Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(93)

Eros’s second moon drifted into the corner of the sky, shedding silver light across the garden, exposing the shadows. E0S flew up beside him, hovering over his shoulder.

“Almost out,” he told it.

Around him, moonlilies began to open, and he tried not to step on them. Two hundred feet separated him from the side garden where he’d come in last night, and then he could sneak out into the square and—

The footsteps were so quiet, he almost did not hear them.

“I know someone is there,” he called to the shadow behind him as E0S dove into the shrubbery to hide.

A Royal Guard stepped out of the shadows of the garden, blond hair shining like a halo of gold in the moonlight. A hand rested on the hilt of her lightsword. “I think you’re on the wrong patrol, guardsman.”

“My patrol was boring,” he replied, turning to face her. She knew he was not one of her guards. Her breast pocket was much too decorated. “Royal Captain Viera, is it?”

“Put your hands up—slowly,” the woman commanded.

“I am not a threat.”

“We’ll see about that.” She unlatched her cuffs from her belt clip. “You’re under arre—”

E0S darted out of a bush and slammed into her head.

As she stumbled, Di grabbed her lightsword and drew it, sheath in one hand, blade in the other. She reached for her pistol from inside her uniform jacket and aimed.

“Just let me leave,” he said, inching back toward the side garden and escape.

Instead, she grabbed for the comm-link on her lapel. “I found th—”

“NO!” he cried. A jolt snapped through his body, and the comm-link sparked. The young woman gasped, dropping the communicator. It exploded before it even reached the ground. He watched in horror. “I—I did not mean to do that.”

She pulled the trigger.

The bullet scraped across his cheek. He winced, the sound reverberating in his head, and with him distracted, she grabbed him by his hair and slammed the side of his face against a statue of the Goddess. She pressed the barrel of her gun against the side of his head.

“I warned you—”

Di glared. The dark of his irises flickered, faintly, like a slow-kindling fire, and morphed into a silvery-white as it caught the light. The mark on his cheek where the bullet grazed did not bleed. It looked like part of the earth cracked open, revealing a vein of silver.

Her eyebrows furrowed. “What are you?”

“In a hurry,” he replied, and E0S rammed into her again, bleeping triumphantly.

Di caught the Royal Captain by the neck and put her in a choke hold. She thrashed, but he was much stronger.

One second, two, three.

He waited, closing his eyes, trying to concentrate on something else—anything else—as the guard captain gasped and clawed in his grip. But all he could think of was the man in the square, the bone protruding from his arm, the calls of monster.

He was not a monster.

Her struggling finally died, and she slumped against him. He gently laid her on the grass full of moonlilies, her chest rising and falling in steady breaths.

“I am sorry,” he said, and stood.

“Why?” asked a voice behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder.

Flaxen hair, narrow face, wearing the deep purple of a royal handmaiden. It was her again—the girl from Astoria. The one who first called him “monster” in the square. Rasovant’s servant.

“Never apologize for being what Father created,” she said, and raised her hand toward him.

The air spiked and static filled his head. Loud, grating. It seized his processors, made him want to swallow his own tongue, it was so painful. His body began to lock up like a hundred thousand volts overloading his system.

Faintly, through the buzz in his ears, there were voices. Familiar voices. Robb, he recognized—and Jax. They were close.

He tried to open his mouth to shout for them, but his vocal box crackled.

The girl smiled. “They will not hear you.”

Fear crawled up his spine. He was helpless. It hurt to move, like razors slicing over his skin. But he had to do something—so he did the only thing he could think of.

Wincing, he grabbed for E0S and pushed a node of data—instructions, the memory core still in the infirmary, how to fix it—into the little bot, and blasted it away with an electric spark. E0S tumbled into the darkness of the garden and escaped into the nearest bush. This girl could not catch it and keep him detained.

The girl bared her teeth. “That made me angry, brother.”

The air turned sharp—cutting, like a knife through his core. His vision blitzed between static and color, warnings swarming his sight like storm clouds. He tried to move, but his arms weren’t his anymore, and his body was something he couldn’t control until, like a switch, the whirring thing inside him shut off.

But not him. He still existed. In the nothing.

The void.

He remembered the void from before.





Jax


The crowd in the square made his head spin.

The warm glow of lanterns and tents and food stands was such a sharp difference from the cold, dark palace that the sight overwhelmed him—and the sky. Goddess, the sky was so wide, and all the billions of stars shone down on his skin. He drank the starlight in. It filled him, expanding, and the dull ache that had crept into a corner of his chest subsided.