by Laura Lam
Coward. You fluming coward, she told herself.
Clo glanced over at Eris to find her expression unchanged. Unsurprised. How could she be so calm?
Eris’s gaze flickered to Clo.
Ariadne said quietly through the Pathos.
Eris’s response was two simple, devastating words:
Sorry wasn’t good enough. Sorry was meaningless. She was trying to keep it together in front of Damocles, pretend to be programmed and under control. If she were engineered, the Oracle would be blocking the adrenaline in Clo’s body to keep her heart calm. Was this all worth another death? Kyla and Sher would have told her so. One death to save many. But Clo still thought the price was too high.
Doesn’t matter. Show nothing.
Eris turned away from the prisoner and asked Damocles casually, “A live Evoli. How did you capture him?”
“This one is a spy,” the general said. “The Oracle caught him trying to infiltrate one of our military facilities.” Damocles hefted the weapon in his arms. “Now show me how to use this.”
“It has a micro sequencer attached to analyze DNA,” Eris explained. “You can either isolate the offshoot strands specific to Evoli, or the ones specific to him.” She nodded to the Evoli man. “All you need is a sample—blood, hair, saliva. Whatever is easiest.”
“I can use any sample of genetic material belonging to an Evoli and it won’t hurt anyone else in this room?”
Eris nodded. “That’s right, General.”
Damocles snapped his fingers to his guards and gestured to the Evoli. The prisoner struggled as they pricked his skin for the blood sample. One of the guards returned and handed the tiny vial to the general. The general loaded it into the gun and the weapon charged up, ready.
Damocles finished examining the gun and swung it around, aiming it squarely at the center of Eris’s head. “You said that it’ll only hit this particular Evoli, correct? So, I could fire at you, right this instant, and the blast will swerve?”
“Yes,” Eris said. “If multiple Evoli were in this room, it would choose the closest match to the targeted genetic sequence, down the line to the farthest if you kept shooting. And you can use various things as projectiles. Mors blasts, hard bullets, gases. It’s highly programmable.”
“And if they survive the projectile?”
Eris flashed her teeth. “Barring any obstructions, they are sensored to detect vulnerable places on the body. It’s programmed to make the kill shot, General. No fuss.”
Clo and Ariadne’s creation would work. It was what Clo did: she fixed things and made them better. Only, this time, she had helped create a tool only monsters would be happy to wield.
Clo froze. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t just let him kill—
Nyx shifted closer to Eris.
Clo snarled.
Clo snapped.
Eris’s voice was so quiet that Clo wondered if she were meant to hear it at all:
The prince fired at Eris. He’d used a bullet instead of a laser, and it exploded from the weapon with a crack, and then changed its course in midair and struck the Evoli.
The man didn’t even scream. He crumpled to the ground, dead from a single blow to the head.
Damocles tossed the weapon to his guard. “Good work, Zoe. Send over the schematics and I’ll have my engineers begin production. Maximus will negotiate your payment then.”
He’d just killed a man, and it didn’t even phase him. Clo averted her gaze from the dead Evoli. From the hole in the center of his forehead caused by a bullet from the weapon she’d made.
“If I might,” Eris said sweetly, as if she hadn’t just been shot at by her own fluming brother. “I’d like more time with the schematics. At the moment, it can only hold three samples at a time, and my own engineers may have a way to improve on that.”
Damocles scowled. “You’ll have eighteen days. The night before the truce ceremony. Whatever you have by then, it comes to use.”
“Of course.” Eris bowed.
Damocles studied the back of her exposed neck. “In the meantime, why don’t you and your assistants enjoy the rest of the ball? Tomorrow is the last night.”
Eris let out a small laugh. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the irony of an arms dealer at a peace celebration.”
“Here I thought you were a pirate.”
“A pirate, then,” she said with a charming smile that made Clo want to throttle her.
The general leaned in. “Then it’s our secret.”
Clo watched as the guards picked up the Evoli’s body. General Damocles paid it no attention as he turned back to Ariadne, who was still holding the zatrikion board. She was staring wide-eyed at where the Evoli’s body had been, at the small splatter of blood on the marble floor.
Damocles ignored Nyx, too. She was only a servitor. By the set of her jaw, she was struggling to keep her hatred in check. What memories haunted Nyx from this place?
The prince picked up a piece, and just when Clo thought he’d move it, he set it back down. “We’ll finish the game some other time, Zoe.” His smile was the smallest lift of his lips. “Until then, I’ll think about my next move.”
Clo didn’t miss the flare of fear in Eris’s eyes.
26.
NYX
One year ago
This was the longest Nyx had ever spent off the battlefield since she was eleven, training halfway across the Iona Galaxy.
