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We’re in one of my brother’s craters. Now I see why Kavax didn’t send in men through the tunnel earlier. It’s in the center of a Vox mobile infantry legion headquarters. Lionguard and Pegasus Legion gunships lay waste to the camp. Holiday leads the special forces troopers straight into the back of a waiting assault transport. Its guns rattle as we lift off as soon as I’m aboard. Fifty Pegasus troopers activate their boots and fly close behind the transport as the door seals.
The war becomes a distant rumble.
A medical team waiting in the assault shuttle rushes to me. Before I can object, they sedate me. I feel our escape from atmosphere distantly through the bumps that resonate through the deck. When I go weightless, I know we have made it to space. When the shuttle wheezes to a stop and clunks down on a deck, I know I have made it to the Reynard. I close my eyes and succumb to the loss of blood.
* * *
—
I wake to find Darrow’s mother asleep at my bedside with Sophocles in her arms. The ship is quiet. It seems they disengaged with the Vox fleet. Monitors above me track my vitals. I am in the Reynard’s medical bay. Sophocles wakes up first and give
s a little yip and jumps on my bed. I wince as pain races through my right side from my wound.
“Stupid animal!” Deanna says, swatting it away. She wipes sleep from her eyes and looks down on me with such protective love that I start to cry. Not for myself. But for her, for the pain I see in her eyes, and all the pain she must have felt these last days for her son, for her grandson, for Sevro, for me. And then I cry for Daxo and Theodora, and the friends I left behind with the monster. She cradles me as I do, humming in my ear as I have always wished my mother had done for me.
* * *
—
Hours later, when I’ve worked up the strength, Kavax and Niobe come to see me. I worry for a moment that Nakamura was too ashamed to come, but then Deanna drags her inside. Holiday can barely meet my eyes for the shame of letting me be captured. It wasn’t her fault. I was thoroughly undone. I’d weep again to Kavax and Niobe for Daxo, but all that needs to wait.
“Has Heliopolis fallen?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Kavax says. “But our agents say it only has days left.”
“Darrow?” I ask.
“We don’t know,” Niobe says.
“Pax?”
Kavax can’t answer, so Niobe does. “Ephraim ti Horn abducted them from the Obsidian. Their whereabouts are currently unknown.”
“Abducted them? Again?”
“We don’t know why. But it occurred immediately after the Pandora was hit. Victra is missing. Her escape shuttle was found, but the first rescue team was shot down crossing Obsidian airspace. Her legions were grounded on the orders of the ArchGovernor, for fear they would initiate a war with Sefi’s Obsidian.”
I lean forward in hope. “Rollo survived then.” He’s a good man. Stalwart. Tough. Loyal. And he was a Son of Ares.
“No,” Holiday says. “They assassinated him in Agea.” I sink into the bed. “Then it’s Vorol?” They shake their heads. “They got him too? Then who took the post?”
“Some idiot,” Deanna says.
“Kieran,” Kavax answers heavily. “Temporary appointment by Mars’s regional governors.”
Darrow’s brother. I sent him to Mars with Niobe to negotiate with the Obsidian. I’m hopelessly behind. Wait, no, Publius and Zan mentioned this.
“Who assaulted the ship?”
“It looks like Sefi,” Kavax says. I just blink at him. “I never thought we should have trusted that mongrel breed. First the Coppers, then the crows.” Looking up at them, I just realize they think Publius did all this. I don’t have time to explain. Calming her husband, Niobe shows me the current disposition of ships in the system. Atalantia is still massed at Mercury, with a smaller fleet at Venus. Most of the Republic battleships are here around Luna, while the Ecliptic Guard gathers over Mars.
“Is this fleet strong enough to break through Ash Armada over Mercury?” I ask Kavax.
“Yes,” Kavax says.
“No,” Niobe corrects. “We cannot defeat them without Ecliptic Guard or the Vox fleet joining us. We might be able to break through as is, but to land and load under fire…” She stiffens. “A miracle could occur, or it could be the greatest disaster of the war.”
“We have to try,” Kavax says. “Darrow would for us.”
