Page 286

“Does Mars ride for Luna, my Sovereign?” she asks.

“You know we can’t yet.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Just to speak with—”

“And of what would we speak? Of how they nailed my son to a tree? Of how Ascomanni came like fucking monsters out of the ether? Of how you could have saved Darrow but didn’t?”

“Victra…”

“Or maybe of how my husband is being tortured by that Abomination while you run back home to lick your wounds?” She glares down at me. “You might think I obeyed your orders, that I…molder here out of fidelity to your leadership. No. I am here because without reinforcements my fleet would be massacred by the Vox, much less if we ran afoul the Core.” She sticks a finger in my chest. “You abandoned my husband. Our enemies move uncontested. So unless Mars is riding for Luna right now, fuck off.”

She turns back to her practice.

The knights look away as I strip off my jacket and unbutton my tunic to my compression bra. “Victra.” She turns. Her eyes trace the divots Lilath’s hatchet left on my stomach and neck and the several hundred punctures the mob gave me on my flanks and arms, and a tension releases from her shoulders. Her love and hate are made of the same passion. “I tried,” I whisper. “Truly.” Her eyes search each one of the scars. I now have more than she does. Her heavy hand reaches to clutch my shoulder, and then the bigger woman pulls our foreheads together.

“If we cannot engineer salvation for our men, then vengeance will suffice,” Victra says.

I nod against her.

My husband would have it no other way. No matter what they say, Darrow is not dead. He endured for me, and I did not arrive. I will endure now until he does. Victra will have her wrath till her dying breath. I will have my hope. I will make our family whole again.

There’s a stirring in the courtyard from the knights. A defense pulseShield warps the air of Hippolyte, and Pax rushes into the courtyard with his datapad in hand. By the look on his face, I know what it is.

“Earth has fallen,” I whisper.

“Already?” Victra snarls.

“To whom?” I ask. “Rim or—”

“Both,” he whispers distantly. “Cassius was right. Lune has bridged the divide.”

“ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU want me to leave you alone out here?” Rhone’s eyes search the warped horizon of the Ladon. Pytha stands behind him before my personal shuttle. “Until the wedding, Ajax will look for any opportunity…”

“Ajax is on Earth. It must be done.”

“But, dominus…” He looks again at the feast. In the middle of the desert, upon a great dune, two broad couches of purple silk and raw nebulawood lie on either side of a long table weighed down by a feast to feed twenty. “Are you certain this is safe?”

“I don’t believe my guest would respect safe.”

“Are you certain he will come?”

I look out at the desert. “The better question is if he is even real.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never you mind. Come back for me in two hours,” I say. “If I’m in more than one piece, collect my remains and fire them into the sun.” I hand him a datadrop. “My will. Glirastes has a copy too.”

Glirastes, who took the day to scout locations for a new library in Pan, would be furious if he knew that I was out here in the desert instead of overseeing the rebuilding of Tyche, but despite what he thinks, he needn’t know all my affairs.

After a hesitation, Rhone salutes and enters the shuttle. Pytha remains behind. “Do you know what you are doing?” she asks. “He is not a sane man.”

“Are you afraid of him, Pytha?”

“Yes.”

“So is everyone.” She understands as she remembers her advice in the fitting bay of the Annihilo. But she does not like it.