Zhade gave her a sad smile. “Then we’re in agreement. Hear, I comp why you chose me. It doesn’t change the way I . . . It doesn’t change anything. For me. If anyone had to leave that room alive, it was you. I recked it. And Wead recked it too. Because you can save us.”
She’d been waiting for Zhade to push back, but he didn’t. Instead, he still thought she could save them. She set the med’wand aside, walking over to the patch of moss and freeing the spider. It scuttled across the wall and into a dark hole.
“I can’t though. I’ve told you over and over—I’m not a goddess. I’m just . . . unlucky. Or unwanted. I don’t know. I don’t know why I was left, but it wasn’t for any reason I can see. I can’t fix the ’dome. Rashmi can. Rashmi’s the special one. She’s the goddess, not me.”
“I don’t believe in the Goddess, I believe in Andra.”
It was the first time he’d said her name. He stood and walked to her, bringing his hands to her cheeks. Her whole body tensed, as her mind went back to that moment in the hallway when it wasn’t real. This felt different. She wanted it to be different. Zhade squeezed her cheeks together so she made a fish face.
He smiled sadly, then relaxed his grip, but didn’t lower his hands.
“I didn’t help you just because I wanted something. Seeya, I did, but not sole because of that.” His eyes met hers, and for the first time she felt like she was seeing the real him. No masks, no roles to play, no hidden agendas. “If I mereish needed you as a goddess, I wouldn’t have fought for you. I wouldn’t have searched the city for you. I wouldn’t have kissed you.” He watched his thumb trace her lower lip, once, then again. “I did those things because you’re Andra, and . . .” He leaned his forehead against hers and took a deep breath. “I hate you less than other people.”
A breathless laugh escaped her, and she twisted her fingers into his hair, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes.
“I tolerate you,” she murmured.
Then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t just the act of two sets of lips meeting; there was something behind it. Some spark that was more than physical, beyond emotion. Intense. Transcendental. A conflagration. Puzzle pieces snapping together. Some inchoate feeling blossoming into meaning.
Zhade kissed like he did everything else. With confidence, panache, and a bit of irony. But there was sincerity there that Andra had never seen in him before. A hunger, a want he’d never revealed.
She hadn’t even realized they’d moved until the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed, and they tumbled onto the sheets. Then she was lying down and Zhade was lying next to her, and he hadn’t once stopped kissing her, his lips feverish. His movements caught between utter control and unbridled frenzy. His shirt came untucked, and her hands wandered underneath. He had scars, and chest hair, which for some reason surprised her.
She gasped, and he laughed, and she knew he wasn’t laughing at her, that it was a sound of joy surprised out of him. His hand cradled her face, angling her so he could kiss her deeper. It was a dance, but it was also a competition. He was winning. Or she was. She didn’t know.
When he finally pulled away, he didn’t go far. He nudged his nose against hers.
“Evens, I’ve been waiting for that for time and a half, Goddess, and that did not disappoint.”
“I’m not a goddess,” she said, breathlessly.
His face was serious, his eyes searching hers. He ran his finger over her bottom lip again. “You are to me.”
A laugh bubbled out of her. “That was the worst line ever.”
His expression relaxed into a smile, not the brilliant one he wore when he was flirting. It barely reached his eyes, but felt more genuine. He flopped onto his back, flung one arm over his forehead, and laughed.
“You keep me on my toes.”
She smiled. “Where did you hear that expression?”
“Something my mam used to say.”
He turned Andra so he could fit his chest against her back. He ran his fingers up and down the length of her arm, and they lay like that for a while, his thinner frame pressed against hers. At first, she was too tense to enjoy it. It was weird and intimate, and as close as they were, there was so much between them, keeping them apart. He was too confident, too brash. She was a thousand years older than him. His people worshipped her as a goddess. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, the just kidding.
But finally she relaxed, and it was then that he broke the silence. “Do you reck . . . were the other goddesses from your . . . time?”
Andra hesitated. “Your mother was the First, wasn’t she?”
Zhade’s silence was all the answer she needed.
She didn’t know when she realized. There was no lightbulb moment. It had come on so slowly, bit by bit, until it was just something she knew. Zhade’s knowledge of tech. His shadiness about where he’d learned it. His search for Andra, and his knowing what to do when he found her.
“Does Maret know?” Andra asked.
Zhade’s fingers slid up and down her arm. “Firm.”
“And he killed her?”
“He gave the order.”
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t respond right away. Then: “I’m half god.”
Andra was quiet for a moment, memorizing the feel of Zhade’s body next to hers. “Well, that explains a lot.”
THIRTY-THREE
THE BETRAYER
Zhade led the Goddess through an underground passage. The tunnels leading to the First’s suite had been destroyed in the Schism raid, so that route wasn’t an option. Instead, they would be coming up the magic lift that led to the hidden entrance on the third floor. The one protected by blood magic.
Things were marching forward almost too fast for Zhade. At luck, he had spent four years adesert devising plans for as many scenarios as he could imagine, and all he had to do now was adapt. But the end was here, and he found he wasn’t prepped for it.
