Between Burning Worlds

by Jessica Brody

  She didn’t want to accept it. She didn’t know if she could ever survive the aftermath. But she knew now that she didn’t have a choice. You can’t unstrike a match. Or repack an explosion. You can’t unbreak a lock. Or stuff the contents back inside.

  And you can’t unknow the truth.

  Who am I?

  I am the daughter of the Patriarche.

  Who am I?

  I am a Paresse.

  Who am I?

  I am the Lark who has finally flown home.

  For minutes—maybe hours, maybe lightyears—Alouette sat perfectly still. As though this terrace floor that propped her up was made of nothing more stable than withered First World paper, and a single twitch might cause it all to come crashing down. As though every breath she took from here on out held a different meaning. As though the next move she made might decide the fate of a planet.

  When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.

  Sister Denise knew. She knew who Alouette was. That was what she’d been trying to tell her through the message on Marcellus’s TéléCom.

  “Home” wasn’t the Refuge, as Alouette had believed all this time. Home was here. Ledôme. The Grand Palais.

  Alouette was a Paresse. The Paresse heir. The only heir.

  A petrified scream punctuated the darkness of the terrace, and Alouette leapt to her feet. More screams followed, and then Alouette heard the unmistakable sound of bodies colliding. Hundreds of them. She ran toward the stone staircase that led down to the gardens and froze. The Imperial Lawn was a blanket of blackness, pierced only by the flicker of glowing Skins. And in the dim light, Alouette saw her worst nightmare come to life.

  Fists punching and hands clawing and mouths open in bellowing roars.

  It was like Dr. Cromwell’s lab on Albion multiplied by a hundred. No, by two hundred. Two hundred guests turned into weapons.

  The general had activated the TéléReversion program.

  Breath shuddering in her chest, Alouette charged down the first few steps toward the lawn, readying herself to fight again. But a second later, something in the distance caught her eye, pulling her to a halt.

  Far off, in the darkness of Ledôme, a lone star twinkled.

  Alouette stood paralyzed and speechless, her thoughts blurring in and out of focus. It couldn’t be a star. It was too low in the sky. But somehow, it seemed to be calling out to her. Like a beacon. A monument of hope.

  Twinkling just for her.

  The Paresse Tower.

  Suddenly, like a Sol exploding, sending shards of light to the far reaches of the galaxy, a thousand voices from a thousand moments in time rushed into her mind at once.

  “… we need your help, Little Lark …”

  “It’s called the Forteresse …”

  “… you should always build a kill switch into any large-scale system …”

  “He wanted this lock to only open for his direct descendants …”

  “It makes sense to hide it, right?”

  “We called it the Sovereign gene.”

  “You are more useful than you realize, Alouette …”

  “… it only activates after a Paresse heir has come of age.”

  Alouette sucked in a breath, steadying herself on the handrail of the staircase as all the voices slowly morphed into one. One voice. One sentence. One destiny.

  “We’ve just been waiting.… Waiting for you to be ready.”

  Those were Principale Francine’s words to her that night she left the Refuge. That night she turned her back on the Sisterhood. On the Vangarde. On her planet.

  When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.

  Alouette now understood everything.

  “Home” was both the Palais and the Refuge.

  Denise knew, just as all the sisters knew, that Alouette was important to the fate of Laterre. To the war that was coming. To the revolution. But not only as the Paresse heir.

  Because the truth was, Alouette was not just Paresse.

  She was also a sister.

  She was also Vangarde.

  She was also the Little Lark.

  And she would see the fall of this Regime.

  - CHAPTER 71 - MARCELLUS

  MARCELLUS COULD HEAR THE CARNAGE on the Imperial Lawn in front of him. Bodies slamming together. Great guttural roars scraping the air. And the screams. The heart-wrenching, piercing screams that he knew would haunt his dreams forever. But it wasn’t until the lights came back on and illuminated the Palais gardens that he could see the devastation with his very eyes.

  And he almost wished the lights would go back out again.

