Empress of a Thousand Skies(57)

PEOPLE always said that time flowed, fled, sped by. Or that it slowed, stopped, and stretched.

They never talked about how time could grip and strangle. How everything good could fall away in your life and bring you to a fixed point, standing face-to-face with the man who’d killed your family.

Nero had stared back at her with a look of perplexity, as if on the verge of some grander realization. And he had been.

Time showed mercy too. Rhee had been pinned to a spot in time and space, breathless—and in the next instant, a ripple in the audience had swept the murderer’s gaze away and allowed her to escape.

A boy with his face bandaged, and a girl with familiar eyes she could barely tear herself away from. Rhee and the boy had shared a look; something had passed between them she couldn’t name. She knew only that he had a secret, just like her.

Nero had locked eyes with Rhee for a split second, and she wasn’t sure if she’d been recognized. The interruption had bought Rhee just enough time to slip away.

Now she strapped into an escape pod and braced herself, placing her palms on the metal right in front of her face. She squeezed her eyes tightly, not knowing where to go—only that she needed to escape. Her finger hovered above the touchscreen, over the command that said DEPLOY. She pressed it.

The pod jettisoned off the first-class side of the zeppelin with a force so strong that her elbows gave in. She slammed into the casing, and the bitter taste of blood flooded her mouth. The seat belt hadn’t been fitted for someone her size.

Blind and willful . . .

She’d been wrong, over and over again. First about Veyron, then about Seotra and now Nero. Rhee had actually thought he was kind—that he was loyal to her and her family’s legacy. He’d only been biding his time, plotting her death for nine years as he earned the trust of the public. She’d been front and center as he reinvented himself, and no longer was Nero the charming ambassador to the regent’s office—he was the new leader, spewing hate on a government platform that he now controlled.

Rhee plummeted into space, cocooned by a metal coffin that sliced through the air. Everything was vibrating. The temperature was rising. She pictured the pod cracking like an egg, disposing of her like a runny yolk into the unforgiving darkness of the universe.

She wanted to cry—from fear, from anger, from her own stupidity. Rhee had sought Nero out. The very man who’d tried to have her killed, who’d killed her family. He’d orchestrated his own rise. He was the “new, worthy leader.” Not Rhee. All her fantasies of revenge, the way she’d sharpened herself into a tool to best take down Seotra—all that effort had been misdirected, wasted, too little, too late.

Seotra. She’d been so certain; all signs had pointed to him. That fight with her father, the prescient threats, how he’d come off so cold and so proud. Nero had capitalized on their rift and positioned himself as favorable in supporting her early coronation . . .

Regent Seotra had trusted that there would be time to tell Rhee. He had taken for granted how na?ve and stupid she’d been, how desperate she was to avenge her family and show the ancestors that she was worthy of their name. She’d refused to speak to him. Thought him rigid and unlikable and petty. And she’d brought Dahlen to Seotra’s doorstep. She hadn’t killed him, but she might as well have. He wouldn’t have come face-to-face with the Fontisian if it weren’t for her own foolish theories.

She was adrift, alone—for the very first time. There was nowhere to go, nowhere safe in the universe. If Nero knew Rhee was alive—and he’d be watching carefully—contacting Tai Reyanna would be impossible.

And Dahlen? He’d murdered a man to avenge his own family, and she understood that more than she cared to admit. He’d saved her, again and again. But he couldn’t save her now.

Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. An entire universe of stars and planets, and not a single one that would hold her.

There was Julian. He couldn’t possibly know that she was responsible for his father’s death. But she knew. Could she ever face him again after what she’d done? She didn’t think so. Besides, he wouldn’t be able to help her.

Only when the automated system kicked on and gave time, speed, distance, and direction did Rhee realize something else: It was after midnight on the seventh night, after the seventh new moon of the year.

She was alone, friendless, and supposedly dead.

It was her sixteenth birthday.

Rhee began to cry, just as she had that night she got lost playing hide-and-seek in the cellars. She knew there was another exit, but in the darkness, full of fear, she couldn’t remember how to make her way through the maze of slick corridors. When Josselyn came, Rhee’d been blinded by the torchlight, blinking away her tears.

Rhee had never forgotten the way Josselyn had looked at her.

“Get up,” she’d said simply, and Rhee had scrambled to her feet, relieved and ashamed all at once. But Josselyn wouldn’t point her in the right direction. “Which way, left or right?” she asked instead.

When she started to say she didn’t know, Joss took Rhee’s hand and brought it to her own neck. She pressed down Rhee’s finger to turn her cube off, and it was like a whole universe rushed in to replace it: water dripping, the smell of wet, the fur of moss growing on the walls.

“Listen. Use your mind,” Joss said.