Everything had almost gone to sands with the Goddess’s execution. Zhade had been relieved when Kiv had sided with them. His rescue plan had relied on Kiv’s loyalty, but as the guard lifted the sword above Andra’s head, a prickle of doubt had run up Zhade’s spine. He’d bareish had time to panic before Kiv purposfulish missed, and Zhade finalish had proof Kiv remained a friend.
His plan was back on a thin string. Not the Schism’s plan, or the Goddess’s or his mam’s. His own. But first he had to march forward with the one Skilla had brewed to free the Second. He would grab the remote conduit from where he’d left it in the First’s suite, and he’d use it to cast the spell that released the glamours in the Yard, but after that, his plans and the Schism’s diverged.
After all, he had his fate to decide.
Their footsteps fell dull in the darkened tunnel, and he tightened his grip on the Goddess’s hand.
Andra.
He’d thought of her as Andra a palmful of times, but it had never stuck like it did now. It felt intimate. A privilege he’d earned. He liked it.
And he was scared of it.
He still needed her in order to achieve his goals, and no meteor what had grown between them, he couldn’t turn back or step side. Tonight was the night.
He just hoped Andra would forgive him.
They walked over the damp dirt, past scrambling insects and decaying rodents, hand-in-hand. It was a long trek, and he could feel Andra tense the closer they got to the palace.
He’d always recked she wasn’t a goddess the way the people believed. The First was his mam after all. She’d told him from a young age that magic and goddesses were mereish words people used for things they couldn’t comp. She skooled him how to find and wake the Third Goddess. Then she’d tossed a ’locket and a dagger at him and told him not to let Maret take the crown. And fin was fin. He recked nothing bout her past.
Til n
ow.
He wasn’t certz how he felt bout it. His mam. Andra. This past where they could put people to sleep for centuries and fly cross the stars. Where everyone was a sorcer and oceans actualish existed.
Fishes and wishes.
It didn’t change what needed to be done, and he tried to hold his focus ahead.
Despite the heat upground, the tunnel was chillish and humid, a combination that left Zhade in a cold sweat. The ground was soft, their footsteps making an occasional squish. And for some reason, Zhade felt . . . nervous.
He never felt nervous.
Andra cleared her throat as they walked, fingers entwined. “What was your mom like?”
Zhade blinked. “Um. What?”
“I’ve tried to figure out who she was. I mean, I might have known her. But there’s no info. No records. No pics.” She shrugged, but the movement was anything but casual. “So what was she like?”
“Tall,” Zhade said. “Busy.”
He fished a coin out of his pocket with his free hand and started fidgeting with it. He’d found it in his mam’s room the first time he’d scoured it for magic. It was mereish a trinket his father had given his mother—nothing magical—but he held on to it anyway.
Zhade sighed. “She was always full proud of me,” he said. “She angered I had to be kept secret, even though it was her idea.” The lights were growing dimmer as they walked. “It was like she . . . knew. Knew what was going to happen—that they’d turn on her, kill her—and she wanted to protect me. She talked in riddles, but I don’t reck she realized she did it. She and my da—evens, he’d already married Tsurina. It was a political match. My mam and him were . . . not political. I was firstborn, but nobody recked I existed except fam. And Tsurina.” He laughed to himself, and let his thumb rub against Andra’s palm. “They did not friend full well, my mam and Tsurina. My mother, she . . . she was a better goddess than she was a mam. But she tried. Some days harder than others.”
They’d reached the magic lift. From this angle, the abyss was a silo, so tall he couldn’t see the top, but he recked where it ended. Where all of this ended. Zhade stepped onto the translucent platform, helping Andra up after.
“She sent you to find me,” Andra guessed, testing her weight against the platform with taps of her feet.
“Firm.” Zhade pressed his palm against the scrying panel. “She hid you. She knew what was coming, and she didn’t want it to happen to you.”
“Then why did she want you to bring me back here?”
She didn’t. Zhade recked he should tell her the truth. How he’d betrayed his mam. How he was about to betray Andra too. He opened his mouth, but as soon as the lift started to ascend, Andra let out a cry and clung to him. He wrapped his arms round her, resting his cheek on the top of her head.
He would make his march to the First’s suite for the last time. He would release the glamours. Then, he would finalish decide his fate.
The wind rushed past them as they rose, closer and closer to the palace. Closer and closer to the end.
THIRTY-FOUR
infer, v.
Definition:
to form an opinion or belief in consequence of something else observed or believed; derived as a fact from reasoning
obsolete: to bring on, to induce; to offer, as in violence.
The cell was empty.
Andra stared down at where she’d last seen Rashmi, clinging to the ’locket containing Andra’s memories. All that was left was her nest of rags and a path of blood across the ground. The door hung on a single hinge. Smudges on the floor suggested she’d been dragged.
After Andra and Zhade had reached the top of the elevator, she’d waited behind a tapestry until she heard commotion coming from the courtyard. Then she ran as fast as she could for the dungeons, something more than fear pushing her forward. But now she was here, and Rashmi was not.
“What’d they do to you?” Andra muttered, trying to wipe the sweat from her brow, but her cos’mask was in the way. It was a poor disguise, a thin layer of camouflage, but it was better than walking around the palace wearing her own face blatantly.