  In his few short years of training as an officer and then a commandeur, Marcellus had seen little violence. A few Fret fights over scraps of food, one or two disputes between workers in the fabriques and exploits, and of course the recent riots. But those incidents paled in comparison to the brutality that was playing out in front of him now.

  In the blink of an eye, two hundred Third Estaters had been transformed from happy, docile banquet guests into enraged, wild-eyed fighters. They used every weapon they could find—overturned tables, shards of broken champagne flutes, titan food platters, even their own fists. They fought and yelled and destroyed, but this was so much more than just a riot. This felt like a war. A war in the Patriarche’s own backyard.

  Most of the Third Estaters stormed the stage where the Patriarche still cowered behind a circular wall of officers and advisors who struggled to fight off the attackers. Others, who couldn’t reach the stage, turned on one another or on the unsuspecting and unarmed Second Estate guests who were unable to flee.

  The officers and guards tried to fight back, firing a barrage of rayonette pulses at anyone they could find, but it seemed they didn’t quite know what to do with this turn of events. They weren’t used to fighting without the help of the droids. They were overwhelmed and outnumbered.

  “No, stop! I beg you! I have children at home! Please!” The cry came from somewhere below him, and Marcellus looked down at the lawn to see a man in a blue tuxedo looming over a defenseless Second Estate woman, a shard of stone from a busted fountain in his hand. Marcellus toggled his rayonette back to paralyze mode and took aim. A pulse rippled through the air, finding its way into the man’s leg. He cried out in pain and slumped over the woman, who hastily pushed him away before fleeing from the gardens.

  Marcellus desperately scanned the crowd for Chatine, praying she’d had the foresight to run as soon as those Skins had flickered red. He thought of Alouette and Cerise and hoped that they were still in the Ministère, far away from this anarchy.

  There was a horrified scream followed by a thump, and Marcellus glanced down to see Georges Bissette, the Ascension banquet host, lying at the foot of the steps, his head cracked open on the stone as a woman in a dark silk gown stood over him with a glint of untrammeled fury in her eyes.

  “Oh my Sols!” someone shrieked next to Marcellus. “She just … He just … What is happening?”

  He glanced up to see one of the Matrone’s handmaids—a young woman named Margaux—staring wide-eyed at the body. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and then she went down. Marcellus dove to catch her before she hit the ground. “Get the Matrone inside!” he shouted to no one in particular. Most of her handmaids were crying hysterically, but one of them took control of the situation and began to usher the Matrone and the rest of the women up the steps to the Palais terrace. An advisor in a dark green robe appeared beside Marcellus, scooped Margaux into his arms, and followed after the others.

  Marcellus continued to fire paralyzeur pulses into the crowd, trying to incapacitate as many Third Estaters as he could.

  “Ma chéri!” the Matrone called. She had stopped halfway up the steps and was now staring into the gardens with a look of utter terror on her face.

  Marcellus’s gaze darted back toward the stage in the center of the lawn, where the Patriarche’s guards diligently fought off attacker after attacker, each one charging wi
th more determination, more ferocity, than the last.

  “We have to get the Patriarche back inside the Palais!” someone called from the stage. Marcellus squinted into the mayhem to see Chaumont shouting at a female officer who was currently trying to ward off a man wielding half of a broken chair.

  She nodded and gestured toward one of her colleagues. “Call in all guards stationed around Ledôme. Tell them to abandon their posts and get to the Palais now. And gather any nearby sergents and officers you can find. We need to clear a path for the Patriarche.” She shoved the Third Estater back with the heel of her boot and then fired a paralyzing pulse into each of his legs. The man crumpled with a whimper.

  “What in the name of the Sols is going on!” the Patriarche bellowed to Chaumont. “Why are they rioting? They won!”

  “I don’t know, Monsieur,” Chaumont replied breathlessly before turning to the female officer. “He can’t stay here.”

