“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to break everything and not be able to put it back together?” he asks sincerely.
“Yes,” I say, understanding myself better than I have for a long time. “That’s why I have Mustang.”
He stares at me for a long, odd moment before shaking his head and chuckling at himself or me. “I
wish it was easier to hate you.”
“There’s a toast if I ever heard one.” I raise my glass and he his, and we drink in silence. But before he parts with me that night, I give him a holocube to watch in his cell. I apologize in advance for its contents, but it’s something he needs to see. The irony is not lost on him. He’ll watch it later in his cell, and he will weep and feel lonelier still, but the truth is never easy.
Hours after Cassius has left me, I’m woken from a restless dream by Sevro. He calls my datapad with an urgent message. Victra has engaged Antonia in the Belt. She requests reinforcements, and Sevro’s already got his gear and has Holiday mustering a strike team.
Mustang, the Howlers and I hitch a ride on the remaining Telemanus torchShip, the fastest left in
the fleet. Sefi tried to come along, eager for more combat, but even after the victory at Io my fleet rides on a razor ’s edge. Her leadership is needed to keep the Obsidians in line. She’s a peacemaker, and the punch line of Sevro’s favorite new joke: what do you say when a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall woman walks into a room with a battle axe and tongues on a hook? Absolutely nothing.
Personally, I’m more worried that only a handful of strong personalities bind this alliance together.
If I lose one, the whole thing might crumble.
We go full burn, straining the ships to reach Victra, but an hour before we arrive at her coordinates amidst a thicket of sensor-disrupting asteroids, we receive a brief encoded message that is patented Julii: Bitch captured. Kavax free. Victory mine.
We shuttle over from the lean Telemanus torchShip toward Victra’s waiting fleet. Sevro picks nervously at his pant leg. Victra’s won a great victory. She set out in pursuit with twenty strike craft.
Now she possesses nearly fifty black ships—fast, nimble, expensive craft. Just the sort you’d expect of a trading family. None of the hulking behemoths the Augustuses and Bellona favor. All the black ships bear the weeping spear-pierced sun of the Julii family.
Victra waits for us on the deck of her mother ’s old flagship, the Pandora. She’s splendid and proud in a black uniform with the Julii sun upon her right breast, a fiery orange line burning down the black pants, gold buttons sparkling. She’s found her old earrings. Jade hangs from her ears. Her smile is broad and enigmatic.
“My goodmen, welcome aboard the Pandora. ”
Beside her stands Kavax, injured yet again, with a cast on his right arm and resFlesh coating the right side of his face. The daughters who raced ahead to find him flank him now and laugh as Kavax bellows a hello to Mustang. She tries to maintain propriety as she rushes to him and tosses her arms around his neck. She kisses him once on his bald head.
“Mustang,” he says happily. He pushes her back and lowers his head. “Apologies. Deepest apologies. I cannot stop being captured.”
“Just a damsel in distress,” Sevro says.
“It seems the case,” Kavax replies.
“Just promise me this is the last time, Kavax,” Mustang says. He does. “And you’re injured again!”
“A scratch! Just a scratch, my liege. Don’t you know I’ve magic in my veins?”
“I have someone who has been dying to see you,” Mustang says, looking back up the ramp. She whistles and inside the shuttle Pebble lets Sophocles go. Claws clatter behind me, then under me as he races through Sevro’s legs, almost knocking my friend down, to jump onto Kavax’s chest. Kavax kisses the fox with open mouth. Victra cringes.
“Thought you were in trouble,” Sevro grunts up at her.
“I told you I had it under control,” she says. “How far behind is the rest of the fleet, Darrow?”
“Two days.”
Mustang looks around. “Where’s Daxo?”
“Daxo is dealing with rats on the upper decks. Still some hardcore Peerless left. It’s been a bitch digging them out,” Victra says.
“There’s barely any wreckage…” I say. “How did you do this?”
“How? I am the true heir of House Julii,” Victra says proudly. “According to mother ’s will and according to birth. Antonia’s ships—legally my ships—were run by stool pigeons, paid allies. They contacted me, thought the whole fleet was right behind my little harrying party. They begged me to spare them from the big bad Reaper…”
“And where are your sister ’s men now?” I ask.
“I executed three and destroyed their ships as an example to the rest. The disloyal Praetors which I could capture are rotting in cells. My loyalists and mother ’s friends have taken command.”
“And will they follow us?” Sevro asks gruffly.
“They follow me,” she says.