Atrium, be quick.
I didn’t know precisely why Solara couldn’t simply comm me with whatever she had to say, but maybe she was worried the lines were monitored. Considering the need for stealth in my family’s citadel felt strange, but I was coming to the realization that nothing was as it had been before. I was in uncharted space in my own home.
At the exit to my suite, I hesitated, glancing at the wall where a thoughtful servant had placed my Disruption Blade in the dock that served as a display case and charger. Its twin rested beside it, both of them glinting under a halo of decorative light. Two swords were typically seen as the height of impracticality in combat, the province of mass media entertainment only. But a very select few Bladeguards were trained in another rare form of combat that incorporated dual weapons to fight multiple opponents. I almost never traveled with both, and I didn’t see how I could possibly need the second one now, but I’d been taught to be prepared for the unexpected.
I took both of my Disruption Blades with me.
The night sky seemed impossibly bright and close in the sweeping space of the Atrium. The craters of the two moons stood out in sharp relief, the stars glittering like the gems that had been in Qole’s hair. With a cunningly crafted roof that was completely clear and curved to magnify the sky, the Atrium was lit only by moonlight. It was deathly still, and the night-blooming flowers, with their faint luminescence, gave off a dreamlike air.
Or in this case, a nightmarish cast. It was hard to believe that I was here to meet my sister in secret, and that my father was holding Qole against her will and doing…I wasn’t sure what. But Father had been talking a lot about needing to make sacrifices, and my gut roiled to think of how far he might be willing to take that with Qole.
“Nev.” Solara’s quiet voice carried across the open space, and I felt uncustomary relief. Solara and I had never been inimical, but we had never been close, either. From age ten onward, our training had taken very different paths.
She appeared out of the shadows of the gardens, the red of her dress in vivid contrast against the moons and the snow-capped mountains looming above us. Those mountains were the original seat of Dracorte power, where the first rich veins on Luvos had been mined. Family memory didn’t even stretch that far back. We’d been able to deduce as much because drones had stopped going through the motions of mining it. That only happened if someone gave them an order to stop, something no one had known how to do since the Great Collapse. Reroute temporarily, yes. Stop, no.
As a result, the mountain was a warren of abandoned tunnels, most of which had been sealed. Some, like the ones at the end of the Atrium, were open for a short ways to act as a grotto for the plants that required caves. It was a beautiful place, and a strange one to be meeting. I couldn’t remember the last time Solara and I had actually spent time alone together, and now, apparently, we were both willing to subvert the will of our family whose greatness was in evidence all around us.
Perhaps we weren’t as different as I had always assumed.
“I can’t believe this,” I said by way of greeting. I scraped a hand over my face. “Father must have wanted you to drive Qole out of the ballroom so they could apprehend her and feel justified in doing whatever they wanted afterward. I just—” I was carrying on, everything inside me boiling over, but I froze as something occurred to me. “Have you seen Arjan?”
“Father said he sent him back to the ship so he wouldn’t interfere,” Solara said. There was no one around, but she spoke in a hushed tone regardless, far more collected than I was.
My sigh of relief was short and constrained. “At least there’s that. But Qole—”
“I think I know where they’re holding her,” she interrupted without preamble.
“How? I can’t find anything on her!”
Solara’s lips quirked in a slight smile, red lipstick looking almost black in the moonlight. “A member of the guard.” Who was infatuated with her, no doubt. “There’s a security lockdown on one of the lower levels…right underneath us, conveniently enough.” She tapped her heel on the floor.
I glanced down at the smooth, reflective stone. “Really? I thought there was only an abandoned hangar down there.”
My own home was big enough for me to be unclear on details like that. Much clearer in my mind was the look of disgust that Qole would have for me, if she knew such a thing.
Qole. The ache in my chest doubled, if that were possible, as did my need to find her.
“Well, it’s not abandoned now. Security and emergency personnel are both flocking there, and parts of the palace are being closed to visitors.”
Once, I wouldn’t have thought that one person could merit such a reaction, but that had been before I met Qole. If she tapped into her Shadow affinity, she would be more than dangerous enough to inspire panic.
Part of me felt sorry for anyone who would cross her path, but…if she was dangerous, security might decide she would serve my family better dead than alive. My heart started beating faster. “Then I’m going down there. I can’t let them hurt her, Solara.” I paused, considering my sister. “Don’t tell anyone where I’ve gone. You won’t, right?”
Solara shook her head. “I’ll even go with you. I know a way down to the hangar from here. That’s why I had you meet me here.”
For an absurd moment, all I felt was brotherly aggravation. “I’ve spent years crawling around this citadel, and now you’re giving me the tour. How is that even possible?”
She turned, the red of her gown making her easy to follow as she slipped into the darker parts of the garden. “You sought adventure, I sought privacy.”
Privacy for what? I wondered how many hearts she had broken in these gardens at night. Right now, I was glad of it.
“They’ll try to stop us,” I warned her.
She laughed. “We’re royals, Nev. We can do whatever we want.”
That’s the problem, I thought.
A few minutes later, an ancient service turbolift had deposited us in a dusty utility room. All I had to do was peer out a door to see the old hangar stretching out in front of us.
It was chaos. Security guards were flooding in from the main entrance, even as others rushed out. Lights bobbed around on the heads of medical responders who were pushing a screaming man on a repulsor-sled. His arm and face were almost entirely gone, burned to nothingness. I shuddered. I was pretty sure Qole couldn’t have done that. Or could she have?
“If security is running around like that, I doubt they know where she is,” Solara whispered alongside me.
The thought gave me hope. What if Qole had tapped into her abilities and escaped?