Seven Devils

by Laura Lam

  Rhea’s expression turned apologetic. “Hit you with an oil canister.”

  “Unfuckingbelievable,” he muttered. His muscles strained as he pulled at the ropes again.

  “You’re not going to get those off,” Rhea said. She held up the syringe from the med kit. “After treating your wound, I injected you with a blocker that works on your sympathetic nervous system. It’ll keep the Oracle in its background processing stage so One doesn’t flood your system with adrenaline and cortisol while we talk.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. If he’d hidden in the vents for nearly a week, he’d be malnourished. “I can get you something to eat.”

  “Pass. For all I know, you’ll poison it.”

  “If I wanted you dead, you would be.” She rose and left him, grabbing the first thing she saw in the canteen: Ariadne’s dessert bars. The girl was going to kill her when she found out.

  When she returned to the command center, he looked more alert. She unwrapped the bar and held it to his mouth. “Eat.”

  “Told you I wasn’t interested.”

  “You’re starving.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Stop being stubborn,” she said.

  With a glare, he leaned forward and bit into the bar. He closed his eyes, as if to savor the taste, and kept eating.

  “So, I take it you weren’t in that ship we destroyed?” she asked. “Or Asteria?”

  “Misdirection. I stayed behind to gather intel.” He finished off the bar and leaned back, exhausted. “Stupid decision, really. Your friend shot me and it’s worse than I thought.”

  Rhea frowned. His skin was pallid, his breathing too slow. When Rhea touched his forehead, his skin burned to the touch. “How long have you been like this?”

  “Few days.” He gestured to his midsection. Dried blood stained his jacket. “Wound’s infected. Wasn’t gonna live if I didn’t make it off it the ship . . .” His voice was trailing off. He shut his eyes, shook his head hard, and started muttering Tholosian propaganda phrases: “Tholos is might. Victory is strength. Failure is weakness. The Scythe slices the soul. The Gods will have their sacrifice. I sacrifice myself to Tholos.”

  Seven devils. The Oracle might not be able to activate his acute stress response, but One’s background processes were still active. Simple repetition to ensure constant compliance. One of Rhea’s clients used to mumble phrases in his sleep.

  “Hey.” Rhea grabbed his jacket, shaking him. “Pilot.”

  He still muttered under his breath, his eyes rolling up in his skull.

  “No,” Rhea whispered fiercely. “You’re not going to die on me.” Not after that Evoli. Not after what she’d seen.

  When the pilot finally passed out again, Rhea checked his pulse every few minutes.

  She was going to save him.

  We have to be better.

  32.

  PRINCESS DISCORDIA

  Five years ago

  “On your feet.”

  The soft command jolted Discordia into awareness. How long had she spent in this room, sitting beside the murdered bodies of soldiers the Archon tasked her to fight? Yet another test, another demonstration he required from his favored child to keep his high regard.

  Focus or die, he’d told her over the comms as he lowered the temperature in the training compound on Macella to conditions no one without body modifications could withstand. The soldiers had all been warm in their thermal uniforms while she fought them off in a thin jumpsuit—with no weapons.

  Dimly, Discordia recalled water spraying from the ceiling’s sprinklers as she’d dodged Mors blasts and hidden blades. The water had turned to ice on her skin, but still she’d fought. Her father was right: focus or die.

  All she wanted was to survive.

  The floor of the facility had iced over. The frost had burned at first, but then it only felt numb. Earlier, a movement had jarred Discordia from her frozen reverie, and she looked over to see one soldier still alive. His breath rattled.

  His eyes were strange. Discordia frowned, scooting closer. His pupils were widening and contracting, widening and contracting. Discordia knew from her training that when the Oracle switched to foreground processing, the pupils dilated.

  “Sergeant Gaius.” Discordia said his name softly.

  He sighed. “My head . . . so quiet.”

  Quiet?

