“Who were the perpetrators?”
Vanya never looked away from her face. “Praetorialegionnaires.”
Chu Hua stiffened in her seat, something like anger flashing across her brown eyes. “That goes against the duty to the Imperial throne thepraetorialegionnaires are expected to adhere to.”
“Duty can be overridden.”
“If it were bribes—”
“It wasn’t.” Vanya stood. “Come with me. I will show you.”
Chu Hua silently followed him out of the office and through the halls of the Imperial palace. More and more people were coming awake as Javier and Alida worked to confirm the absence—or presence—ofrionetkas.
Thepraetorialegionnaires guarding him remained those who had been with him in Oeiras. They followed Vanya and Chu Hua from the low-lit hallways of the Imperial palace to the coolness of a summer night, dawn closing in from the east.
The pathways to the private star temple on the palace grounds used by the Imperial family were lit by gas lamps. Typically guarded year-round, every hour of the day, the number ofpraetorialegionnaires on duty at the star temple had doubled since his arrival home. With them were spiderlike automatons patrolling in nonstop circles.
The reason for the heightened security lay within its walls, watched over not by a star priest but by a Legion magician, whose clarion crystal–tipped wand never left their hand.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” thepraetorialegionnaire said, coming to attention at their arrival. “Imperial General.”
The trio of metal coffins taking up space near the star temple’s altar were locked, though not welded shut. Each coffin carried the corpse of arionetka, the rest of the bodies having been burned in Oeiras. A much smaller box sat on top of the center coffin, carrying the remains of the clockwork metal hearts that had given corrupted life to the men and women who had once served Vanya and ultimately found a different master.
Vanya gestured at the coffin on the left. “Open it.”
The legionnaire kept her wand pointed at the coffin as she stepped forward, tracing the spell lines wrapped around the locks with her wand. Vanya could sense the flow of the aether through the clarion crystal, the element transmuted into magic. Her control was perfect, and the magical ties keeping the metal locks in place went dormant. The keys she carried on her hip undid the locks themselves, the sound of gears turning loud in the star temple.
It reminded Vanya of what lay below the tiled mosaic floor and the mechanism that kept the crypt sealed away from prying eyes. Tonight, they weren’t there to bury the dead, merely to bear witness.
Two otherpraetorialegionnaires on duty inside the star temple stepped forward to lift the lid off the coffin. A faint hint of decay drifted up from it. Vanya didn’t react, for he’d smelled worse things in his twenty-eight years of life.
Because of the way the Houses vied for power—through marriage, murder, and skirmishes alongvasilyetborders—death was a way of life in Solaria and sanctioned by their guiding star. The Imperial family always traveled with a royal embalmer to ensure their bodies could be brought back to Calhames for proper mourning and, eventually, secret burial.
Vanya had instructed the embalmers to preserve the bodies of therionetkas. They’d been stored in a massive ice box in Oeiras under heavy guard before being loaded onto the airship. They could not be stored anywhere else on the palace grounds. The dead had to be handled with care, and while Vanya doubted therionetkaswould rise as revenants, one could never be too careful.
Chu Hua stepped up to the coffin, nostrils flaring at the rancid smell. She gazed down at the mutilated body inside, expression unchanging. “Are these the kinds of scars you’re searching for? No one has been forthcoming on that bit.”
“Yes.” Vanya joined her by the coffin, peering down at the body with its sunken-in chest, vivisection lines cut through cold flesh. “We found clockwork metal hearts inside each of their chest cavities.”
She turned her head fractionally to look at him. “Similar to the one found in the assassin who attacked during your coronation a few years ago?”
Vanya nodded slowly. “I did not know what it meant then. I do now.”
He’d allowed Soren to carry that heart back to the Warden’s Island for further examination. The wardens hadn’t been able to decipher the spellwork on the metal clockwork heart back then. The self-destruct spell embedded in the metal meant the devices broke apart after a certain period of time once the host was dead, whether or not magic was involved. Vanya had hoped to retain them whole, but the pieces were in the box on top of the center coffin.
What Soren had uncovered back then in that assassin’s chest had been known by very few people in Solaria. Chu Hua was one of them, which was why Vanya was meeting with her here, at this hour, keeping secrets for just a little longer.
“Javier used mind magic to interrogate them before they died. Part of their memory was missing, and who they were was no longer a truth they lived. They called themselvesrionetkas,” Vanya said.
Chu Hua made a moue of distaste. “Puppets.”
“Ones who were sent to kill me and take Raiah from Oeiras.”
“Did they succeed?”
For all that the broadsheets had reported on his survival, Raiah’s absence had been noted as well. Vanya stepped back from the coffin, nodding at the magician to close the lid and lock the dead away again. “My daughter is safe.”
“But she is not with you.” Chu Hua tipped her head to the side. “Neither is your warden.”
