present day
The party was nothing like the celebrations Rhea had attended on Tholos. There were no champagne fountains, no golden plates filled with the best delicacies the galaxy had to offer.
It was only the Zelus canteen—gray walls, the air filled with the fading smell of grease from their meal. No decorations save for a few Tholosian flags Ariadne took great delight in ripping to strips and hanging from the ceiling in tattered bunting. But the view of darkness and pinpoints of stars was just as beautiful as the gray and amethyst mountains on Tholos. Rhea had never traveled through space, never left the capital of the Tholosian empire.
If she left the Pleasure Garden at all, it was usually to Damocles’s bedroom.
Now she traveled for herself and the women who had helped her escape. Even if the tether of the Empire was still drawing them back.
On Tholos, Rhea had worn such finery to those parties. Dresses of gold cloth, her hair heavy with the weight of jewels and gold and silver filigree. She had brushed her eyelids with shimmery blue or bronze, painted her lips carmine, dusted her skin until it shone like white gold. She’d been surrounded by people in the highest echelons of Tholos, and every word, every movement, every blink of her eye had to be practiced and perfect. Parties were nothing more than performance, the prelude to the night where she became the entertainment.
On those nights, she had danced only for others. Never for herself.
Yet the only guests of this makeshift celebration were five women with blood on their hands. Rhea, Ariadne, and Nyx hadn’t slept for close to two days, and they’d been running on little more than adrenaline and hope. They should be exhausted. They should be resting for their return, but none of them even spoke of sleeping.
After going over as many of the details of the mission as they could nail down before actually landing on Macella, everyone agreed to Rhea’s suggestion that they celebrate in case this mission was their last.
Rhea clutched her drink to her chest. Clo had found a hidden bottle of alcohol in the Legate’s quarters. Of course, the man who had set the rules had broken them himself. It was good, dark rum from Argos, and it burned going down. As much as Rhea wished to drink and drink—to forget her worries, to simply forget—she kept in control. Small sips. Watered down cocktails. Nothing more.
She never let herself drink too much—it lowered her defenses, and she always had to hold herself apart. The mask must never slip, not even there.
Rhea’s eyes followed Clo as she went around, topping up people’s drinks. She found the other woman fascinating. The shortness of her hair highlighted the almost fey tilt to her eyes, her high cheekbones and strong jaw. The small scars that nicked her long, thin fingers. The muscles beneath light brown skin. She had three little moles by her right eye, and Rhea found herself wanting to touch them with the tips of her fingers. It had been a long time since she’d found someone attractive, purely for their own sake. Purely for hers.
Clo looked up and their gazes collided. For a moment, Rhea thought the other woman would turn away, but Clo simply tilted her head as if coming to some decision. What was she thinking? Could she sense Rhea’s attraction?
Rhea drank more rum, lips tingling. Clo followed the movement, staring intently. When Rhea smiled, the other woman blushed and finally looked away.
Rhea’s smile widened.
“Turn up the music!” Ariadne crowed, banging on the table as if it were a drum.
Clo reached over and flipped up the volume.
Rhea didn’t recognize the music—so much was banned from the Tholosian citizenry, except that which was deemed acceptable by the Archon. These would be old songs Ariadne had access to from the Oracle’s history archives. Music from the Old World, and after, before the Empire became so powerful that it deemed its own art to be dangerous.
She wanted to laugh, to sing and raise her voice to the rafters. To scream with the knowledge that they had done it. They had finally escaped. After a year of planning, she was far from Damocles, from the Archon, from that horrible palace. She could listen to banned music. She could—
Until moonrise, she reminded herself. Only until moonrise.
Rhea’s smile disappeared. For all that hard work, they were heading right back to the heart of the Empire.
Nyx glowered in the corner, the sides of her face taped with bandages from her latest tattoo-removal session. Her drink might be more rum than the berry mixer from the Tholosian gardens, a way to deal with the pain of removal. Ariadne was fussing with Nyx’s curls, braiding them away from the bandages and twining them around her head. Ariadne was the only person who would be able to do that without losing an arm.
“Hold still,” Ariadne was saying. “You’re going to make me mess up.”
“Can we take a break so I can down enough alcohol not to care?” Nyx said dryly. She caught Rhea’s eye and made a face as if to say This kid.
Rhea smiled back. That kid had saved their lives.