  The Oracle’s voice, Discordia realized. He must not be hearing the subtle programming that indicated the Oracle was active, One’s whisper in the head of every soldier that spoke of victory, conquest, and loyalty to the Empire. Was it the cold? Or something else?

  He shut his eyes. Discordia had no time; he was dying.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked him in a rough whisper. “Dying?”

  “No,” he breathed. She could barely hear Sergeant Gaius’s voice, and had to inch closer to hear his last words. “I like the silence.”

  Discordia had unhooked her necklace and given every soldier last rites. But that had been so long ago. Had her father forgotten her?

  She had no choice but to wait.

  Her hand was stiff with blood when she slipped it into her pocket and felt the rough edges of Xander’s firewolf. She’d flown to Macella after he’d given it to her, sought out her father. I have doubts, she wanted to tell the Archon when she arrived. I felt guilt for killing people. Make it go away.

  She never got the words out. Her father had taken one look at her—perhaps he’d seen something in her face—and told her to get into the training room. “Don’t disappoint me,” he’d said before he locked her in.

  Discordia didn’t know how long she’d been in the room. Hours? Days?

  “On your feet,” the Archon said again, standing before her.

  She hadn’t heard him enter. He’d stepped in the blood of his soldiers and left boot prints on the floor. Did he care? Did he care about anything other than battle and conquest? These loyal soldiers had all died for a mere test.

  Look up. Meet his eyes, she thought. See for yourself.

  But when she did, Discordia found no answer. Her father’s gaze was as frigid and inhospitable as the room he’d left her in.

  Discordia had spent too long in the cold; her mind was not as sharp as it usually was. She was tired, and the guilt had settled cold and hard in her belly once more. That was the only explanation she had for why she said, “I thought about peace. I’m not fit to be your Heir.”

  Something in his expression faltered. In the end, he only reached out and lifted her chin. His fingers burned her cold skin. “On your feet, Discordia,” he said once more, and released her. He left her.

  Had the longing in his face been real, or was it only her imagination?

  Discordia stood on shaking legs and closed her hand around the firewolf in her pocket. The sharp edges bit into her fingers as she stepped over Sergeant Gaius’s corpse.

  She wondered whether he’d be dead if the Oracle had given him a choice.

  * * *

  —

  Urion, one of Discordia’s brothers, was going to kill Xander.

  Discordia had tracked Urion to Regulas, a moon in the outer quadrant of the Iona Galaxy where she knew Xander had gone. Xander had been reckless. He’d left an encrypted message that allowed her to track his whereabouts—a stupid decision, she’d thought. Bring the firewolf back to me sometime, he’d said. Why would he do that? Why would he make such a foolish choice just because she’d taken that carving? Didn’t he know not to trust her?

  More than once, Discordia had convinced herself to go after him.

  Every time, she changed her mind.

  Two brothers in the same place, she thought to herself, tracking Urion through the trees of the moon’s thick northern forest. She’d put off killing Xander long enough. It was time to final
ly slit his throat and leave the firewolf behind. Xander was responsible for this doubt, this guilt. He had to die for it.

  The scent of woodsmoke grew stronger as Discordia followed Urion—Xander’s camp couldn’t be far. As she edged through the trees, she watched her brother’s movements for any indication that he was aware of her. He wasn’t. When Discordia had seen Urion train, it was clear that he was unexceptional. Not weak or strong; an average candidate in a cutthroat competition. The fault, perhaps, had been with his prefect, a former member of the royal guard who had been too rash with his charge. Impatient for results, and for the prestige of having trained one of the surviving Heirs. Mistress Heraia had considered his teachings inadequate.

  For Mistress Heraia’s patience had been so endless that it, too, had been a form of torture. She had been the first to leave Discordia in desolate rooms with corpses for company.

  Discordia crouched behind the bushes as Urion reached Xander’s camp. Xander was there, sitting by the fire, as if awaiting such a fate. There was a formality to the way the royal cohort had been taught to duel; they approached each other as adversaries, yes, but there was a civility to it. Rules of straightforward approaches. The challenge had to be issued.

