Fitchner's razor buzzes, and he chops away the tail faster than a bee beats its wings. It flops to the floor, transparent stinger hissing out poison. On the Sovereign's arm, the wounded creature screams. Wailing and writhing like a dying cat. The Sovereign rips it off and throws it at the wall. My own releases slowly, as if connected with the other. Mewing pathetically, it retreats to its box to hide in the darkness. I dab away the faint trail of blood it left on my forearm.

"So you do lie," I say with a wicked grin.

The Sovereign exhales a long sigh.

Mustang stands, enraged. "You promised you would not hurt them. You lied."

"Yes." Octavia rubs her temples. "Yes, I lied."

"You said there were no lies here," Mustang hisses. "That was a precondition of my allegiance to you. The only thing I asked for, and you planned to do it while I watched?"

"Sit." The Sovereign stands, drawing nose-to-nose with Mustang. "Sit down."

Mustang sits, breathing heavily. She won't look at me or the Sovereign. She's surrounded by betrayal. The Sovereign notes this, piecing together a new strategy as Mustang draws a gold ring from her pocket and rolls it compulsively through her fingers.

"Do you know why I need your family gone?" Octavia asks Mustang. She doesn't reply. "I asked you a question, Virginia. Put aside petulance and answer."

"He is a threat to peace," Mustang replies flatly, slipping the ring on her finger. "He disregards your orders. He does not obey financial directives. He delays helium-3 quotas."

"If I tried removing him from power, what would happen?"

Mustang looks up at her. "He would rebel."

"So what am I to do? If he rebels while on Mars, it becomes his planet fortress. The monies it would take me to pry him out—to find him, to kill him, to reinstate order—is ... incomprehensible. Ships. Men. Food. Munitions. Trade. Helium-3 shortages. The Society would not recover for years.

"We cannot afford an enemy like him. But we also cannot afford an ally to so publicly affront us. What if the Governors of the Gas Giants thought they were immune to my orders because we're lenient with your father? Because we let him manipulate helium prices or ignore Sovereign directives? Sixty years ago, in the first year of my reign, the Moons of Saturn rebelled. The war did not end until I destroyed the moon, Rhea, outright. Fifty million dead. That is how stubborn our race is. They know how difficult it is for me to flex my hand billions of kilometers from the Core. But still they are afraid. So much of a ruler's reign is a figment of the people's imagination. My power isn't ships. Isn't Praetorians. My power is their fear. But they must have fresh reminders.

"And so my family was the reminder."

"Yes. Tell me that doesn't make sense."

Mustang stays quiet for a long moment. "It is the logical political move. But he's my father ..."

"Then also consider this."

She waves her hand and a holo ignites on the floor, rising to fill half the room. It's a riot. Buildings smoke. Grays mow down women and men with pulse weapons. She changes the image. A dozen more dance across the room. A woman falls in front of me, dead. Hole in her skull. Smoking still.

I stare down at the sudden horror.

"Is this Mars?" I ask, fearing for my family.

"You would think so, wouldn't you?" The Sovereign traces a finger through the muzzle of a pulseRifle as it fires. "It's Venus."

"Venus?" Mustang whispers. "There are no Sons of Ares on Venus."

"Nor will there be after tonight. The flame spreads even to the Core. Two hours ago, multiple bombings racked this Society. My Politicos and Praetors and various high-level personnel throughout the empire have initiated Order Zero. No media will report this. Wherever there are flames, we make quarantine. We will snuff them out. Something your father did not do, Mustang. In fact, he allowed the Sons to thrive. To spread here."

I warned Harmony. I only hope the Sons aren't all lost.

The Sovereign crouches in front of Mustang. "Your father must die. He hanged the very woman the Sons of Aresused to start all this. His face burns across their propaganda. If he goes, if we strike them, then they fade. We will kill two birds with one stone. Arrange the transfer of power to Bellona, and Mars is at peace for the first time in my reign. All it costs is fifty lives. I know he is your father, but you came into my fold for a reason."

Looking at Mutang, I understand that reason now, and it breaks my heart.

