Page 80 of Last of Her Name

Below, the tensors finish branding Riyan, then leave him hunched on the floor, trembling and holding his hands to his scalp. His sisters push through the crowd to get to him, and I start to follow. I don’t know what I can do to help him, but I know I didn’t save his life at the Loyalist base just to see him get sentenced to death by hard labor. This may be tensor law, and maybe I swore not to interfere, but Riyan is my friend. I have to do something.

But that’s when the tabletka in my pocket beeps.

I pull it out, hiding it in the cup of my hand, as my heart begins to pound. I’d almost forgotten it was there, in the drama of Riyan’s trial and the startling revelation hidden in the judges’ Stones. But now all of that fades away, a hundred light-years distant, as my full attention narrows to the little screen in my hand.

My messagedidget out, I realize, because now a single line of text flashes across the screen:You have a deal, Princess.

The tensors are slow to leave the chamber; everyone wants to whisper about what just happened. The Lord Tensor voting to condemn his own son, sending him to a prison camp—they all seem shaken. Riyan is still kneeling below. Jorian and a few other tensors aren’t letting anyone close to him, even his sisters.

I slip away before Pol or Mara can notice. Weaving through the crowd, I duck out a side door and then hesitate a moment. Looking back at Pol, I can just make out his face. He’s looking around, probably for me. I press his profile into my memory—the angle of his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the sweep of his hair around his curving horns—and then turn away, a knot forming in my throat.

I have to hurry.

The pyramid is silent as a tomb. I climb stair after stair; the tensors who operate the lifts must still be below with everyone else. My oxygenator hisses and wheezes at my side, the mask digging into my face.

Up and up, my heart beating faster with every step. But my body drags, as if trying to pull me back, resisting my decision. I press onward until finally, halfway up the pyramid, I stop and sag against a window, partly to catch my breath, partly to harden my nerve. This is the same spot where Riyan and I stood the day he told me about his people’s connection to the Leonovs. Where he told me their tessellating was due to a cybernetic code fused to their DNA.

What are you running away from?whispers a voice in my head, a voice terribly like Clio’s.

“I’m not,” I whisper.

You’re afraid of him.You’re afraid of yourselfaroundhim.

“This has nothing to do with Pol.”

It’s a lie. This is for ClioandPol. They are the most important people to me in the galaxy. If this one act can save them both, how in the stars could I walk away from it?

Snow falls outside in dusty white clouds. Flakes land on the glass and melt, running in thin rivulets that mingle and branch like crystalline veins. While I catch my breath, I watch the clouds forming over the mountains, nebulous, brooding, and full of secrets. Bringing yet more snow and ice to this frozen world.

The more I stand here, the more I lose my nerve.

I push myself into motion, turning from the window and toward the stairway. But I don’t make it three steps before I hear the horn from the Chamber of Judgment again, only this time, the sound comes from every direction, flooding the whole of the pyramid. It washes over me with almost tactile force, vibrating in my rib cage. The sound is too loud and urgent to be the dinner horn, or even the peal that signaled the start of Riyan’s trial.

It’s an alarm. And I think I know what tripped it.

I hurry back to the window and press my hands against the glass, eyes widening at the dark ships that lower from the sky. They’re miles distant and indistinct through the haze of snow, but I don’t need a close-up to know what they are. Dread turns my limbs to stone. I stand locked in place as the ships approach, all my courage melting like the snowflakes on the glass beneath my fingers.

Can I really go through with this?

Because once I do it, there will be no turning back.

I hesitate too long and hear hasty footsteps behind me. Before I can move, he calls out.

“Stacia! There you are!”

I shut my eyes, let out a breath.

Pol’s breathing hard, one hand on the wall. He must have stopped at his room on the way up, because he’s got his coat on and his gun tucked into his belt. “Stace, they’re here. It’s the astronika, and a dozen other Union ships.” He curses. “I’ll bet the Loyalists told them about Riyan. They’d have guessed we’d go to Diamin.”

“They got through the gravity wall,” I murmur, watching the ships as they hover over the ice forest. That wasn’t part of the plan. How did they get through into Diamin’s atmosphere?

“No one knows how they did it, but the tensors are preparing to fight.”

The Committee isn’t here for the tensors.

“We have to talk,” Pol says. “We …” His voice falters; his eyes narrow on me. “What are you doing all the way up here? Is something wrong?”

“I’m fine.”