  It was as formal as giving last rites.

  Urion greeted Xander in the usual way: “I challenge you.” No regret, no emotion. Only facts. “Choose your weapons.”

  Xander gave a short nod and rose. The brothers were of equal height, both had pale skin and dark hair. Discordia resembled neither of them; her and Damocles’s features had been chosen differently, hair like spun gold to contrast their black-haired siblings. Where Urion lacked similarity in coloring, he matched Damocles in physicality. His body was large and muscled, whereas Xander’s was more compact, athletic. Their strengths would be different.

  “Hand-to-hand,” Xander said.

  Discordia reared back sharply. Was he insane? The entire point of the challenge was an acknowledgment of an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. It had been an opportunity for Xander to choose his best weapon—a blade. He had been good with blades, Discordia recalled. Urion outmatched him in hand-to-hand.

  Even Urion seemed startled, but only said, “I accept.”

  Their fight began.

  From the moment it started, Discordia knew Xander was going to lose. He was quick, yes, but Urion landed blows that made Xander double over with the force. Worse, it seemed he wasn’t even trying.

  Damn you, Xander, she thought. Fight. Put up a fucking fight.

  But she could practically read his thoughts: what did it matter? Only two siblings would win, anyway. One was not going to be Xander. The other was not likely to be Urion. Why fight the inevitable? Why win now only to lose later?

  Urion punched Xander so hard that he stumbled. Discordia winced, watching as her stronger brother slid an arm around Xander’s throat and cut off his air supply.

  Leave him, she told herself. Urion was doing her a favor. She wouldn’t have to kill Xander; all she had to do was wait until her brother choked the life out of him.

  Easy, she thought, as the guilt squeezed her chest. It felt like she was being choked, too. So easy. Ea—

  Her hand found the firewolf in her pocket. Rough edges. Carved lovingly by Xander’s hand, even after his fingers had been broken over and over and over again by his prefect to discourage it. He’d never carve anything that beautiful again.

  He’d be dead.

  Discordia’s Mors was in her hand before she could think. She raised the weapon, aimed, and fired.

  It was a killing blow straight into Urion’s skull.

  Xander heaved in a breath as he collapsed onto the ground. He looked up as she came out of the trees, and his eyes touched on her, on the Mors still gripped in her hand, then on their dead brother. A drop of blood slid down Urion’s forehead.

  “You didn’t challenge him,” Xander said hoarsely.

  No, she hadn’t. Discordia had broken the rules. She was a fucking fool for coming there. “And you didn’t even put up a fight.”

  Xander shut his eyes and wiped the blood from an injury at his temple. The nanites in his system were healing his wounds already. In another hour, he’d be completely recovered. “Are you going to challenge me or not?” When she didn’t answer, he just shook his head and took off his scythe necklace. “Then why did you even leave home?”

  Home? Where was home? It wasn’t back at the palace on Macella, where she had left the gerulae to their task of dragging her victims’ corpses out of the training facility. Not back at the academy on Myndalia, either; nightmares forced her to recall every brutal session Mistress Heraia offered there. Neither of those places were safe. Nowhere in the galaxy was safe for her.

  Discordia didn’t have a home.

  She gritted her teeth. Stop it. “I left because my tracker indicated Urion was coming here,” she said a touch too sharply. “And you told me you’d be here.”

  “So, you executed him to save me.”

  A denial was on her lips. Save? She didn’t save people. She was the God of Death’s servant. She did not give life. “Did you want to lose to Urion?” she asked him.

  Her brother went quiet. Some emotion worked through his features—a strange thing to witness that indecision. Survival felt like such a prominent aspect of their training that Discordia had mistaken it for intrinsicness. Something coded into their DNA.

  “No,” he said softly. His eyes met hers. “I want you to be the one to kill me.”

