Blood of a Thousand Stars (Empress of a Thousand Skies #2)(7)



Daisies were everywhere—auto-cams on constant stream. They were technically called day-sees because of the light mounted on the bottom, but the word had been slurred over time into daisies. They swarmed the windows of their vehicle, while Dahlen’s handpicked guard of Fontisians rode madùcycles on either side and swatted them away.

“Rhiannon!” a voice screamed, loud enough to rise above the chorus.

She saw a man crawl over a barrier and make a gesture so obscene as their vehicle passed that Rhee almost looked away. The man was tackled by one of Dahlen’s Fontisian guards, who’d gracefully launched himself off his madùcycle. He had the man’s head to the ground within seconds. Rhee swiveled to look behind her as they sped past.

“Ancestors!” Rhee hissed. “Can’t your men be more gentle?” She didn’t want the Fontisian guard to give protesters more cause for unrest.

“Don’t forget that they’re your men,” he said.

She didn’t answer. It’s not how the Kalusians would see it. The guards were all Fontisian, and like Dahlen they were part of the Order of the Light, a fundamentalist Fontisian religious group. The order was obsessed with maintaining peace, even if that meant working with Kalu and supporting Ta’an rule. They’d favored her father; he’d brokered peace between their two planets and ended the Great War all those years ago.

But that didn’t mean the average Kalusian would be welcoming. To any Kalusian, a Fontisian was an outsider. Here was Rhee—their one true ruler, returned from the dead—flanked on all sides by security that, with their white-blond hair and sharp faces, looked a hell of a lot like the enemy. Judging by some of the sneers and looks of real fear in the eyes of the crowd, she wondered whether it had been a good idea for the order to take such a prominent role in protecting her.

But no one else had offered to.

“I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. The order already has a reputation of being . . .” She searched for the right word.

“Fanatical? Violent? Aggressive?” Dahlen reached down to shift gears roughly. The vehicle was self-driving, but as usual, Dahlen took no chances. He was worried, he said, that the tech would be hacked by Nero’s cronies; there would be no accidents today.

“I’m trying to make friends of enemies,” she said defensively.

“We will not apologize for our presence.” He scanned the packed streets of Kalusians as they passed. Fontisians spoke in negatives; it made everything they said sound forceful and stubborn. Though perhaps it was because they were forceful and stubborn. “Such a stance isn’t an adequate strategy when it comes to dissenters.”

“Yes, because you have ruling a planet all figured out?”

He cocked his eyebrow as they stared at one another through the mirror. “Because you do, Empress?”

Rhee exhaled slowly but wouldn’t respond—she was working on staying calmer, hiding her feelings better. That word, Empress, still felt wrong. She remembered when Julian had called her Empress in the Nau Fruma marketplace, as the meteors rained down above them the very last time she saw him, how the title had filled her with dread.

Her purpose then had at least felt clear, violent but uncomplicated. One life for many. Seotra’s for her family’s. But Seotra had been innocent. Her vengeance had been misguided, and she’d ended up killing one of her most powerful allies.

Her purpose was different now, though just as clear as before—to bring about peace.

They crested the hill, and for the first time in six years, Rhee caught sight, at last, of the palace. It took her breath away. It was the only thing from her childhood that had lived up to its memory—her organic memory. It was a feeling, different than the memories she had replayed on her cube, better than the crystalline perfection that made it seem smaller and quaint on her cube. In person, it was majestic. Red and gold, one thousand steps leading up to its entrance. The sun, as it set, looked as if it were slowly lowering itself on the southernmost spire—pierced open and dripping fire on the orange, backlit sky.

As enormous, as beautiful, as vast as it was, what struck her the hardest was how strongly she sensed her father. She could see him pacing the marble corridors just hours before they’d leave for good because of the growing threat to their lives; her mother’s sobs that same night bouncing between pillars in the fountain room. Only hours later, the craft that was supposed to take them to safety on Nau Fruma had exploded, killing them both. When she recalled a memory organically, like she did now, she experienced it with every sense, every facility she had. She was transported in time.

Cube memories weren’t like that at all. The cube was precise; it rushed to the very moment you needed it to and then pulled away with the same cold efficiency. Not that it mattered—she’d temporarily turned off her cube so that they couldn’t be tracked while they traveled.

But there was another reason she hadn’t turned her cube back on. A deeper, unspoken fear she couldn’t yet voice: Nero’s ambition to find the overwriter. Rhee didn’t think it existed. Not really. It was a technology without precedent, and anytime she’d heard of it, it was only in conjunction with the G-1K conspiracy theories. Only those on the fringes believed—or those, like Nero, who were prone to dramatics and flair, ready to chase down any mirage to secure his reign.

Imagine being able to speak through any cube, he’d said on Houl, to anyone at will, throughout the whole universe. Imagine being able to whisper to them, not through their ears but their minds . . .

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