It was hot—almost unbearable. The dungeons were a bit cooler than the rest of the Rock, but not by much. There was a light tremor as the palace rumbled with the sounds of the fight.
Even with the ’drones giving off simulations for the palace guards to battle, the few members of the Schism providing real ’gunfire were still at risk. Skilla and Xana were out there, and though she’d been told not to, Andra bet Doon had sneaked into their company as well. The sims were on a five-minute loop, and it wouldn’t take long for Maret and his army to realize what they were seeing was mostly illusion. The quicker they could get out of here, the better. But Andra wasn’t leaving without Rashmi.
Based on the evidence, she was hurt. Or worse. She was a tool, yes. A means to an end. More than that—she was . . . if not a person, she was alive. She bled. Andra felt a tug to find Rashmi that was more than just the desire to fix the ’dome and save Eerensed. Andra needed to save the AI. Save the girl.
She stood frozen, weighing her options, trying to guess where Maret might have taken her. She’d just decided to check his suite next when there was the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Her breath caught.
She was trapped with nowhere to hide. She had no weapons, and without the icicle dagger, she couldn’t use her ’implant. She should have come up with contingency plans for getting caught, but she’d put all her trust on the distraction and Zhade’s knowledge of protocols. She only had half a second to wonder if Zhade had betrayed her yet again when a hulking figure appeared in the doorway, haloed by torchlight. It was as tall as the doorframe and almost as wide, and as the figure took a single step into the dungeon, Andra caught a glimpse of a white twisted helix flickering on the black casing of an arm.
“Mechy?”
The mech’bot heard its name and cocked its head.
The last she’d seen the ’bot, it was gathering dust behind a curtain in her suite, all but useless without a shuttle to build.
“Hello,” it intoned, its voice interface crackling. Its eyes shuttered in the approximation of a blink. “Follow me,” it said, and then turned.
Andra frowned. Had it just asked her to follow? She hadn’t given it a command, yet it seemed to be carrying out some sort of task—she just didn’t know what. The last command she’d given it was to wait.
No. That hadn’t been it.
Maret had come to her room and she’d needed to hide it. She’d tried dragging it behind the curtain, but it had been too heavy to move on her own, and she’d muttered something to it. A plea.
The last command she’d given the ’bot was to—
“Help me,” she whispered.
Mechy stopped and turned to face her. “I am. Follow me.”
Andra hesitated. This was madness. The ’bot shouldn’t have been able to extrapolate data like this—take an ambiguous command and form a conclusion based on variables it hadn’t even been presented with. It wasn’t an AI. Conversation with ’bots followed strict protocols, based on mathematical algorithms, not the fuzziness of linguistic discrete infinity. This was—quite frankly—impossible. She could very well be walking into a trap. Perhaps Maret had programmed the ’bot, was controlling it even now with his crown, but Andra had the strangest hunch Mechy was in fact leading her to Rashmi. That the ’bot was actually helping her.
She followed it up the stairs.
* * *
The palace was eerily still. Shouts still came from the direction of the courtyard, along with the boom of fake bombs and ’gunfire, but the route the mech’bot took Andra was completely deserted. She didn’t remember the ’bot having heat sensors, so she doubted it was avoiding people on purpose. Everyone must be involved in the battle. It wouldn’t be much longer before Maret and his guards re
alized the threat was just a distraction. Andra had to hurry, but she felt her stomach drop when she realized where Mechy was taking her.
The ’bot stopped at the doors to the throne room.
There was no one in sight—no servants, no ’bots, no guards. One of the massive doors was cracked open, and Andra edged closer. Through the opening she saw a single figure curled up at the foot of the throne, and it was undoubtedly Rashmi.
This was definitely a trap.
But she couldn’t turn back.
She opened the door a tad wider. The hinges creaked. It wasn’t loud, but Rashmi’s head snapped up. Her eyes met Andra’s.
Andra put her finger to her lips. Rashmi nodded. Andra waved her over to the door. Rashmi shook her head. Andra’s gesture grew more emphatic, but so did Rashmi’s.
Why wouldn’t she leave? Something was wrong. Rashmi had said something about liking Maret—that he’d spent time with her—but surely she didn’t want to stay. Could an AI get Stockholm syndrome?
Sweat trickled down Andra’s back, and the booming of the battle shook the palace. She was running out of time, and trap or no, she couldn’t just leave Rashmi.
“Ready?” She looked up at the ’bot, who tilted its head in a single nod.
Andra opened the door, just managing to squeeze through without the hinges groaning. She’d taken two steps into the room when a strident squeak rent the silence. She turned to find the mech’bot throwing open the door. She rolled her eyes, even as her heartrate sped and she waited for the rush of footsteps, the clink of swords. But it remained silent, so she made her way through the empty throne room, the ’bot lumbering after. Her footsteps slapped against the marble. The air felt thick, almost solid in her chest, like she was holding back a cough. Her skin erupted in goosebumps. But still no one came.
Her strides grew surer, her confidence rising every second that Maret or his guards didn’t show, until she was flying across the empty room toward Rashmi, who still hadn’t gotten up, and now Andra saw why.
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