  “I know,” she replied, glancing out into the fray. Marcellus followed her gaze to see her requested reinforcements were on their way. She shouted out orders to the officers around her, and they began to reposition. Some ventured down the stage steps to clear a path, others stayed huddled around the Patriarche. “We go on my command! Ready …”

  But just then, another undulating flicker of red permeated the crowd. Marcellus’s stomach clenched violently as he gazed out at two hundred Skins flashing the deadly crimson color.

  Within an instant, the rioter’s anger seemed to escalate. Tables were overturned, people were shoved into hedges and flowerbeds, and a group of twelve men started to storm the Patriarche’s stage, fire and fury in their eyes.

  He’s increasing the voltage.

  The horrific sounds around Marcellus continued to intensify as the new, elevated voltage took hold, pushing the Third Estaters into a higher, more deadly gear. For a moment, he stood paralyzed on the steps, just watching it all unfold, unable to move.

  But then a small, frantic voice yanked him from his trance.

  “Maman? Maman!”

  Marcellus peered out to see a little girl in a violet billowing dress standing on the edge of the lawn—her dark, coiled hair whipping across her round, tear-stained cheeks—as she looked desperately around for her mother.

  Nearby, a man in a shimmering silver suit was shoving through the chaos of bodies, searching for the next place to direct his rage. His shoulders were hunched, his fists clenched. Marcellus watched the man’s eyes zero in, horrifically and unequivocally, on the little girl, and his paralysis shattered in an instant.

  Bounding down the stone steps two at a time, he launched himself across the grass, snatching up the girl in one hand while the other fired his rayonette. The pulse was sloppy and badly aimed. It grazed the man’s elbow, but he didn’t stop. In fact, the pain only seemed to fuel his rage. He lunged at Marcellus and the girl. Marcellus aimed his weapon again, but another body slammed into him and knocked it right out of his hand. The man in the silver suit attacked. Marcellus threw a punch into his jaw. It felt like every bone in his fingers crunched on impact, but it wasn’t enough. The man only staggered slightly before descending again.

  Marcellus hunched his body over the little girl, trying to protect her from the strike that was surely coming but somehow never did. When Marcellus unfurled himself a moment later, he saw a female sergent in a dark uniform landing a graceful, arcing kick to the man’s chest that sent him soaring backward and crashing into one of the green and pink frosted gâteaus. He didn’t get back up.

  Marcellus stared dazedly at the woman who had delivered the blow. She was now inserting herself back into the brawl, fighting off attackers with a relaxed ease that gnawed at the edges of Marcellus’s memory. There was something strange, yet familiar about the way she moved. Like she wasn’t fighting, but … dancing?

  “Allie!” A woman in a burgundy gown bustled up to Marcellus, sobbing with relief as she reached for the little girl still in Marcellus’s arms, “Oh, Allie. Thank the Sols.”

  “Get her inside the Palais!” Marcellus yelled over the roar.

  The mother nodded, teary eyed, and swooped the little girl from Marcellus’s arms before bounding up the steps. Marcellus snatched up his fallen rayonette from the grass and followed after her.

  Peering back at the stage, he saw more officers and sergents arriving to protect the Patriarche. They were trying to form a human wall from the stage to the steps, to give the Patriarche a clear passageway to flee. But it seemed that with every new officer that arrived, another was dragged backward into the fray.

  Then, a dark-haired man in a torn tuxedo slipped through the barrier of guards and climbed onto the stage. Marcellus saw a flash of metal and was instantly certain this was the end. The man had somehow gotten hold of a rayonette, and he was now moving toward the Patriarche, the weapon outstretched.

  A pulse was fired.

  “No!” someone shouted. It was Chaumont. He stepped in front of the Patriarche and a second later wilted to the ground, dark smoke drifting up from the wound in his chest. Two of the other officers tackled the assailant, wrestling the weapon from his grasp and using it to put an end to the threat.

  A sickening sensation of defeat started to settle over Marcellus. The Patriarche’s chances of getting out of here alive, he now realized, were slim at best. Soon, the general would have exactly what he wanted. He had all but won. He had activated the weapon. He was controlling them all.

  Controlling them.

