“We’ve got to push forward with our mission, to achieve the vision that Orion had for us. We need to band together and achieve a united Vysanthe, no matter what it takes!” Ezra bellowed. “The Fed took the rulebook off the table when they betrayed us, when they broke their word on our exchange, and now we’ve got to take what we want, by whatever means necessary!”
A chant rippled through the crowd below, quiet at first but gaining volume. “Chief Ezra! Chief Ezra! Chief Ezra!”
“We’re making successful steps toward a working immortality elixir as we speak. Soon enough, death and decay will be a thing of our past. We’ll show these filthy frostfangs what a real rebel army looks like—one that isn’t afraid of death or injury. One that can swallow up entire galaxies and spit them out, taking what we want for our race, our species, our people. With the elixir, we’ll be unstoppable!”
The chant grew louder. “CHIEF EZRA! CHIEF EZRA! CHIEF EZRA!”
I glowered at Aurelius, who looked smugger than ever. “You lying—”
“Now, now, let us not begin with the name-calling,” he cut me off. “I simply wanted you to get a taste of the cause you are aiding. Isn’t it glorious? Can’t you feel the euphoria of a vibrant future, bristling in the air?”
“I think you’ve been drinking too much of the Kool-Aid, you weaselly little scumbag!” I snapped. “If you think we’ll ever join forces with the rebels, after everything you’ve done to us, to my planet, to Vysanthe… you’re even more clueless than I thought.”
Aurelius chuckled. “We do not require you to fight for us. We have plenty of soldiers, as you can see.”
“Then what do you want us for?” Navan shot back.
“Goodness me, you are an impatient pair.” He sighed, savoring the moment of torment. “All will be revealed, as I have said.”
His voice carried a thrilled, ominous note that I didn’t like one bit. If he didn’t want us as soldiers, then why were we here? I shivered, thinking of the hooked humans being carried through the factory part of the alchemy lab like slabs of meat in a slaughterhouse. Was that what we were destined for? Or did they want to use us as test subjects for their elixir? It would be the perfect revenge, I supposed, if we ended up helping to unlock the code that would make them immortal.
“Why Ezra?” I asked suddenly.
Aurelius frowned. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I can understand you wanting to stage a coup against Gianne, because she was killing people left and right, and your head would’ve been next on the chopping block… but why Ezra?” I pressed. “Why would you agree to serve a defector like him, with no power, no throne, no place on Vysanthe?”
Aurelius scowled, puffing out his meager chest. “I do not serve Ezra,” he spat, offended. “The two of us are equals. He does not look down on me, and he does not expect me to bow and scrape. We seek the same goal of seizing galaxies, under the banner of a united Vysanthe, and are bound together in that.”
“Why aren’t you the one making the speech, then?” Navan mused.
Aurelius shot him a look that might have terrified a weaker man. It looked like he wanted to hurt Navan, but, presumably for the same reason he hadn’t laid a finger on us earlier, he didn’t rise to the bait.
“We split our responsibilities. Currently, I have the more vital role of managing the pair of you,” he said, after taking a calming breath. “Besides, there has to be a brain and a brawn in every outfit. I am the former; he is the latter. Trust me, it is working far more smoothly than you could ever imagine. Just look at what we have already achieved, thanks to my flawless plotting.”
“If you’re here, and you’re siding with Ezra, does that mean Queen Gianne is dead?” I asked, puzzled. How he’d managed to escape her remained a mystery, though it seemed he was wilier than we’d given him credit for.
A flicker of embarrassment crossed Aurelius’s face. “That good-for-nothing daughter of a frostfang is surprisingly resistant to every type of poison. She has her father’s constitution, it would appear,” he murmured. “Though, I got him in the end.”
I gaped at him, wondering if he was just showboating to try to scare us. Had he really been the one to kill the former king of Vysanthe? If that were the case, then Aurelius had been the cause of all this. He’d caused the war, the aftermath, the rebellion, the resumption of the fighting, Gianne’s madness… all of it. Navan was oddly silent, as though contemplating what Aurelius had just said.
