“Last I saw her was in the throne room, but I don’t know now.”
Yemi was opening her mouth to advise him on what he could expect if she didn’t find Dahlia in the throne room when a bullet glanced off her mask. She peered back up the hallway to see a group of gunners backed by the two women from earlier with hand cannons aimed at her as she stalked toward them.
“Halt!” one of them shouted in warning.
“Or else what?” Yemi growled, holding out her arms as if daring them to do their worst. There was no cell in her body that believed she was anything short of invincible.
A strike of flint and a whiff of powder.
In a blur, Nova appeared before her, the edges of her iron fans dripping blood as she slammed them together in shield position. The hand cannons fired not half a breath later, and smashed into the shield with enough force to dent it, crushing Nova’s fist and pushing her back full inches.
“What the fuck are you doing!” Nova growled.
“Enjoying myself,” Yemi replied.
Nova grimaced as she attempted and failed to remove her hand from the bent well, the jagged metal drawing blood. She flexed her fingers seemingly just to prove she still could.
Yemi salivated behind the mask, leaning into the overwhelming, metallic—delicious—scent.
“This is Commander Grey,” Nova shouted at their opposition. “Surrender or you will be put down.”
“Can’t do it, boss,” came the reply. The voice was daring if unfamiliar.
“They can’t do it, Commander Grey,” Yemi repeated in a taunting voice.
“You can. And you should,” Nova called.
“Oh, but they won’t.” Yemi grinned. Nova smelled wonderful, the mild, fruity scent of her hair, the beads of sweat pooling in the hollow place where her neck and jaw met. She could make out the subtle throb of an artery just disappearing beneath the collar of her subarmor, close enough to taste it…
“Yemi.” Nova frowned at her. “Backup! What is wrong with you?”
Bullets began pelting the shield again before Yemi could answer.
“You know what? Fine. Fuck it,” Nova huffed. She pushed forward, taking advantage of the long reload time for hand cannons. Yemi followed closely, drawn more to Nova’s blood than the promise of violence ahead.
Nova picked up one of the discarded cannon rounds that had fallen at her feet. It was heavy, and the size of a rough-hewn billiard ball. Yemi heard the click and smelled the sizzle of a flint-lit fuse before Nova threw them both into a wall behind a stack of crates just as the hand cannons fired again. The rounds passed them, hammering into the marble at the end of the hall, and Yemi and Nova charged their enemies.
Nova stayed behind her shield until the guns were empty, but Yemi launched herself from behind it, thrusting her spear into the first face she saw. Bullets pinged off her subarmor, marking her chest, thigh, and gut with what promised to be phenomenal bruises, but she laughed as she slayed them all. Nova punched one of thecannonmaidens with her shield and slammed the round in her free hand into another guard’s skull with a thud.
Nova roared in pain as she extricated her hand from her battered shield. Yemi moved herself away before she was drawn in to Nova’s injury again. Nova was a distraction, she reminded herself. For both her feral mind and her human heart.
“My hand’s broken,” Nova groaned, inhaling back to calm as she picked up a discarded spear. “Cutter and the Gold Guard are back this way. We’ll get one of them to escort y—where are you going?”
“Go. The Harpy is in my throne room.”
“I—I’ve found Orie and Enna. They’re alright,” Nova called, her tone one of futile disappointment.
“I’ll congratulate you all later.”
“Orie says they put the statue in a masons’ storeroom in the crypt. I circled back and got the door open, but it’s not there. It’s gone.”
“Fine,” Yemi shouted.
Bodies littered her route to the throne room. Cutter and the Gold Guard had been busy. Outside the front doors, soldiers still hurried about, either searching for a place to hide or stage their last stand. They were of little consequence.
The forechamber of the grand hall was dark and free of the night creatures who normally chirped alongside the water gardens. The air was humid and smelled of home. The pools reflected the dark through the glass ceiling, the scant torchlight, and the long tapestries draped on either side of the throne room doors. Dahlia had replaced the Bear Queen’s plants with red spider lilies. The little fish took shelter beneath lily pads as the surface of the water trembled from the distant fighting still ongoing in the wings.
Yemi’s boots clicked quickly on the marble, and her grip on her spear tightened. There was no fear to smell here. No small army waiting for her behind those doors. But there was someone.
