Well, I started this round.
“You want answers?” I ask. “Let Niles go.”
The Prime regards me, eyebrows raised. I may have started, but he’ll finish and we both know it.
He motions Niles up with two effortless fingers, and Niles matches with efficiency. Slipping from my grasp and on his feet almost before my hand registers the motion.
“May I introduce you to my son?” asks the Prime. “Or perhaps you’ve met.”
What?
Niles stands at attention, stares not so much at me as past. Blue light threads his black hair and glistens along his shuttered eyes. The impenetrable blank of his cheeks and chin. He says nothing, looks like nothing—not smart or relentless or irritating. No hidden warmth that multiplies and melts my skin.
Niles? The Prime’s son? But they look nothing alike. Their height, their facial structure, their eyes—the Prime’s are too round and light and—
Amusement flicks through the Prime’s gaze, slides into a small smile, and I see it. The Niles in him.
My dad excels at leverage, he’d said.
Think, Decker, he’d said.
“Appropriation,” I say. My own smile crawls out of nowhere at the beauty of it. The perfection. A razor’s edge he balanced while I fell. Am falling. My stomach a sickened spiral that rips on every broken crag and doesn’t land. Can’t—there’s no purchase. The only solid ground I had was him.
So, of course, he wasn’t real.
I laugh with all the heat scraping my eyes and throat. “Appropriation. God. I can’t say you don’t play fair.”
The statue of Niles becomes more statuesque. He makes a pretty statue. Cast him in marble to preside over the city’s high gardens. Probably will, what with him being the son of the Prime. Hell, if an Heir never appears and the Prime and Lady Galton duke it out to establish a new bloodling line, Niles may wind up ruling the House.
I’d have kissed a House Lord.
I can still feel his lips. My heart’s answering glow. Jackknifed now, but . . . there.
Niles watches with his stone smooth face, and probably sees everything. My laughter dies.
“I wonder,” says the Prime, “if you grasp the current state of affairs.”
“I’m trapped in a room with the Prime and his—his son,” I say. “Think I’ve got it.”
The Prime moves closer—easy, graceful, he damn near controls the air. “This little rebellion? Your ‘Accounting’? Won’t last.”
“My Accounting,” I repeat.
“‘Close your eyes against the blood,’” he recites, in Mom’s same singsong. “‘Promise yourself it was all for love.’”
He’s heard it before. He knows.
“That’s just a stupid lullaby,” I say.
“Come now, aren’t we past that?” He closes in, eats the space. “This power-out of yours won’t last.”
So the power’s still down. No wonder they’re running off of battery-backed spotlights. Mom must have blown the city’s energy grid. Probably had it on a timer.
“Don’t confuse me with Mom,” I say. “You think I have brains enough to manage a power-out?”
“Doesn’t take much to activate a trigger.”
“What trigger? You have everything I had of Mom’s.”
And Dee has everything else, full stop.
“You mean this?” The Prime pulls Mom’s bracelet from his jacket pocket, to dangle it aloft. The light catches it in starbursts. “Worthless.”
Niles gave the Prime my mother’s bracelet. He must have. Because there it is, in the Prime’s hand—charms tinkling in a silver ribbon that clatters to the floor, chain curling in the paved dirt. Even there, it shines.
I stand still and straight and do not—do not—retrieve it.
“It has no hidden circuitry.” The Prime shrugs in a Niles-like way. “And I don’t need silver or glitter.”
The real Niles might atrophy if he doesn’t move soon.
His name probably isn’t even Niles.
My stomach wants to eat my heart.
“Like I said,” I repeat. “That was everything of Mom’s I had.”
“No, not everything.” The Prime reaches one long finger and taps the center of my forehead. “You have this.”
Mapping.
He’s going to mind map me. Pry my brain for answers. Piece me apart.
Wonder how that works with a temporary scent map patch. Probably not well.
The Prime’s finger trails over my temple, down my cheek, and under my chin. He lifts.
“Don’t think I don’t know what her digivirus is doing.” Soft enough for a whisper. “Why she chose the Archive, the real project she set in motion. It was never about destroying the power grid, though I’m sure she felt it a nice perk.” He leans near. Entirely too near. Another inch, and our noses would brush. “And don’t think I won’t stop her. This House is mine.”
He’s too close and too tall and twice my age at least, the bastard.
Yonni always said there was nothing worse than a man who flaunts power against those who have none.
“Really?” I say. “’Cause I thought the House was the Heir’s. Though if you’re planning to usurp the line, good luck taking it from the Lady. I think she’s got you beat.”