  Discordia did not expect such a statement to weigh so heavily on her. But it did. It hurt. Why did it hurt? Why did she care? “Another time, then,” she said, taking off her own scythe necklace. “But don’t get comfortable. You’ll be next on my list.”

  Discordia ignored Xander’s smile and settled next to him. Together, they said last rites over the body of their dead brother.

  * * *

  —

  Xander was having a nightmare.

  It had been careless of Discordia to accept his invitation to rest before taking her bullet craft back—but it had been even more reckless for him to fall asleep with her sharing his tent. She had set up her cot several feet away, and she kept her back pressed to the trunk he’d used for their dinner table. Carelessness was one thing; trust was fatal.

  But Discordia had been weary after killing Urion. She had wanted to sit and rest.

  Most of all, she didn’t want to be alone. These days, she had thought too often of the freedom on Sergeant Gaius’s face when he died.

  Stop thinking about him. Rest.

  When she shut her eyes, Xander gave another rough shout. He had tossed and turned for the last hour, his prefect’s name uttered in some pleading litany. No, no, no.

  “Weak,” Discordia said to herself, rolling the word on her tongue. She played with the knife in her hand; she’d taken it out when she accepted his invitation to stay. She ought to cross his name off her list.

  Still, she couldn’t bring herself to move. One strategic strike of the knife, and she’d be all alone again, with no one but a father who used her as a weapon and another brother who loathed her as his competition. This one didn’t. This one just wanted another day in this fucking galaxy. Discordia wondered at Xander. Perhaps she, too, slept restlessly. Perhaps some memories of her time at the academy floated to the surface then, negligently spilling over without her permission. No one had ever been in a position to let Discordia know.

  The thought unsettled her.

  She felt for her firewolf talisman. How ridiculous to draw comfort from a carving. How childish.

  With a disgusted noise, Discordia slid her knife into her belt and stood. “Xander,” Discordia called. “Wake up.”

  Her brother woke more quietly than he slept. He blinked and stared at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. “You’re still here.”


  “I’m leaving.” She should have left hours earlier, when one of the other moons came over the horizon. She snatched the firewolf out of her clothes and held it out. “I only stayed to give you this.”

  Xander stared at the carving but made no move to take it. “Why?”

  Discordia hated his questions, his probing eyes. Most of all, she hated that he made her doubt everything. “Why what?” she practically snarled.

  “You could have given it to me earlier,” he pointed out. “Or left it on your cot. You didn’t have to stay.”

  She made some soft noise and looked away. How could she tell him that the unpleasant gnawing in her gut quieted when she saw him or when she felt the rough edges of his carving? That he had done her a kindness, and generosity was not a language she understood? It was as unfamiliar as the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

  “You talk in your sleep,” she told him. She had not meant the words to sound so accusing, but they did anyway.

  Xander’s lip lifted in a not-quite-smile. “Hear anything interesting?”

  She did not answer his question. “We went through the same things, back at the academy. The grueling training, the long hours. I had my fingers broken for painting once. I had seen the gerulae mindlessly constructing a mural, and I marveled at the colors, the detailing. The Oracle had probably fed them the instructions and worked their hands. But I figured that if a husk could create something that beautiful, why couldn’t I? I never picked up a brush again.”

  He didn’t say anything right away. Rather, his gaze searched hers, as if trying to understand the sister who was his enemy. Perhaps he comprehended that he was there on borrowed time—time that she had bestowed. Because he asked, “Would you have wanted to?”

  “I don’t know.” She slid her hands across the face of the wolf. “Every time I look at this, I wonder what life I might have lived if I had been given the choice. You would not be on my list. Because I wouldn’t have one.”

  Xander sat up and rested his wrists on his knees. “I made that when I found out what happened to the firewolves. We revered them, put them in those murals you love so much. They thrived in the forests of Syrmia, a planet on the border of the old Tholosian kingdom—before we conquered the whole galaxy. And—”