The light flickers, unsteady, but it shines blue against a tangle of metal protruding through the wall. In a heartbeat I’m back inside LRI Headquarters, watching the rift spring to life in front of my eyes.
“We’re close,” I breathe, touching the arm of the person nearest me—Flynn, it turns out—and gesturing toward the light. “This way.” We can only hope our friends outside can hold off Lilac’s army a little longer.
The hall leads around a corner and into what would’ve once been a beautiful foyer, the light growing stronger. We’re forced to scramble to keep our feet on the once-polished marble floor, using the giant jagged cracks in its surface to find purchase as we make our way across to the half-collapsed archway at the opposite end. We pull ourselves up against it, and in the faint blue glow emanating from the space beyond, I pause to scan the features of my companions.
No one’s thought of a way to save Lilac. Jubilee’s face looks ashen, even more so in the blue light.
She doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, fixing her gaze on the wall behind me, where the real wood paneling has buckled and splintered in a line running from floor to ceiling. “He’ll never forgive me,” she whispers, pressing the palm of her hand flat against her leg, as if willing herself to reach for her weapon, and being unable to.
Flynn shifts, boots sliding on the sharply angled floor until he can reach her side. “Maybe not,” he replies, surprising me—I’d have expected one of his impassioned speeches, not this, just a few words in a soft voice. “But he’ll be alive. He’ll be sane. And so will the rest of humanity. You know what Lilac would want us to do.”
Jubilee’s eyes are wet, a realization that strikes me anew with shock. I didn’t know people like her ever cried. “But it’s Lilac, Flynn. How can I…She’s my friend.”
“I know.” Flynn’s voice is hoarse. “I wish I could tell you.…I don’t know what the right thing is. Only that we didn’t come this far alone, and you’re not alone now. We do this together.” He takes her hand between both of his, pulling it away from the holster and raising it to his lips.
Part of me feels like I ought to look away, let them share this moment privately, but I can’t—her eyes, as they flick over to meet his, hold such trust that it makes my heart ache. With pain, with gladness that Flynn found her despite the barriers between them, with an envy so deep my vision blurs. My mind flashes with the last vision I had of Gideon, dozing in the nest of blankets in the arcade, one arm still stretched out across the space where I had lain. How is it that a trodaire and the leader of the Fianna can trust each other so completely, while Gideon and I…They’ve overcome the walls formed by a generation of hatred and violence, and I can’t reach past the walls in my own heart.
The three of us stand in silence, absorbing the full weight of what we’re about to do. Then, wordlessly, we slip through the ruined doors.
The archway opens up onto the ballroom. Though I was here only a few short days ago, before the Daedalus fell, I almost can’t recognize the room—only the chandelier, lying in a heap of shattered glass and electrical wiring in the corner, sparks my memory. The shining floor is dull and shattered, caved downward, pit-like, as though sinking under the weight of the massive ring of metal nestled in its heart.
The rift itself dominates the cavernous ballroom, almost as though the machinery has grown to accommodate the room around it—blue light cascades off every twisted surface, reflected a million times over in the shards of the mirrors that once lined the far walls. The dais where Lilac and Tarver stood at Roderick LaRoux’s side is smashed, scattered in pieces across the pit before us. Overhead, the vast windowed ceiling that once looked out into space is gone, leaving a jagged, empty hole that shows nothing but the dull reddish blackness of the Corinthian night sky.
The voice we’d heard continues, one long stream of syllables that only resolve into words as we draw closer, taking cover behind a fallen pillar.
“…thought a picnic might be nice, like we used to have, like your mother used to love. Just you and me, my darling girl…Nothing has to change. Nothing ever has to change now.”
My eyes pick out a dark silhouette to the left of the rift, and as the light from the rift rises and falls again, I make out his features: Roderick LaRoux. He’s huddled on the floor, still clad in the grimy, torn, sweat-stained eveningwear he sported the night of the gala. For a confused moment it seems as though he’s speaking to the rift itself, until a second figure emerges from behind it.
Lilac, too, is still wearing what she wore the night the Daedalus crashed. But where her father’s clothes are filthy, hers are as spotless as if she’d only just gotten ready for the gala. Her black dress falls in sleek folds, moving like silk as she passes her father without giving him a second glance. Not a hair is out of place; a single ringlet falls, styled just so, across her neck.
“Of course, Daddy,” she murmurs, her voice echoing strangely, as though coming from more than one place. “After we help everyone else.”
“Of course,” he repeats. “Of course, of course…rifts…make everywhere safe. Never lose anyone again.” His mumbling continues, subsiding once more, and over my flare of hatred and disgust comes something so surprising it steals my breath for a moment, makes me sag down against the pillar.
Pity.
There’s a soft click beside me as Jubilee takes the safety off the gun. My heart’s pounding, my stomach sick, and I can hear her breath shaking. I don’t know Tarver or Lilac, not really. I hated them both, because they were part of LaRoux, attached to the thing I wanted to hurt most in the entire universe…but I hated them from a distance, the way you hate the rain or the traffic. I never really hated them. Not the reality of them. In the brief moments on the Daedalus before everything shattered, I actually found myself liking them; Tarver’s quiet humor, Lilac’s quick wit. Their devotion to each other.
But now we have to destroy them both.
“Daddy,” comes Lilac’s voice suddenly, cutting through the unintelligible monologue coming from the floor. “We have guests. You sneaky thing.”
My heart seizes, my eyes meeting Jubilee’s, then Flynn’s, where we’re concealed behind the column. I’m about to lift my head and look over the column and try for a distraction to give Jubilee the time she needs, when a third voice drags me to a halt.
“I wasn’t trying to hide,” comes a voice from the opposite side of the room. When I peek over the edge of the column, I see Tarver picking his way down into the sunken ballroom, boots sending trickles of dust and debris raining down below. Mori’s words come back to me. They’re in there. She didn’t just mean Lilac and her father. Tarver’s voice is low, almost conversational. “I’m not smart enough for that.”
“Just a big, dumb soldier?” Lilac speaks the words like they have significance, and I can see her smile from here.
Tarver flinches, skidding to a halt in the bottom of the ruined ballroom.
My eyes scan the darkness beyond them, hope and fear sending my blood into a panic as it rushes past my ears—but I see no sign of Gideon anywhere. Maybe they’ve given up their plan to shut down the rift. Maybe…I hold my breath.
“Why are you here?” Lilac asks, turning to face him and smoothing a fold in her dress, a movement so human, so habitual, that it makes me shiver to see it combined with the look on her face. No human hates like that.