I’d been counting on it.
“I swear, I will protect you. Let me heal you.” He knelt before me, gathering me up in his arms.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. Once upon a time, I had found such wonder in this embrace. His touch had been my own proof that a kind god existed, that the universe bent toward justice.
“You’re safe now,” he whispered.
My heart spiked in my chest. I opened my eyes and looked into his. I looked past the monster he’d become. I looked deeper; I looked into the soul of the boy I’d loved, and I smiled. This is for you, I told him.
“I’ve been so afraid for you,” Tyrus told me, tears in his eyes.
“Shh… I’m safe now.”
Did Tyrus lean toward me, or I toward him? Somehow our lips met, a kiss so gentle that it roused an echo of the old wonder, raising goose bumps as his hands closed softly around mine. He kissed me deeply as he drew me to my feet, his fingers twining through mine, the marriage electrode in my palm meeting his.
I was shaking, but so was he. I drew our conjoined hands to his tear-streaked cheek.
This was right. Fated. He was everything, all to me—even after the horrors that had passed between us. Fingers twined with his, I stroked the faint stubble covering his lean jaw. I brushed soft coppery hair away from his temple.
His mistake was simple. “You never stopped loving me,” I murmured.
The tears shone in his eyes. “I could never stop. Not until the final stars burn out.”
And my mistake was the same. “Nor could I. Till the very universe ends.” I turned my hand in his, so my palm pressed against his temple. With my free hand, I cupped his head, my fingers tightening in his hair as I spoke that single word: “Now.”
And before he could understand, before his eyes could even widen or his machines react—the engine behind me shot to full power within the chaotic gale, and the massive discharge of power erupted.
It spiked toward us, and in that last moment, I looked into his eyes.
I love you.
The bright blast of light flooded the air, its lethal path boiling toward us from the engine core, and there was no escaping the force of it.…
And then Tyrus shoved me away from him.
Hard enough to send me toppling over to the ground, but he did not move from where he stood.
It struck him in full, and then the remaining bright tendrils of electricity spiking out of him hit me, and bright white talons of purest pain arced through me. Screams erupted from our lips, our muscles locking. Security bots clanged to the ground, released by Tyrus’s mind.
I love you, Tyrus.
The floor slammed into me and then he toppled down beside me, his eyes wide open and fixed, his mouth still open, arms extended where he’d given me that push.
I love
34
WHEN MY EYES opened, I found myself in the finest chamber on the Arbiter. Overhead, through the ceiling window, the chaotic gale’s purple clouds swirled into the shape of a scorpion. Its lethal tail curled in victory as it hovered over a crumpled opponent.
I blinked, and all I could see was a twisting cloud.
“You’re awake.”
I twisted to find Neveni beaming down at me. She looked… different.
“Your hair.” My voice came out scratchy. I felt sluggish. Had I been ill?
Neveni reached up self-consciously, tracing the vivid blue streak in her dark, shaggy hair. Her scar was gone. She looked glowing, rested and content.
Unease itched through me. There was something I needed to do, something I had forgotten.…
“We found a bunch of beauty bots,” Neveni was telling me. “Probably not the time, but I felt like celebrating. Speaking of which…”
Eyes dancing, she leaned over to the bedside table and lifted a mirror up to show me… myself.
My skin was smooth and unblemished. The disfigurement had been erased. “His med bots worked wonders,” Neveni said. “No surprise, he had enough of them. They didn’t shut down with the other Domitrian machines.”
Memory slammed through me like concrete.
I killed him.
I leaped to my feet. Neveni said something, but I could not hear her through the roar in my ears.
The window in the wall looked directly onto the boarding artery linked the Arbiter to the Alexandria, Tyrus’s prized starship.
Tyrus was dead.
His lifeless eyes. His slack cheeks, still damp from his tears. He was dead, and I had killed him.
My vision darkened. The softness of the bed caught me as my knees gave way.
