Error landed on Troy’s sterile atmospheric docks, the shining silver platforms connected to the city by tethered elevators.
Ari’s band of knights couldn’t resist making a few faces in the small ship windows of their armored escorts. Ari tasted a wild humor at having trounced Mercer in this simple—and yet bizarrely satisfying—way. She displayed her middle finger for the shouting, shoving associates, while Kay dropped his pants and gave them the pressed ham on the glass.
“We only have minutes,” Gwen said heatedly, drying out everyone’s laughs. “Merlin, block their communications.” Merlin complied, fingers dancing while various sensors and dishes crumpled on the outside of the Mercer ships. Ari’s sense of lightness crumpled as well.
They dropped into the city in a glass elevator. Merlin’s jaw hung open as he took in a planet that was entirely human-made. One enormous city covered the entire thing, without interruption. “Troy has no indigenous nature,” Lam explained. “Just barren rock coated and recoated by skyscrapers. Bet you haven’t seen anything like it.”
“I have,” he said. “This is quite like Mumbai or Tokyo or New York City in the twenty-third century, but even then, we had… sky.” Merlin’s eyes pointedly turned toward the pale atmosphere that glowed digitally, changing advertisements at swift intervals.
Ari put an arm around her magician. “It could be worse.”
“It’s worse,” Kay said, pointing to a patch that lit up with Ari’s picture. WANTED. DANGEROUS. KETCHAN. DO NOT APPROACH. The words scrolled beneath her scowling face, the image taken from too close—from when she’d used that couple’s watch to take tourist photos on Heritage. She could see the visor of the knight’s suit pushed all the way up. She should have kept the damn thing on to talk to them.
“Shit,” Gwen said, and Ari looked at her wife, startled into a smile by how sexy Gwen sounded when she swore. “Val?”
“They can’t detain her once you’re inside the government offices,” Val said. “It’s a bizarre sanctuary loophole left over from when Troy had its own government, before Mercer swallowed it. You’ll have to get there before anyone spots her, though.”
“We move fast,” Jordan said, her armor taking up most of the elevator. “The people here aren’t strong enough to stand up to Mercer. They do as they’re told. They’ll report us.”
Lam took off the purple scarf they were wearing and draped it around Ari’s head. “And we’ll go separate ways. We’ll draw less attention if there are fewer of us traveling together.”
Gwen took control with a succinct tilt of her head. “Jordan and Ari are with me.”
Ari touched Merlin’s shoulder. “You’re with the boys and Lam. Take care of them?”
“No harm will come to them,” Merlin promised, holding up two fingers as if making some kind of strange pledge.
She squeezed his thin shoulders and ruffled his red hair. “I trust you,” she whispered. She never wanted to catch him staring into the void like he had during their spacewalk—as if he were about to be eaten whole by a cruel, pointless universe. Ari had felt like that after she lost her family, before she settled into life with Kay and the moms. “You’re one of us now, got it?”
Merlin nodded with those large brown eyes that had grown on her so much that it felt like they’d always been familiar. The elevator slowed and stopped at the ground level of Troy. When the doors opened, they shot out into the city like a flock of birds from a tower window, splitting apart and yet staying in formation. Gwen knew the way, so Ari followed, and Jordan brought up the rear. Ari kept one hand near her shoulder, at the spot where Excalibur was strapped to her back.
The overcrowded nature of the planet helped matters. No one looked at Ari’s face. They were too busy hustling—a rushing river of humanity that would not pause its flow for anything. The same force that was keeping her anonymous had a dark side, though. Troy had a history of terrible riots. People trampled beneath the heels of hysteria. Bodies strewn like litter in the aftermath. Which was why Mercer kept such a tight lockdown on the entire planet; she wouldn’t be surprised if every single person was monitored.
Ari shivered as they wound down several streets and approached a wide, circular stone courtyard bearing an enormous gold statue of the Mercer Company logo. The gleaming building behind it wore the—much smaller—silver words GALACTIC STATE DEPARTMENT.
“They’re not even trying to hide Mercer’s control over the government,” Ari noted. “They’re bragging about it.”
“Don’t stop,” Gwen said, nearly running inside. Ari followed but the doors blocked her entry. At first she thought she was busted, but then a red warning scrolled across the glass at eye level.
NO WEAPONS ALLOWED ON THE PREMISES.
Jordan was already unstrapping a number of concealed blades and dropping them into one of the lockers in the row beside the building. Gwen stood just inside the door, anxiously beckoning Ari to enter. Ari heaved Excalibur from her back, swinging it around in a way that cleared the crowd and caught some attention. Just then, the sky lit back up with her stark image and Mercer’s ugly lies, and several people pointed and shouted.
She slammed Excalibur into the courtyard, the sword sliding through the metallic pavement as if it were as soft as earth.
Ari entered the building, leaving the crowd behind her. “We made it,” she said, arms encircling Gwen. “It’s going to be okay.”
Relief and amusement tangoed in Gwen’s expression. “Don’t look now, Ari, but that was a bit of pageantry.”
“If they already know I’m here, I’d rather not be shy about it.”
“Hmm,” Gwen mouthed, a silky sound that sent Ari’s mind and heart racing back to their naked, tangled hours on Error. “Ari,” Gwen murmured, running her hands up Ari’s arms. “I know what you’re thinking about.”
“How?” Ari asked, blushing and glancing at Jordan as the knight pushed through the thick glass doors.
“Because my body’s been memorizing yours since the moment I met you.” Gwen turned, pulling Ari along behind her with their fingers entwined.
“Fuck,” Ari whispered, mouth dry. That statement didn’t just satisfy Ari’s addiction to truth. It set her heart on fire. “The things you do to me, lady…”
Gwen looked over her shoulder with a small, proud smile.
Minutes later, Ari and Gwen sat in the interplanetary marriage approval department. Ari eyeballed the people waiting to be interviewed and either granted legality or rejected. The white, sterile place criticized romance acutely, and everywhere she looked, Mercer had left its mark. Troy was no longer the democratic center of the galaxy. It was Mercer’s favorite puppet.
Gwen was bent over a sticky, government-issued tablet, entering their information into the system with a typing speed that Ari had only imagined to be possible. She swept her curls over one shoulder, adjusting her silver crown the same way Merlin pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose. The crown garnered a lot of looks. Most likely half of the new couples in the room had gone to Lionel for their medieval-styled honeymoons.
“You need one, too,” Gwen said, tapping her crown without looking up from the tablet. “But don’t worry. Consort crowns are smaller.”
Consort. Ari would never get used to that.
“I imagine ‘Helix’ is your adopted name. Do you know your birth name?”
Ari peered backward into her memories. They ended in that dying water heater when Kay’s chubby face peered over the edge. He’d cried when he saw her. She must have looked bad, but her brain seemed determined to protect her from the worst of the details—from whatever had come before, whatever had caused the shipwreck.
Ari shook her head. “I don’t remember my last name, but Ari is a nickname. My birth name is Ara.”