Clo offered Eris a drink. Eris took it with a tentative nod of thanks. The two women still kept their distance from each other, despite the small peace offering. There was a history there. Rhea wondered what had happened to make things so tense. Whether it was recent or far in the past.
Ariadne finished with Nyx’s hair and made her way to the control panel to change the music. Unfamiliar instruments, echoing vocals, a strong, steady beat.
“This is old,” Eris said, her voice very low. A small smile touched her face. “I haven’t heard it in a long time.”
Rhea glanced around to see if anyone had caught Eris’s comment, but no one else had. Music was so tightly controlled by the Archon. She must have been someone very important.
But who? What position?
Ariadne’s twirl drew Rhea from her thoughts. “I love it!” The fabric of the girl’s jacket billowed behind her. “I listened to all kinds of music back at the Temple, from the beginnings on the Old World to last year. I snuck a lot of vids and books, too. Even the censored ones. Especially the censored ones.”
“The Oracle let you watch them?” Eris asked.
A shiver went through Rhea. That woman was so intense. Rhea wasn’t sure what to make of Eris yet.
Ariadne just grinned, tongue between her teeth. “One didn’t know.” Ariadne pirouetted about in the center of the canteen. “This is the song I always put on when I was bored and finished my work ahead of schedule. I used to climb to the top of the Temple and dance in the rafters.”
She pinwheeled her arms, spinning faster and faster. Her hair slid across her cheeks. Her smile was luminous. Rhea had never seen Ariadne so unburdened—so happy—as she twirled across the command center.
As she came closer to Rhea, Ariadne stopped and held out a hand. “Dance with me, Rhea!”
Rhea smiled. She used to dance in front of her clients, in front of important diplomats and soldiers. She rose in a smooth motion, twisting and sending her skirt twirling. She rose up on her toes—
No. She wasn’t in the Pleasure Garden. There, the dancing had been so formal and regimented. Her slippers had been made specifically for dancing on her toes, with ribbons that snaked around her ankles. Her dresses were silk, slit high up the thigh to bare her legs to onlookers.
She had been expected to dance until they told her to stop.
Rhea halted, her chest heaving. She looked down at her feet—scarred, callused, some of the old blisters still peeling. She remembered her feet had bled through the silk of her slippers some nights, and she still had to dance.
Rhea shook her head, her eyes stinging. “I don’t have any dance shoes.”
Ariadne gently gras
ped her hands. “Neither do I. See?” She showed Rhea her small feet. No calluses. No injuries.
“I can’t,” Rhea breathed. “I don’t know how.”
“Let me show you,” Ariadne said, cheeks dimpling. “I’m a great dancer.”
Rhea could deny this girl nothing. So, she forced a smile and let Ariadne lead. At first, Rhea was awkward; her face burned with embarrassment. But there was no one to watch her critically, no one to notice her failure—or even care if they did. Ariadne spun them both slowly across the command center, their hands linked.
It was . . . it was lovely. Different. She could be different. Rhea could be as wild and untamed as she wanted. There were no predetermined steps, no judging eyes, no one she had to seduce.
Just her. Just this. Just her own body.
Ariadne whooped with glee. “See? Isn’t this fun, Rhea?”
Yes. Yes, it was.
Laughing, Rhea unpinned her dark hair and shook it free. It fell down her back to her thighs—a sign of her health, her pampering. One day, she’d cut it all off, maybe buzz it like Clo’s. When she finally felt free from the Empire. From everyone who thought they could control her. She would throw that hair into space and tattoo her body with something fierce and beautiful, and dance how she wanted.
So, she danced with the girl who had saved her life.
Ariadne’s hands were so small. Together, they twisted and twirled. Rhea lifted the smaller girl into the air. She couldn’t help but be graceful—it was a skill prized in the Pleasure Garden—but she admired how Ariadne jumped around, awkward and strange and all the more endearing for it.
As Rhea pirouetted, she found Clo watching her. Rhea felt emboldened. Who was this other woman? What was in her past? “Clo,” she called, emboldened. “Dance.”
Clo let out a nervous laugh and shook her head. “No way.”
“Just one dance. Be my partner.” Rhea gave the other woman her best pleading expression until Clo finally joined her.
Clo’s first movements were stiff. Rhea had noticed her limp; the silver glint of the prosthetic visible in the gap between her shoe and trouser leg when she sat down at the command center. It didn’t seem to slow her down, but Rhea could understand why it might make Clo self-conscious.
