“Darling,” he’s saying, that too-cultured voice choked with emotion. “Look at me—it’s Daddy, look at me.”
Tarver’s ripping the lining out of his tuxedo jacket, his face white, jaw set and determined. He eases the figure on the floor up—it’s Lilac—so that her head rests in his lap. “It’s just her shoulder,” he’s saying in a shaking voice, starting to bind the wound with the strips of silk. “She’ll be fine, it’s just—”
LaRoux snaps something back at him, face transformed in that instant by such fury, such hatred, that I can’t tell what he’s saying.
Tarver, however, remains calm, meeting that icy-blue stare with his own. “You want her to bleed to death?”
Jubilee’s beside him, pulling off her belt and handing it over to help strap the makeshift bandages in place, fixing LaRoux with a look that seems like it should do to him what the bullet didn’t.
LaRoux draws in a shuddering breath, reaching for Lilac’s hand and cradling it between his own, drawing it up to press it to his lips. “Hang on, darling girl.”
Sofia stirs in my arms, voice shaky with pain as she mumbles. “She wasn’t supposed to…Why, why did she do that? I never meant to—”
“Because he’s her father,” Flynn says softly. “Because she loves him, and you were trying to kill him.”
“He’s a monster,” whispers Sofia, struggling to sit up on her own power, some of the shock from her injury starting to ebb.
“And he’s her father,” Flynn replies.
Sofia’s face crumples, tears spilling out to mingle with the blood on her chin. I’ve read her background now. I know what happened to her own father. And I know how many voices were calling him a monster in the wake of his death. What it must be like to love someone, despite whatever they might have done. I tighten my arms around her.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
Lilac stirs, and it’s enough to jerk both men’s attention back to her, as Tarver finishes binding off her shoulder with the silk lining of his jacket. “Tarver…” she mumbles, and I see the way her father’s face tightens, the look of loathing on his face as his eyes dart up toward his future son-in-law.
“There’s my girl,” Tarver replies, oblivious to—or ignoring—the look he gets from LaRoux. He smiles, bending his head to brush his lips against her forehead. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Are you lying to me again?” Her voice is so quiet I can barely hear it.
A sound, like a laugh but without much humor, escapes Tarver’s lips. “Not this time,” he answers. “I promise. Lee, call for a medic, we can’t move her.”
Jubilee rises to her feet, jogging over to the commpoint on the wall. But Lilac’s stirring.
“I feel…” Her voice trails off, and for a horrible moment I think she’s dead, that Tarver missed something, that she was hurt somewhere else. But then she speaks, and her voice has changed, and something in it makes my entire body freeze. “Angry.”
As if in response, the whispering, surging voices on the air cease all at once, leaving us in utter silence. My mouth floods again with the taste of blood, and despite my arms tightening around Sofia, my muscles start to quiver, like I’ve been climbing for an hour and my body’s too exhausted to fight.
Tarver’s calm shatters. “Lilac—Lilac, look at me. Look at me, beautiful, don’t—” His gaze snaps up to meet LaRoux’s. “Do something!” he shouts.
“I don’t understand,” LaRoux’s saying slowly, stupidly, staring at whatever’s happening to Lilac, something we can’t see.
“She’s different,” Tarver snaps. “That’s what we’ve been hiding from you. She’s connected to them, and she knows that you’ve still got them held captive in the last rift here. They want her, don’t you get it? They’ve been trying to get inside her head for the past year. You have to shut down the rift, send the whispers back. Now.”
“I told you, there is no rift up here on the Daedalus,” replies LaRoux, his face white. “There’s only one of the creatures left at all, it couldn’t possibly—”
“It’s killing her! If it’s down on Corinth, then make the call!”
“There is simply no way—” LaRoux’s voice catches and chokes. “It cannot be reaching her…”
“Hush.” It’s Lilac’s voice again, but under control, no longer confused and whispery and hurt. She reaches out, wounded shoulder and all, to gently push Tarver’s arm away from her so she can sit up. “I’m fine.”
Tarver’s silent, and LaRoux too, as though that gentle command were a magic spell robbing both men of their voices.
“What a strange thing,” says Lilac, rotating her injured shoulder slowly, not even seeming to notice when the movement causes a fresh flow of blood that trickles from beneath the makeshift bandage. “Pain is so different from what I’d imagined.”
Fingers of ice creep down my spine, fear trickling in before I can even figure out why I’m afraid. I give Sofia a squeeze, and as though she can read my thoughts, she struggles to get her feet beneath her and together we stagger up to stand side by side.
Lilac, spotting the movement, lifts her head to look at us. But instead of the bright, sky-blue eyes so like her father’s, I see only blackness, like empty holes.
Tarver’s just looking at Lilac, and for the first time I see him, really see him, how he looks at her. I’ve been so busy hating him for replacing my brother that I never noticed.…His heart is written clear across his features, and the agony reflected there as he looks at Lilac makes my own heart ache in response.
“Lilac,” he whispers. “My girl.”
Lilac’s black eyes swing over toward him, and though her face remains neutral, almost empty, her voice carries a cold so intense my skin crawls. “I know you.”
Tarver shivers, drawing up on his knees so he can reach out and take Lilac’s arms, gazing intently at her. “Lilac, I know you’re in there somewhere. You can fight this. You are stronger than this. Please—please. Please.”
Lilac gazes back at him for a long moment before a ripple travels through her features and she sags a little, like a marionette whose strings are being cut. Her eyes flick up to fix on her fiancé’s face. “T-Tarver?”
Tarver’s breath catches and he leans closer, eyes scanning hers, searching for some flicker of the girl who used to be there. “Lilac.”
The girl gives a sob and leans forward, pressing her lips to his, a desperate sort of kiss. For a moment, no one else moves, the whole room narrowing to just the two of them, Tarver’s hand coming up to touch her cheek, her movements as she leans into the kiss harder.
Then she pulls back abruptly, opening her eyes—her black eyes—and giving a brief, mirthless laugh. “You’re so easy.” She lifts one hand, and like she’d brush aside a fly, she shoves him back—and the force of the blow sends the soldier flying, to strike the far wall with a sickening thud.
She rises to her feet, not even flinching when Lee Chase instantly swings her weapon around to point at her. “You murdered my brethren,” says Lilac—or the thing that used to be Lilac, still staring at Merendsen. “To save your own skin—to save this skin,” she adds, gesturing with some distaste to her own body, “you killed them all.”
“They wanted…they asked.…” Tarver’s groaning, dragging himself up from the floor—his eyes aren’t focusing right, and I know he’s only barely conscious.
“You’re lying. No one asks for death.” Lilac glances around, head tilting as though to get a better look at each of us. “Though maybe you will, before the end.”