  The thought burst into Marcellus’s mind, and his gaze shot back toward the gardens. Third Estaters in dresses and tuxedos were still punching and bludgeoning and clobbering anyone they could find. But, of course, none of them were in control of their own fury. All of them were being manipulated.

  Which meant the general had to be close. He had to be watching.

  Marcellus scanned the Imperial Lawn, searching for the source of this anarchy. At the base of the steps, two Third Estaters pummeled an officer in a white uniform, dragging him to the ground.

  And that’s when Marcellus lifted his eyes skyward. That’s when he realized his grandfather would not be down here, putting his own life in danger. He would be somewhere safe. Somewhere high up, where he could manipulate his soldiers. Move his little peasant pieces across the board. Observe his victory unharmed.

  Then, almost as if his grandfather had shouted out to him, Marcellus’s gaze instinctively tracked up to the second floor of the Grand Palais.

  And there he was.

  General Bonnefaçon stood on a balcony, half hidden behind the door. Marcellus instantly recognized the location as his own rooms, the very place where he’d been arrested a little more than a week ago. The general’s body was rigid, his face stoic, his eyes scanning the massacre with a mild curiosity. And clutched in his hands was his TéléCom.

  A calm suddenly spread over Marcellus. Deep and profound. The deafening sounds around him faded away, as though they were nothing more than quiet ripples, traveling outward on a pond. Every distraction in his mind stilled. Every thought solidified. Until he felt more focused, more determined, than he ever had.

  “Always so hasty to act, aren’t you, Marcellus? Always rushing into things.”

  Not this time. This time, he was playing to win. And there was only one move left to make.

  Spinning around, he climbed the stone steps to the terrace and slipped quietly through the door. Compared to the Imperial Lawn outside, the Palais was quiet. Eerily so. Like it was keeping vigil, holding its breath for the outcome of this night.

  Marcellus silently crept up the servants’ staircase and down the long corridor of the south wing. The door to his old rooms was left slightly ajar, just as it had been the last time he was here. Before he’d stormed in to discover that General Bonnefaçon was framing Marcellus for his own crime.

  Never underestimate the element of surprise. His grandfather had taught him that. His grandfather had taught him everything.

  With steady hands, he flic
ked his thumb over the toggle switch on his rayonette, hoisted it in the air, and stepped into the room.

  Check mate.

  - CHAPTER 72 - ALOUETTE

  GARGANTUAN AND COMPLETELY DWARFING, THE structure soared above Alouette. The latticed metalwork glinted and glistened under the inky star-filled TéléSky, and its four massive feet hulked around her like the claws of a strange, gleaming giant.

  “The Paresse Tower,” she murmured under her breath, as she looked up and up and up, tracing its great bowing ascent into the air. Standing here, under this massive, intimidating edifice, Alouette felt so infinitesimal, so insignificant, so small.

  Yet, she knew she was not small. And she was certainly not insignificant.

  For somewhere up there, so high it almost touched the artificial Sols, was a vault that only she could open. A stronghold of corruption that only she could bring down.

  A Forteresse.

  The guard station at the base of the tower was empty, the officers clearly having been called to the commotion at the Palais. Alouette stepped into the tiny elevator and crouched down to examine the control panel affixed to the side of the cage. It was a complex mechanism, undoubtedly with layers of security. Yet, a knowing smile crept over her lips as she reached for her toolbelt, now truly understanding why Denise had taught her so much about the inner workings of Ministère technology.

  The elevator moved swiftly, like a bird swooping toward the sky. There were no plastique windows or solid walls inside the car, just a frame of intricate curling metalwork that allowed the artificial Ledôme breeze to whip through and tug at Alouette’s curls as she ascended. She gazed down at the ground receding below. The whole of Ledôme stretched out beneath her. The boulevards with their twinkling streetlamps spreading out likes rays from a glimmering star. The parks, the gardens, the ponds shimmering in the moonlight. And not far off, the Grand Palais. From way up here, the great building seemed so peaceful and serene. Untouched by the horror and carnage that was unfolding right at this very moment.