Empress of a Thousand Skies(76)

TWENTY-FIVE


    RHIANNON



WITH a wave of Nero’s hand, Dahlen was wheeled out, strapped to a rolling gurney. An NX pushed him into the center of the white-tiled pit and took a step back. Rhee felt raw and exposed. She urged her breath to slow. Honor, bravery, loyalty as she inhaled and exhaled, on the count of three, spacing them out so as not to feel faint. This was her fault. For all her talk of ma’tan sarili, she had abandoned Dahlen.

She was a fraud.

“What have you done to him?” Even from here, Rhee could see Dahlen’s eyes were dilated. He took in the lights with a dazed expression that looked eerie on the boy she’d come to know. He was always so aware of every detail of his surroundings.

“We’ve prepped him.” Nero walked over to Dahlen and picked up his limp hand, prying the Fontisian’s index finger free so he could press it to Dahlen’s cube. Dahlen’s body stiffened, just barely, and Rhee knew it was from the jolt of electricity traveling to his brain as his cube was turned back on. He’d been offline for years. Nero had made him break his vow.

Nero pressed a panel on the wall, and a large holoscreen projected above them. It began to illuminate, and something took shape—an island against a dark sea. But as it started to sharpen and focus, Rhee understood.

“Get out of his head!”

Dahlen merely squinted up at it.

“Oh, we’re not in his head yet. This is only the diagnostic makeup. Think of it like one of those paintings your mother loved to collect. It has an artist quality, doesn’t it?” Nero said. “But we can scratch off the paint, unpeel the layers . . .”

“Leave him alone!” Rhee backed up and brought her knee up high, kicking down on the glass. It wobbled under the impact and immediately repaired itself.

Projected up on the light box were the peaks and valleys of Dahlen’s brain. So many colors. The form of it was outlined in neon pink; jagged, yellow streaks looked like bolts of lightning scattered about. There were large swaths of green and blue, and they swirled into each other like a lush ocean. She wanted to tear it down so that no one would see.

“Let’s access his playback, shall we?” An ornate metal crown, three feet tall and torturous looking, lowered from the center of the room.

Rhee looked at Nero. “What? No—” There are things locked away in his mind. “You want to . . . to Ravage him?”

He rolled his eyes as he circled Dahlen’s body slowly. “Don’t you want to know what specter haunted his childhood? What horrors produced the boy he is today?”

Rhee thought of the casual breathlessness with which Dahlen had killed. How he’d belittled her for mourning Veyron; cut away that Miseu’s cube without so much as blinking; electrocuted Seotra, who moaned in agony until he turned to ash. Dahlen was psychotic, emotionless, cruel—Rhee had been certain at times. But his dedication, his loyalty—that was part of him too. And who was she, of all people, to judge his bloodlust?

Rhee shook her head. A small no was all she could manage to say.

“Then what of that memory?” Nero continued. “The one buried way deep down in this soup of consciousness—the one of your family? Maybe you can finally know the truth of how they died.”

“You can’t,” she choked out. And yet, she did want to know. She’d obsessed over her family’s deaths; she’d thought about their deaths even more than she had their lives. She had imagined the moment of impact, the fiery explosion, a thousand different ways. Filling in the gaps—however gruesome the details—had been like drinking salt water to quench a thirst.

If she could see, then she could know. She could stop obsessing. She could let it go.

“Or even,” he continued, “where your sister is.” He feigned surprise at the look on her face. “You hoped I hadn’t known?”

She froze. He was one step ahead. He’d always been.

There are things he knows, and things he doesn’t know that he knows, the Elder had said of Dahlen.

“Say the word, Princess. We can download his cube into yours. All his memories, his feelings, his knowledge—yours to experience. Even the moments he himself can’t remember.”

“What would—what would happen to him?” she asked. Rhee could hear the uncertainty in her own voice. Her ma’tan sarili corroding, just like her resolve. She was weak. She’d always been too weak.

“Does it matter?” he asked. “Agree to join me. Relinquish the throne and hand power over to your council, to me, and I’ll let you live. You will be my top adviser. You never had what it takes to be empress. You were never meant to be empress, after all.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“There’s no shame, Rhiannon. Not all of us were meant to rule. Join me. I’ll help you find your sister, and I’ll let her live as well.”

Rhee couldn’t help the desire she felt, like all her atoms were rearranging at this moment, making room for the new knowledge she wanted so badly. For a way to find her sister, finally, after all these years. But at what cost? To make Dahlen a shell? To Ravage him, to reach in and steal his soul and wring it dry? It made her nauseated, then angry.

Honor. Loyalty. Bravery.

She wasn’t capable of what Nero was asking. Killing was one thing. She couldn’t ask someone to live after she’d taken away the very thing that made him human. The ancestors were watching, and perhaps Vodhan was too.