The overload should have killed me. How was I alive, when he was dead?
“You won the day.”
I looked blindly toward the sound of Anguish’s voice. He stepped in from the doorway, his expression somber. He wore none of Neveni’s jubilant glow.
“Anguish,” I whispered. What a fitting name he had been given. Anguish.
Tyrus was dead.
And the image of him filled my mind.
Along with the memory of what Tyrus had done at that last moment, with his last act, the very last impulse firing in his brain…
He had…
He had pushed me away from the blast.
“It had to be done.” Anguish stopped a few paces away, his tone gentle as he said, “You saved us. You nearly perished yourself.…”
“I was farther from it than he,” I said, my head reeling. I hadn’t been farther, not at first. Not until he’d pushed me from the blast.
He’d had time to react, and he’d reacted… by shoving me away. He’d made no move to escape it. If he’d but leaped forward, I would have received the full force of the discharge along with him, but instead…
Instead…
He’d absorbed it all himself. Now I was alive and he was dead.
“His drones went dead as soon as his heart stopped.” Neveni looked gleeful, as though fighting back the need to whoop and dance about the chamber. “It was a complete…” She trailed off as Anguish touched her arm, then cleared her throat. “It’s over, is what I mean.”
A dim chord of recognition made me stare at her. Here was the old Neveni, the one I’d known before the loss of Lumina. Enlivened by hope.
And yet I could feel no joy in response.
The overload should have killed me. I’d been as close to it as he had. His body blocked it from hitting mine.
Neveni seemed to mistake my silence for disbelief. “It’s over,” she repeated. “Truly. The Grandiloquy panicked—once the drones died, they fled. We fired our remaining missiles at the Alexandria, then invaded. The resistance was—”
“Why am I alive?” I murmured, thinking of what Tyrus had done.
“You were still breathing.” She glanced at Anguish. “Well, you weren’t the only one with a secret plan. When the others left the Arbiter, Anguish and I stayed behind. There’s a cargo box that blocks sensors, just big enough for the two of us. We waited in there. When we felt the power discharge, we got out and went looking for you, hoping—”
“You were very close to death,” Anguish cut in. “But still alive.”
Of course I had been. Tyrus had stayed right in place, planted between me and the explosion.
He hadn’t tried to escape it.
Why hadn’t he tried?
“But we found you in time.” Neveni laughed exultantly. “Oh, Nemesis—” She clapped. “When I saw you there beside him—when I saw him, when I realized you’d actually done it…”
My mouth felt bone dry. I stood up on legs I could not feel. “And… him?” I could not speak his name.
They exchanged a swift, unreadable look.
“You did it,” Neveni said again, as though this were an answer.
Except—it was an answer.
I turned away, staring at the boarding artery connected to the Alexandria.
I was certain I should feel something. Grief. Triumph. Yet I was numb. My thoughts felt like clay, thick
and unwieldy.
“All the machines linked to him are disabled?” I heard myself ask, thinking of those security bots I’d watched clang to the ground about us.
“Yes. We’ve walked through the Alexandria and they’re all disabled. Waiting for another Domitrian with the scepter to take command.” Satisfaction filled her voice, for there were no more Domitrians and the scepter was destroyed. “And we get his ship.”
“How?” I said. “You can’t take command unless—”
“Oh of course I know the ship is useless without his authorization codes,” she said hastily. “But we’ll find a way around it.”
I just stared at her.
“Don’t you see? This is the time!” Neveni came to my side, eagerness radiating from her. “We’ll take his ship to the Chrysanthemum. They’ll think it’s the Emperor, returned from the disaster—alive and well. We can fake his image in a holographic. The entire Chrysanthemum is in orbit around Eurydice right now. Once we’re close enough, we can destroy it.”
“How is that possible?”