“When did you run from Gianne, then?” I asked, knowing he’d likely never give us a straight answer on the subject of regicide.
“I did not run from her,” Aurelius muttered, his tone exasperated. “I merely decided to switch my alliance to someone better suited to my needs.”
Navan chuckled coldly. “You seem to do that a lot.”
“One cannot blindly follow an insane ruler,” Aurelius fired back. “I would much rather be a rebel equal than a lowly slave.”
“Yeah, but how did the two of you even meet? You were nowhere near each other,” I said.
“A serendipitous capture of one of Orion’s spies led to a deal between Ezra and myself,” Aurelius replied proudly. “It became clear that we shared the same values and the same idea for Vysanthe’s future. A civilized society cannot continue with a monarch at the helm. By all means, have them as a figurehead, but do not permit them power. The leaders of a nation must be of the people, as myself and Ezra are. A leader cannot be too weak, either, as Orion was.”
“So, you saw an opportunity to gain power for yourself and jumped on it?” Navan muttered.
My eyes widened as realization dawned. “Wait, you were going to kill Gianne and blame it on someone else, weren’t you? What, were you supposed to knock her off while Ezra murdered Orion?” I saw a guilty look pass across his features. “What happened—did she get away from you?”
“She is irrelevant now,” Aurelius hissed. “She can take her humans away and try all she likes to get the elixir to work, but she will not succeed. She does not have what we have.”
“The notebook?”
He smiled. “Amongst other things.”
“So, you failed, and she escaped?” Navan taunted him.
“I have already told you, she is irrelevant!” He was getting angry now.
I stared at him silently, inspecting the silvery line of the new scar that cut across his eye. He didn’t seem like the kind of cowardly snake who’d get involved in fighting, so how had he ended up with it? I pushed the thought away, and my gaze flickered back toward the stage, where Ezra was bathing in the chants of his underlings. He and Aurelius seemed like the unlikeliest of alliances, but then again, so had Jareth and Aurelius. In fact, it seemed like all three of them were the same kind of coldblood at heart: self-serving and ruthless in their pursuit of power.
Suddenly, from the stage, Ezra’s eyes locked with mine in a long, hard stare. A smirk curled up the corners of his lips, and written upon them was one single word: victory.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Aurelius and his guards led us away from the auditorium, marching us down another set of identical corridors. The thrum of the generators rattled in my ears. He ushered us into a clinical-looking unit that branched off from one of the main hallways. We pressed on through several sets of double doors, and down a long, sterile corridor, until we reached a grim metal door—windowless and thick, with a security panel on the side.
The panel scanned Aurelius’s eyeball before the door opened with a heavy grind of metal on metal, the scrape of several mechanical locks sending a worried shiver up my spine. Without warning, the guards shoved us both forward, sending us sprawling into the room beyond as the door slammed shut behind us. The scrape of the locks closing into place made my stomach turn, my heart thundering in my chest.
Navan helped me up, the pair of us looking around in shock at our new surroundings. I’d been expecting a dingy cell of some kind, but this was a large, white bedroom—not a prison, per se, but not exactly homey, eit
her. It looked clean and clinical, with plain walls, plain floors, plain bedding, everything pristine, reminding me of a swanky penthouse with minimalist décor… or a modern mental health facility. I’d always thought the two things were separated only by the presence of medical equipment and screams.
There were porthole windows, to my surprise, but they looked out onto the emptiness of space. Even if we’d wanted to break them and escape, we wouldn’t have been able to. I supposed they might be useful if we wanted to… escape, in a different way, but that didn’t bear thinking about. We definitely weren’t at that point yet.
“What the hell is this?” Navan muttered, putting a protective arm around me.
“I don’t know… a test facility, maybe?”
