Priya had no directions this time. History was changed and Empra’s datastream could no longer give Far his much-needed edge. His mind went for the parry, but his reflexes chose to dodge. The result was a half-tail combination of both. His enemy’s blade glanced off the trident, path diverted from Far’s neck to his arm. The hurt was too shocking to feel, at first. Far only knew he was wounded because the storm screams were back, raising every hair on his neck. Lightning soon followed, nerve endings opening up all at once.
His trident arm. Oh Hades, his trident arm. The sword had found his scar and split it right open again. Had there been this much blood the first time? Far couldn’t remember. The Fade had whittled memories of the injury down to Priya’s needle and swift stitches. She’d hummed then, to distract him, a song called “Fix You,” written by one of her favorite bands of yore. Cold—something? Cold, cold. That, too, was slipping…. Far’s red-rain blood dribbled into the sands as he stumbled away.
This was the beginning of his end.
“Far!” When Priya saw the wound through his eyes, she cried, “Don’t you dare stop, Far! Keep fighting!”
“P…” He was never supposed to win. Both of them knew that.
There was a rustling sound. Far spun around, bracing for a blade, but the other fighter had dropped back, side trauma and heavy armor taking their toll. The noise must have come from Priya’s end.
“I love you. I—I have to go.”
What? No…
“Keep fighting,” she said again.
“Priya?”
Dead air ached in his ear. Far felt as if something far more vital than his arm had been cut. How was he supposed to keep fighting now? How was he supposed to die alone? Like this: The other gladiator began circling, slow, stalking steps. His sword was edged with Far’s blood, poised for more. Not that it was hard to find. Half of Far was red as he switched his trident to his good arm, struggling to secure the slick handle.
Not yet.
But soon.
He couldn’t blame Priya for leaving. No amount of love in the world could make a person strong enough to watch this.
46
THE MOTH WHO KNEW HER WINGS WOULD BURN
PRIYA HAD NEVER BEEN SQUEAMISH AROUND wounds, even her own. Playtime scrapes were a source of fascination, something to be studied through the glittery fray of Madam Wink’s mane while her father sprayed on Heal—All. He often recited facts as he did—things to distract her from the sting, truths to tuck away for later.
“One minute is all it takes for a drop of blood to run through your body. Heart back to heart. The hemoglobin in your red blood cells threads oxygen through your veins to keep you alive. It’s pretty phenomenal stuff.”
“Why are some people so scared of it?” Priya had asked, thinking of Tommy, who’d abandoned his own hoverbike to help her off the ground, only to freeze when he saw her torn-up knees.
Her father went quiet. This silence went past tired, the kind of pause that meant something important would be said. So Priya had waited, squeezing her stuffed unicorn so tight its stuffing pushed back against the practice sutures.
“It’s not the blood people fear,” Dev Parekh said finally. “It’s the pain.”
Now, at eighteen, watching Far’s wound ooze through the screen, Priya understood. Here was a sight that turned her stomach. The pain was not a distant dream, but red and roaring, all of Far’s blood spilling out too fast to replace. His medical readings scrambled across the infirmary screens—fight-or-flight wild, a beat no song could match. Even if there were such a tune, playlists were a thing of the past. Both sets of Priya’s headphones, BeatBix and rip-offs, sat quiet on her desk, mirroring their surroundings in their gold plating: the see-through surface of a dead holo-paper zine, useless needles, Ganesh’s curled trunk. All appeared four times and shining, reminding her that this was the only way to make a way. Everything would be better when the string was cut.
But it hurt watching Far bleed out of life. It hurt watching life bleed out of him. Neither force crackled.
“Far! Don’t you dare stop, Far!” Priya’s own heart bled through the comm.
She was afraid.
“Keep fighting!”
“Priya! Priyapriyapriya!” Imogen appeared, a lemon-colored blob in the headphones—too frantic to register her cousin’s injuries. “We’ve got an emergency emergency. The Bureau jacktail showed up with the Corps, and he’s trying to fritz out Eliot’s equipment with a stunrod. His teleport equipment is working again and he’s chasing her all over the city and she’s still got Gaius in her pocket universe and I don’t know what to do. Do you have something zappy?”
If Gaius was in the pocket universe, then the chip was as well. They were supposed to be passed on to Empra together. Priya had even written a letter to Far’s mother, filling the inside cover of the Code of Conduct with instructions to give the chip to Far on his seventeenth birthday. The guidebook’s paper tore as easily as it folded and was now a tiny square in a small box in a pocket universe on Eliot’s wrist, hopping all across Rome. The Invictus’s whole past and possible future hinged on this: Stay with Far at the hour of his death, or save their lives for later.
All or nothing.
It wasn’t even a choice.
“I love you.” Priya’s finger trembled over the Mute button. “I—I have to go. Keep fighting.”
She cut the audio link before Far could answer and tossed a lab coat over the feed. Grief settled gray below her eyes, dry, yet dark enough to tarnish the BeatBix. “Why do you need zap? What about Eliot’s blaster?”
“Are you an ace shot?” the Historian asked. “I’m not. Anything short of a kill means squat when teleportation is involved. I figure it’s better if we can fritz Agent Ackerman’s jump systems before he fritzes Eliot’s. Less death, less hopping, everybody wins.”
“We don’t have any stunrods on board.” But they were in a ship full of live wires. Priya turned her back to the lab coat’s shine and pushed into the common area. A few floor panels remained crooked from Far’s Rubaiyat ransack. Sharp corners, tilting plane, covered in costumes from a blank-page past. Neon fires flared as Priya shoved aside the flash-leather suit, prying up the panel beneath. More rainbows appeared in the form of wires, bundled together by the dozen.
“Welcome to the Invictus’s nervous system,” she announced. “Very colorful, very electric.”
Imogen knelt next to her, gaping at the Medusa mess. “You’re gonna gut the ship?”
“This is all the zap we’ve got.” The correct combination of wires—high voltage, low current—could substitute as a stunrod, stopping a man, but not his heart. It was the ship itself Priya was worried about. Disconnecting the wrong line could bring down the holo-shield, the comms, the mainframe… any number of systems essential to their mission. “We can do without overhead lights or speakers, right?”
“Affirmative.”
Which wires were which wires were which wires were which? So many colors streamed together, and Priya found it hard to keep her head on when her heart was in the arena. Green? Light blue? Orange? Red? Red? Red?