“We’ve run the calculations. If we move quickly, if we use the element of surprise, the ships won’t be able to unlink in time. We’ll just need enough explosive force to deorbit the whole thing. Without a Domitrian mind to synchronize the systems and tell the linked vessels where to navigate, they’ll—”
“Burn up in Eurydice’s atmosphere,” I finished for her. How curiously calm I sounded. Should I not be jubilant, as she was? I remembered his eyes, the moment before he died. I remembered our lips, pressed together.
I had learned to weep. But my eyes now were dry. All I could think of was Tyrus before the power core, awaiting the blast.…
Was I not so human as I’d thought? Was I truly just a creature? For there was no feeling left in me. The explosion of the power core had killed it.
Anguish, I saw, was frowning at me. But Neveni’s bright mood did not flag. “You have to come with us,” she said, grasping my arm and pulling me toward the door. “Once we pull it off, we’ll land right on Eurydice. The galactic media will all be there. They’ll be in shock, of course, but if you—”
“Neveni. Let her rest,” said Anguish abruptly.
She started to object, then looked between us. Smile fading, she let go of my arm.
“Of course,” she said hastily. “Rest, yes—you nearly died, after all. And got a makeover. And killed the Galactic Emperor.” A quick, uneasy laugh. “Not in that order, of course.”
She hesitated, as though awaiting my agreement. “Of course not,” I said. “No use making over a corpse.”
Wrong reply. She looked stricken, suddenly. Then her eyes flooded with tears.
“Oh, Nemesis.” Abruptly, she surged forward and threw her arms around me. “Thank you. Thank you!”
I did not move as she pulled away, as they left me alone in the room. In the silence after their departure, I turned to stare again at the clouds.
I could no longer see any shapes. The clouds blurred, but not because of my tears. My eyes remained dry, and the clouds continued to blur and resolve as I waited for something to clarify.
I had killed Tyrus.
He was dead.
I turned that strange thought around in my head.
I’d killed him. It was done. I had finally done it.
I had ended the threat to this galaxy.
He was dead, the person whom I’d loved more than anything.
He would never breathe again. I would never see him again.
I had done that.
And yet he had to know what I’d done. He must have understood it in those final moments.
Still—he had not moved, as though he meant to shield me from the blast. He had saved me. He had forfeited any chance at saving himself to save me. Though I killed him.
And the tears would never return—I understood that suddenly. The explosion of the power core had killed Tyrus.
Yet something in me had perished as well.
35
TIME HAD GONE awry, as though we were close to a black hole. Each second felt unnaturally extended. I would look at the chronometer, convinced that hours must have passed, only to find it had been mere minutes, sometimes seconds.
I wandered the swarming corridors of the Arbiter with the odd sense that I had left some crucial task undone. The ship was crowded with Partisans transferred from vessels too crippled by the gale to function. Their conversations reached me in fevered snippets. Many had decided to defect from other subleaders to follow Neveni. They toasted to her, they roared her name.
They spoke my name too—but softly and reverentially, bowing their heads as I passed. They all now knew that I’d been a co-conspirator rather than a captive. Yet their awe only increased my detachment. When they pressed their hands to their hearts in tribute to me, I could not manage to return the salute. I found myself studying my own hand, rubbing my thumb over my fingers, amazed that I could still feel. Tyrus was dead, but I was the ghost—stranded among the living, untouched by their elation and untouchable.
Why had Neveni and Anguish revived me? A person who believed in fate, in the Living Cosmos, would wonder what possible purpose she might have now. I felt… extinguished.
My mind wandered again and again to Tyrus standing tall before the swelling light of the engine core, and then Tyrus as I’d last seen him, his eyes fixed wide. He would have had only a moment—long enough to understand that I had killed him. Long enough to feel surprise. Long enough to register that the blast would kill us both. Long enough to calculate the way to preserve one of us.
I wanted to see him. To close his eyes. To ensure they were not open anymore.