He mumbled into my hair. “That’s what I was thinking. If they aren’t going to force us to fight, then it stands to reason that they’d want to use our blood, to test the elixir.”
“You don’t think they managed to grab enough human subjects before they escaped?”
“I doubt they had many left at all, after the queens and the humans bombed the crap out of the base,” he said, with a sad smile. “I imagine they’re clutching for whatever they can get.”
I frowned. “Then why didn’t they take Angie, too?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe they didn’t know she was on board.”
“What have we gotten ourselves into?” I clung to him, like he was a life raft in a storm.
“It’s nothing we can’t get ourselves out of,” he promised, but I didn’t believe him. How were we supposed to get out of a room, suspended in space, with a door made of thick metal that needed a retinal scan to enter? We were pretty good at getting out of scrapes, but this didn’t feel like one we could easily escape.
“What is this place, anyway?” I glanced back at the room, wondering what it had been used for before we were shoved in here.
Navan shook his head. “I’ve been wondering that. Even Orion didn’t have the kind of resources to build a space station out of nowhere, and Ezra definitely hasn’t had the kind of timeframe that would make this kind of thing possible.”
“You think he stole it?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Do you think there might be other people like us on board?”
He looked concerned. “Test subjects, you mean?”
“If that’s what we are.”
Navan was about to answer when the heavy door screeched open again, revealing Ezra’s and Aurelius’s smug faces. The former was dressed in a sleek suit with a high collar, similar in style to the ones I’d seen Bashrik and Navan wear back on Vysanthe. Only, this one was made from the same dark gray material the guards had been wearing and looked like it had the same Kevlar-like texture. Evidently, he wanted to look the part of leader, but he looked ridiculous.
“Sit on the bed,” Ezra instructed, gesturing toward the neatly made king-size that was the room’s centerpiece.
Navan narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Sit on the bed. There are things we need to talk about,” he repeated, “and we want you to feel… comfortable.” I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be weird, but his words came off as super creepy. A bed wasn’t exactly a normal setting for a conversation with someone like him.
Navan took my hand as we backed up, not taking our eyes off Ezra for a moment. The new leader of the rebels stayed by the doorway as we stepped backward, not stopping until we felt the edge of the mattress on the backs of our legs. Slowly, uncomfortably, we sat down on the edge of the bed, as instructed, and waited for him to explain why on earth we were here. Ezra, however, seemed to have other ideas—it looked like there was going to be a self-gratifying preamble.
“Are you impressed?” he asked.
“By what?” Navan replied sourly.
“That I managed to outfox both Brisha and Gianne. You sent them after me, I know that much, but they’d never have found me here, even if they’d bothered to do as you asked.” He grinned proudly. “Honestly, didn’t you see it coming? Didn’t you see that they’d just pick up humans of their own and scurry back to Vysanthe, where they can be big and powerful again, if only for a short while? Aurelius and I knew exactly what you’d do, and we knew exactly how to outsmart everyone.” He flashed a satisfied glance at his so-called “equal.”
I smirked, although I felt uneasy. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
Ezra grinned. “The queens are waiting for us to strike—and, oh, we’re going to strike—but the longer we leave it, the more paranoid they’ll become.”
“What is this place, anyway?” Navan snapped.
Aurelius was the one to respond this time. “A cloaked station was my idea, but naturally, we had to commandeer one first. It appears that quarantine facilities make the perfect hideouts.”
“Where are all the sick people?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Out there, where they can’t cause trouble ever again,” Ezra said bluntly, gesturing toward the portholes.
“And the doctors?” Navan hissed.
“We could not allow ourselves to have any witnesses, unfortunately… so they joined their patients,” Aurelius said.
“You realize you’re giving the queens time to strengthen themselves, too, right? If you leave it long enough, they might figure out the elixir before you do,” I said, choosing to ignore the fact that they had the notebook. Part of me still hoped it had nothing worthwhile inside it.
