The Sovereign wasn’t worried about me knowing anything, else why play the game? But as soon as Mustang entered the room, the paradigm altered. She should have concluded the game then and there. But her pride got the better of her.

As for Mustang, I knew she was with me as soon as she took the gold horse ring I gave her from her pocket and slipped it onto her finger. My heart leaped in that moment, and I knew she’d find our way out of this.

“Sevro.” I smile and clasp his hand. “Our ArchGovernor is—”

“I know. Mustang briefed us.”

“Come here, you tall devil.” Quinn steps past the others and slips her thin arm around my waist and kisses my cheek. She smells like home. I have missed these people. The wind howls as it passes through our jamField. Sevro’s bionic eye glitters unnaturally. Quinn has brought me gravBoots, ebony in color. I slip them on.

“Mustang might have brought us from the Rim. But we didn’t come for her. We didn’t come for Augustus. We came for you, Reaper,” Sevro snarls. Quinn frowns as Sevro spits on the pretty carpet. “We saw what you did to Cassius. And we want what you’re trying to make.”

“And that is?” I ask, more than a little confused.

“What poor killers always want. War,” he growls. “And all its spoils.”

“What of your father? He has a high place now.”

“Fitchner is a shiteater,” he sneers. “He’s made his bed. Let him sleep in it while we burn the house down.”

“Well, if you want war, if you want spoils, we better move. The ArchGovernor’s the one with an army.”

Quinn nods. “And Roque’s down there. And Tactus.”

“Tactus,” Sevro mutters, though I know the sneer on his face is for Roque. He watches Quinn, eyes sad for the smallest moment, before adjusting his armor.

“So what’s the plan?” I ask, and take the razor Pebble offers me.

Sevro and Quinn look at each other and laugh. “Mustang’s fetching a ship. She said you’d figure out the rest,” Quinn says.

Just then the door behind me shudders and glows with a dilating pupil of red-hot metal, and I notice something. The bag that Sevro threw down. It moves.

Sevro smiles at me. I know that smile.

“Sevro?”

“Reaper.”

“What did you do?”

“Mustang brought us a package. Let’s just say”—Quinn grins at my shoulder—“it’s not their cook.”

I unzip the bag and gawk.

“Are you mad?” I ask him.

He just howls.

18

BLOODSTAINS

Father once told me that a Helldiver can never stop. You stop and the drill can jam. The fuel burns too quickly. The quota might be missed. You never stop, just shift drills if the friction gets too hot. Caution comes second. Use your inertia, your momentum. That is why we dance. Transfer movement into more movement. Uncle Narol always told me to stop. He was wrong. Blew so many drill bits because of him.

Then again, Narol lived longer than Father, so maybe he has a point.

My Howlers jump with me out the window and we don’t stop when we dive into the black storm. We freefall, piercing the clouds without the use of our gravBoots. Like black rain screaming toward the ground. I’m first. I feel them behind me. My Howlers. The oxygen is thin at first. I hold my breath. My eyeballs nearly freeze in their sockets. Tears trickle out. My body shivers as the cold wind bites me.

We use our gravBoots now to cut across the Citadel. Skirt among the clouds to keep from sight. Villas beneath. Buildings, gardens, and parks. Barracks and statued plazas. A ripWing cuts through the sky. We slide behind a spire and stick there like spiders till our scanners say he’s passed. I shiver amid my armored friends. Then we float down again. A kilometer from the villa. Weed carries Sevro’s present now. Slung around his back, it weighs him down a bit.

I land on the wall that surrounds the villa and separates it from the other compounds where the other notable families hunker in fear of what the night brings.

It’s warmer now that we’re lower to the ground. Howlers land around me, looking like gargoyles on the wall. Darkness claims the villa’s grounds.

“We’re early?” I wonder. No signs of fighting. But the lights are out.

“Or late,” Sevro says, “if they were murdered in their beds.”

“This is to look like a Bellona massacre. The Sovereign won’t want to be implicated.” But what does that even mean? The Bellona would come with Grays, Obsidians, Golds, and despite all their vaunted honor, they would destroy every last woman and child with any means at their disposal. You do not let your foot off the throat of an enemy and remain powerful, as they have, for hundreds of years.

The killing will be silent, though. The Sovereign may control the Citadel, but chaos would bring unwelcome eyes, unwelcome variables, and it would make her look weak. Better to have the act done. Better to say the Bellona did it and damn what anyone thinks. With the Augustans dead, what is the point in mourning them? That’s how Golds think. But if they are alive having escaped assassination … well, that’s another thing entirely.

“Quinn.” I lean close so I can hear her whisper.

“Visual is too clear. If they have optics, they’ll spot us up on the wall.” She points to the roof. “We can make an incursion there. Sweep down level by level.” I hear the worry in her voice.

“We’ll get Roque,” I say. “Promise.” I pat her arm. “Sevro, how long till we have the shuttle?”

“Mustang is ten out.”

I pop my neck and rub the rain between my fingers. “Per aspera ad astra.”

“Through the thorns to the stars.” Sevro snickers. “You fancy little fart. Omnis vir lupus.” Everyone a wolf. The Howlers flash smiles to one another, and we rip away from the wall.

We land on the roof. Silent and dark. Weed stays on the high wall with Mustang’s present squirming in the bag. Predators, we stalk over clay tiles in through a window on the villa’s seventh level, two at a time. The place is a complex. Dozens of rooms. Seven levels. Fountains running throughout. Baths. Basement. Steam rooms. Their infrared is worthless, then. Too much hot water going through pipes. It’s quiet as a crypt in here.

We creep along, checking the bedrooms, flowing like water around one another as we did at the Institute. Sevro and Thistle ghost ahead, scouting. GravBoots deactivated so the hum can’t be heard. There’s not a soul to be seen. Every room empty, beds unmade, including the ArchGovernor’s. The Augustans are not here. So where are they?

They’ve no military armaments besides some armor and razors and a few pulseFists. The bodyguards were wiped out before they even returned to the villa. Augustus and his entourage couldn’t have climbed the walls. Perhaps they flew away on gravBoots? But they would have been spotted. Shot down. We only slipped in because we’re unexpected.

“Captured?” Sevro asks.

No. For the Praetorians tonight, the only good Augustan is a dead one.

Pop.

We all look at one another. A jamField has just gone up. A big one. We’re inside it. Likely, the whole villa complex is inside it. Something’s about to happen. I glance out the window and see a shadow moving across the garden lawn. Three shadows in the rain. I duck and signal Sevro. Praetorians. GhostCloaks. My heart makes my rib cage rattle.

He moves to the window, about to jump out to try to kill them. I pull him back.

“What the hell are you doing?” I whisper.

He scowls. “I want to kill someone.”

“Not yet, dammit. We’re not an army.”

No one on the seventh level. We go down a circular marble stairwell. Their oiled armor creaks softly, echoing down the cavernous stairwell. We can see the marble of the first level more than a hundred feet beneath, but no movement. The first blood is found on the sixth level, seeping from the steam room. Pull the door open, heart throbbing into my throat, ready to see mutilated Golds. It’s a sadder sight.