After the Battle of the Garnet, relations with the Evoli had cooled. No outright war—just machinations behind the scenes that Nyx had nothing to do with. There were no missions for her. She stayed in the beautiful, ornate palace on Tholos, her every need attended to.
She was so damn bored.
She’d been relegated to guarding Damocles. Everyone told her it was an honor to protect the next Archon of the galaxy.
But it ought to have been Discordia, they’d sigh if they were strong enough to voice anything close to dissidence. Beloved Discordia. Strong Discordia. The true Heir of the Archon.
Nyx had two minds. There was the soldier’s mind, threaded through with the Oracle’s touch. She would see him as her leader. The galaxy’s protector. She’d yearn to please, to prove to him she was the best among his guard. If he gave her any sort of attention, endorphi
ns and dopamine would flood through her, heady as any drug.
The soldier loved Damocles.
But sometimes, and more often over the last few months, other thoughts broke through. When Nyx saw Damocles, unfogged by the Oracle, her skin crawled. He tried to appear strong to others, as if he were the apex predator. But he reminded Nyx of nothing so much as the scavenger animals she’d seen over on Naxos. Blood-covered muzzles, unblinking purple eyes, glaring at you as if this was a kill they’d made rather than found.
She dampened these thoughts. They’d earn her nothing more than a swift knife across the throat.
Damocles loved having a decorated soldier outside of his doors. She was a predator turned pet, her claws dulled from lack of use.
Whenever he caught sight of Nyx outside his rooms, his eyes dragged across her from the tip of her head down to her toes. Every time he passed her, he found a way to brush against her arm. To lean in too close as he whispered his orders. Their skin was separated by armor and a glove, but it was still difficult for Nyx to keep that calm, stoic face, especially when his lips turned up in that knowing smile.
She didn’t know why she could break through while others couldn’t. In those stolen, clear moments, Nyx despised Damocles. She nursed her tiny ember of hatred, and she let it burn. Once, she had been so proud to serve. She couldn’t pinpoint when that devotion had soured. Did anyone else around her feel it? Were they all pretending, or was their love still coded so deep it might as well be real?
The questions came to the forefront of her mind whenever she saw Damocles’s favorite courtesan from the Pleasure Garden. Rhea Aglaea-7. Tall, willowy, every movement graceful as a dance. The long, curled dark hair, a scattering of darker freckles against her pale skin.
A year ago, those wide, green eyes had stared up at the chandelier as she had lain on a table. When she stared at Nyx before entering Damocles’s chambers over the next few seasons, she didn’t blink, didn’t flinch from the tattoos on Nyx’s face and all the slaughter represented.
Did you hate that night after the battle? Nyx had wanted to ask her that night and all the days since. Being served up like a platter? Not having the choice to say no?
Dangerous questions. Treasonous questions. Throughout each day, Nyx’s loyalty waned. Like every soldier, every citizen, she listened to the Oracle’s voice murmuring through the speakers in the barracks as they slept, the same words echoing the programming in Nyx’s mind.
In the morning, she loved Tholos and its Heir anew.
Eleven months after that dinner where Nyx refused to dine on food still warm from the other woman’s body, Rhea pressed a note into Nyx’s hand as she left Damocles’s room. Nyx startled at the touch, but her fingers closed over the paper. It stayed in her hand for the next five hours of her shift. It stayed in her pocket that evening, as she ate in the canteen with the other soldiers. Eventually, in the middle of the night, when the barracks were silent but for soft snoring, she crept to the bathroom and unfolded the note. Old paper, anachronistic, so nothing could be traced.
But the note was nonsense. A smattering of random letters. Nyx’s anger flared—was this woman mocking her?
She kept the paper under her mattress. Every few nights, she took it out, puzzling over it. Wondering if it was some kind of code.
A few days later, when Nyx clearly hadn’t turned Rhea in, the courtesan passed the mercenary another note.
The key to the cypher.
It was a page from an ancient book of fables. On the left was an ink drawing of a woman in a long black dress peppered with stars. Her hair curled around her face. The moon shone above her head like a crown. The woman seemed peaceful, serene. Nyx traced the illustration with a fingertip, hours before the dawn on Tholos. The page spoke of the Goddess—the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone. Nyx had never heard of a goddess, only of the gods.
Rhea had scribbled on the page in red ink. She’d circled the letters of the alphabet and added a number above. It took Nyx hours, but eventually, she decoded the message.
It was a time and a place. Rhea wanted to meet tomorrow.
Nyx didn’t sleep for the rest of that night. What did she want? Would Nyx open the door to see Damocles, eyes bright with the knowledge that he’d caught a pretender in his midst? A disloyal soldier, fit for nothing but an honorless death, her cohort not even allowed to grieve her.