“An unfortunate turn of events, seeing as we were only supposed to have one queen to deal with,” Ezra replied, glaring at Aurelius. “Nevertheless, we’ve still got the upper hand, even if they do manage to strengthen their armies back to full force.”
“Oh, and why is that?” I asked dryly, deciding to play along with his narcissistic games.
“Because we have you, of course. What a striking pair you make. Such a lovely couple.”
“So are you two.” Navan gestured at Aurelius and Ezra, the former visibly struggling not to take the bait.
Wanting to defuse the situation a little, I interjected. “Look, why don’t you just tell us what we’re here for? If you don’t want to use us as spies or soldiers, then what is it? Are we guinea pigs or something?”
“I do not understand your terminology,” Aurelius replied, but Ezra talked over him.
“We need you to do what you’re best at,” he purred. “We want you to be lovers, rather than fighters.”
“You sick bastards! What the hell does that mean?” Navan stood up from the bed, fists clenched. I had a horrible feeling I knew exactly what Ezra meant, but, until he spelled it out for us, I wasn’t going to believe that anyone could stoop that low.
Aurelius snuck in before Ezra could say another word, clearly wanting to steal his thunder. “We’ve pieced together the failed experiments we discovered in the alchemist’s notebook that Ezra so helpfully acquired from you. That, combined with our own research, has allowed us to decipher the key to the immortality elixir,” he said, with obvious delight.
“You can’t have,” Navan whispered, his hand gripping mine.
Aurelius carried on as though Navan hadn’t even spoken. “Many of the earlier experiments showed promise, when a combined elixir of Vysanthean blood and human blood was created. However, every attempt ended in failure, no matter what kind of stabilizing agents were added. And so, the idea was abandoned. We moved on to other bloods and other agents, always using human and Vysanthean bloods as a baseline, but nothing has worked thus far. As you know.” He paused, his skeletal chest heaving with the exertion of his excitement. “In analyzing the patterns of error, however, our new alchemy specialist, Lazar Idrax, has determined the missing piece.”
“Which is?” I asked, breathlessly.
“For the elixir to work, it requires the complete miscegenation of both bloods… It requires a half-breed child.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“A half-breed child?” I spat, my whole body shaking with anger. I cou
ld barely breathe from the shock of hearing them say those words, knowing what they meant by them. The king-size bed, the semi-welcoming surroundings—all of it made my stomach churn.
“You twisted sons of frostfangs!” Navan roared, leaping up with his fists raised. We’d both had our weapons taken from us, but it wouldn’t stop either of us from fighting back. He lunged toward Aurelius, who lifted a box that shimmered with silver energy. It forced Navan to pull up short, his chest heaving with angered breaths. He snapped his bared fangs, his eyes turning black.
Aurelius smiled. “I thought you might recognize this.”
A flicker of silver light lashed out from the silver box, attempting to savor a taste of Navan. It was the same stuff that had kept him frozen to the control panel in Aurelius’s ship. He glanced back at me, his brow furrowed, his face a mask of pure fury. I knew what he was thinking—if he lunged at them again and risked the silver energy enveloping him, that would leave me all alone, to fend for myself without a weapon. They had guards, a thick metal door, and the vacuum of space. It wasn’t as though I could win. Besides, now that we knew what they were after, there was no telling what sort of punishment they might bring down on me, if Navan got taken out.
“You can’t be serious. Even a pair of bottom-feeding scum-suckers like you wouldn’t stoop that low,” Navan hissed, taking a few steps back, his arm shooting out across me as though that could somehow protect me from what they wanted.
“Stoop to providing a brighter future for our nation? I assure you, we can.” Aurelius sounded amused.
“Weren’t you listening back there, in the auditorium?” Ezra chimed in. “We’ll stop at nothing until we create a viable elixir. Our vision of Vysanthe is going to happen, by any means necessary. You happen to be those necessary means, and, what’s more, you’re already in love.” Disgust dripped from every word.