She stands slowly, walking to the window as if fleeing the decision. She stares out at a ship passing in the distant fog. "When Mother was alive, he used to ride with me through the forest. We'd stop at this wildblossom clearing and lay in the red flowers, arms out, pretending we were angels. That man is dead. Do with the new one as you like."

17

What the Storm Brings

The Obsidians escort me to new quarters, Fitchner trailing along behind, pacing jovially on the marble floors. When we reach my door, he takes my hand.

"Well played, boyo. Good reading on her—knowing she wants what she can't have. Gorydamn clever. Warms my heart to finally see you playing the game and winning, you little pisser." He slugs my shoulder. "Tomorrow, we'll go to market and buy you a servant. Pinks. Blues. Obsidians of your very own. For now ... I left you a present." He gestures into my room where a lithe Pink lies on the bed. "Enjoy."

"You don't know me at all. Do you?"

"This is the hand life has dealt you. It's not a bad hand. Imagine the things you can do as a personal emissary of the Sovereign. She makes your Governor look like a small-town slumlord. You have your girl. You have opportunity. Embrace your new life."

The door slams.

A new life, but is it worth the cost? I don't know what's happening with the Sons. That's something I can't affect. But he expects me to let Roque die? To let Tactus and Victra and Theodora perish to Praetorian death squads?

I walk around my suite, ignoring the Pink. Luna's night clouds sprawl far as the eye can see beyond the huge bank of windows that comprises the suite's north wall. Buildings puncture the clouds like glittering spears.

I am trapped by opulence.

Rain continues to pour. The storms of Luna are enigmatic creatures. For a man of Mars, it is a slow rain. Lethargic. As though the drops tire of their own fall in this low gravity. But the winds that come are gales. There are no cracks in the Citadel's windows through which the wind can whistle. I miss the moans of my old castle on Mars. Miss the laments of the deepmines. Those moments when the drill cooled and I sat there touching my wedding band through my frysuit, thinking of how soon it would be that I had her lips to mine, her hands on my waist, her body drifting light as dust over my own.

I cannot think only of the Red girl. When I see the moon, I think of the sun: Mustang burns in my thoughts. If Eo smelled of rust and soil, then the Golden girl was of fire and autumn leaves.

Part of me wishes I would only remember Eo. That my mind belonged to her, so I could be like one of those knights of legend. A man so in love with one lost that he closes his heart to all others. But I am not that legend. In so many ways, I'm still a boy, lost and afraid, seeking warmth and love. When I feel dirt, I honor Eo. And when I see fire, I remember the warmth and flicker of the flames across Mustang's skin as we lay in our chamber of ice and snow.

I examine the empty room, which smells neither of leaves nor soil, but cardamom. The room is too vast for my taste. Too rich. There is ivory on the walls. A sauna. A massage parlor adjacent to a pleasureChamber. There's a commChair, a bed, a small swimming pool. These are my chambers now. I see on a dataFile that I've been given a fifty-million-credit stipend to choose my attendants. They left me an additional ten million to populate my harem. This is the price they pay me for betraying my friends. It is not enough.

My eyes now fall on the Pink who lies on my bed. Naked, covered only by a blanket. I threw it on her to mask her form, thinking of poor Evey when I first saw her. But the longer I look at this new girl, the harder it is to remember Evey, to remember Eo or Mustang. That's what Pinks are for, to help you forget. So effective they even make you forget their own sad plight. When she grows old, she'll be sold off from the Citadel staff to some high-class brothel. And a few more lines will form and she'll be sold down the ladder and down the ladder till she has nothing more to give. It happens to men. It happens to women. And, I'm beginning to realize, it happens to Golds.

The Pink asks me to join her. To let her soothe what ails me. I don't reply. I sit on the edge of the windowsill, my hands kneading my thighs, waiting. I don't have my razor. Obsidians guard the hall outside. The glass window won't break by any means I have at my disposal, but I do not worry. I sit watching the storm, feeling it brew inside myself.

With a hiss, the door opens. I turn, a smile already cracking my face.

"Mustang, I—"

Through the door slips a demure male Pink with white hair and eyes that'd break a thousand hearts in Lykos. It breaks mine now. I was wrong.