The next night, she went to the location: a room off of the Pleasure Garden with a discreet back entrance for those who didn’t wish to announce their arrival and exit.
Inside was what Nyx expected, though she’d never visited a courtesan. Rich colors, a comfortable bed, soft lighting. Flowers, a fountain in the corner. In another was a cage, its door open. A small red bird rested on Rhea’s finger, preening.
Nyx closed the door behind her.
“Am I being executed or not?” Nyx asked, not seeing the point in pleasantries.
The other woman looked like she was about to laugh. “That’s what you thought? And you still came?” A pause. “I’m glad you read my notes.”
“I burned them,” Nyx said. She’d hated to watch that moon goddess go up in flames.
“That was wise.” Rhea settled back against the pillows of the bed. The bird hopped to her shoulder.
“Is it real?” Nyx couldn’t help but ask. She hadn’t seen one like that, not in a color so vivid.
The little bird nuzzled Rhea’s cheek. “No, but it’s close enough.”
“Are you sure it doesn’t have a camera in it?” she asked.
The other woman’s smile faded. “The Pleasure Gardens are the least surveilled part of the palace for obvious reasons. This room, in particular, was designed for discretion with Damocles.”
“Don’t care. Turn that thing off.”
Rhea raised her eyebrows. “As you wish.” With a last pet, she turned off the bird. Its head twisted, burrowing into its neck as though asleep. She set it back in its cage.
Nyx waited for Rhea to tell her why she was here.
“How long have you hated the Empire?” Rhea asked.
Nyx felt her neck stiffen. So far, she hadn’t said anything treasonous. Was this the trap? To trick her into giving voice to her doubt, to admit that when she sacrificed to the God of Death, she felt a little more of her soul die each time.
“I’m loyal.” Her voice didn’t tremble.
“Are you?” Rhea said it almost mockingly. “I’ve watched you guard Damocles for months, and I’m not so sure.”
No, Nyx couldn’t have been so obvious. Damocles would have ended her by now. How did this woman know her secret, then?
Nyx narrowed her eyes. “What about you?”
She looked over at the empty place on the bed next to her. “Every time I’m next to Damocles, I think about how easy it would be to murder him in his sleep.” A sigh. “But then they’d just make more Heirs, wouldn’t they? The games would begin again, the new cohort just like the old. Nothing changes.”
Nyx glanced around the room. “You shouldn’t be saying any of this aloud. Seven devils, you shouldn’t even be thinking it.”
Rhea blinked. “You wouldn’t turn me in. You’d worry they’d look closer at you.”
“My programming, at least, is still intact.” Nyx studied the courtesan, who even now, looked all too calm for treasonous talk. “Is yours fucking glitching, or what?”
A flicker in the other woman’s gaze, one Nyx didn’t understand. “I was bred to be a listener and advisor in this Garden,” the woman said dismissively. “A few of us are not programmed or chipped. That’s why they keep the walls so high and never let us leave.”
Nyx had the distinct feeling that was either a lie or not the whole truth, but she barely knew this woman. They were not at any stage of trust.
“Then you’re not Novantae,” Nyx said, hating how her voice had dropped to a whisper.
“My help?”
“Yes.” She seemed so calm, so serene, but her fingers fiddled with the coverlet. “At the banquet all those months ago, you didn’t eat from me. Why?”
Nyx pressed her lips together. “Wasn’t hungry.”
“Lie.” The other woman’s voice was soft, crafted in this garden to tell and keep secrets. “They kept you marching for hours in those streets, planet to planet. I know what you must have seen. Done. Now tell me the truth.”
“This is what I was made for. I can’t escape that.” It wasn’t an answer to Rhea’s question.
Rhea stood, moved closer. “I think I have a way.”
Nyx froze. Hope was dangerous. Hope could get her killed. “One doubt doesn’t make me a traitor.”
“You refused to see me as an object laid out for amusement and enjoyment. You’re the only one that night who did.”
Nyx sniffed, turning her head aside.
“The Oracle’s programming is subtle. Everyone else ate those delicacies, even if deep down, something didn’t feel right. But not you.”
Nyx should have eaten that blasted sweet. If Rhea noticed, others might have as well.
“When else have you said no when others didn’t?” Rhea asked, her voice soft.
“I pulled the trigger every time they asked me to.”
“The Empire has made us all do things we don’t want.” She came closer. “Help me escape and we can both be free.”
Nyx shut her eyes. She tried to imagine what her life would be like without orders, without assassinations.
She couldn’t do it. She’d always known her future. Play the good soldier and when her body started aging and her reflexes slowed, she’d be replaced by a new cohort of younger, faster soldiers. She’d never have to go to battle again. That was the best Nyx could hope for.