When I asked Neveni over the transmitter if I could view his body, a few moments’ silence passed. Then, voice soft, she said, “Nemesis, we delivered his body into the star.”
Out the window, my eyes found that star, gleaming through the thin bands of the chaotic gale—far beyond the asteroids and the scattered Partisan vessels, beyond even the dead drones that drifted through space, untethered from the Domitrian mind that had once given them purpose.
“Already? Why?” I whispered.
“If we’d kept it on the ship…,” she said with a hint of vexation in her voice.
It, I thought.
“Someone could have grabbed it. They might’ve used it to make him into a martyr. Or one of our people might have desecrated it. You wouldn’t want that.”
The star burned fiercely, and when I closed my eyes, a bright spot lingered. “You gave him a Helionic burial.”
“Anguish said you would prefer that. Since I don’t believe in the Living Cosmos, I don’t care one way or another if the body burns in a star.”
A Helionic burial. My mind at last sharpened into focus. Perhaps the old rituals would grant me some understanding, a measure of peace or comfort.
I made my way swiftly back through the crowds. I was grateful when I saw the sign posted on the outer door, forbidding newcomers from entering the sanctum for purposes other than quiet reflection. On this day of wild celebration, the chamber stood empty.
For a moment, I lingered on the periphery, oddly hesitant. Once, in this very place, I had been officially declared a person by the faith.
And once, in a very similar place, I had bidden farewell to Donia. It was the only Helionic funeral I had ever attended.
Only Tyrus and I had realized the significance of the ceremony, of course. It had followed shortly after his coronation, when the time had come to launch the remains of Emperor Randevald von Domitrian into the sacred hypergiant Hephaestus. The corpse had been preserved in stasis for a month awaiting the fanfare of its trip into a star.
Tyrus had not considered his uncle worthy of the honor of an Emperor’s funerary rites. He’d told me—and only me—that he’d had Sidonia’s body placed in the coffin instead. We’d stood amid the crowd in the Great Heliosphere, donning gems that linked mourners together into a great current that symbolized the pulse of the Living Cos
mos, and we’d watched as Sidonia’s black crystalline coffin was launched into the star.
I reached down now into my pocket, where Sidonia’s cloud sphere still resided. It had survived the blast too.
I could think of no more precious substitute for Tyrus’s body. My mind dwelled upon that supernova, for Donia had gone into that star. Once the star erupted, it sent all of itself soaring across the galaxy.
“You are everywhere now,” I whispered to Donia, my heart crushing in my chest. “And with me always.” My lips traced the cold contours of the sphere, and then I placed it lovingly into the launcher tube.
A mechanical roar as the crystalline chute drew the device toward the lip of space.
I never took my eyes from it. Without Donia, I would not have learned to love. Not truly. For I’d loved her beyond a Diabolic’s artificial bond. I’d loved her for being the human being who showed me that I had a soul. I had blamed her for this in my dreams, after what Tyrus did to me—for I would never have loved him if not for her.
But I also might never have stopped him if not for her. She was the reason I knew of my own humanity—and that was what awoke me to the humanity of others, the sacredness of their lives. I owed her an immeasurable debt.
This orb was the only physical token that remained of Donia. But today belonged as much to her as to anyone. And my love for her, and my love for Tyrus—these two were inextricable, for without one, I would not have had the other. She had been reunited with the pulse of the divine Cosmos and now he was there with her, and so perhaps this was a way to commemorate both of them.
I launched her into the star with a whispered, “Good-bye, Donia. Look after him, if you can. I will love you both until I join you.”
Then the sphere receded into the blackness of space until it was too tiny to see, and utter silence fell about me, thick and unbreakable.
It dawned upon me that nothing remained to be done.
There was nothing else to commemorate, and no action left to take. It was all finished.
Hopelessness swirled through me. I stared at the launching tube. Death was empty. There were no answers to be had, no one I could ask who could answer for Tyrus: Why had he saved me?
The Nemesis Page 22