Before she could reach them, the doors opened, and Dahlia came storming out in regal plain clothes and her Harpy regalia. She fired once from a glittering revolver and missed before angrily discardingher mask for better aim and stalking toward Yemi. She looked exhausted, sweaty, and enraged. Yemi smiled. She fired again and again, striking Yemi repeatedly about the torso, but the subarmor stayed their impact. The chamber empty, Dahlia tossed her revolver into one of the reflecting pools and unsheathed the greatsword gripped in her other hand. It was long and thin with a bit of a curve, and the blade glinted gold in the low light. A swordswoman’s answer to a spear.
Yemi clucked her tongue as she approached. “You seem upset. Did you get my gift?”
“I should never have let you leave here alive,” Dahlia growled, inviting her in with her blade.
“To err is human.” Yemi shrugged. She stood before her now, close enough to make out the whites of her eyes, the furious tremor of her lip. “I don’t suppose you’ll surrender quietly now, faced with the eradication of your little sect, the timely demise of your father, and the terrifying shadows of all your life’s failures staring you down.”
Dahlia spat in her face. It landed on the cheek of Yemi’s mask.
“Attagirl.” Yemi smiled.
The darkness covered Dahlia’s eyes again, and Yemi knew Ursla was in play. Yemi whipped her spear but Dahlia parried and came after her instead with a speed and ferocity Yemi hadn’t thought her capable of. She relished it—their fight was more a dance than the slaughter the night had been so far. She applauded herself for having had the foresight to warn her. Dahlia’s end would be more satisfying this way.
Yemi managed to strike the sword with the tip of her spear, halving the length of the blade, but Dahlia was unshaken. The long shaft of metal clattered to the ground, and before Yemi could sweep back to victoriously loose Dahlia’s head from her shoulders, Dahlia punched her hard enough in the face to send her mask flying. Startled, Yemi dropped her spear, sending it sizzling into one of the water gardens. She recovered in time to collect the fallen blade, the sharp edge of it carving into her palm. She didn’t feel it. It didn’t matter. She raised it and drove it through Dahlia’s gut.
The black disappeared from Dahlia’s eyes, and the hilt of her sword clattered to the ground. She went to her knees in the shallow pool. Blood pumped in thin rivulets into the water, dyeing it in splotches of crimson.
Yemi’s gums itched. All her inner voices screamed for flesh. This was victory. She’d earned a treat.
“Whatever you think you’ve done here tonight, the monarchy is dead,” Dahlia cried.
“It’s not the only thing,” Yemi said in a hollow voice. “Welcome to your martyrdom.”
A guttural groan escaped someone behind her, and despite herself, Yemi looked back.
Nova was pinned to one of the great doors with a spear in her side and her hands wrapped around the skull of her attacker, thumbs pressed into the inner corners of his eyes. Cutter arrived to cut down another one before they could finish her and sawed off the bulk of the spear shaft.
As if in slow motion, Yemi watched Nova pull herself forward and free of the weapon. Her empty gaze drifted in Yemi’s direction before she collapsed.
“Nova, no!” Yemi screamed as Nova fell. The words ran long, and her voice went deep and foreign. Despair rose within her like a tidal wave until—
Her blood stopped moving.
The stone in Yemi’s stomach grew its needlelike legs again, only there were more of them, growing longer, pricking her skin from the inside. She collapsed into the pool, barely able to keep from drowning in it.
Among the hissing voices now rose one more distinct. Familiar.
Let me in, little fish.
Nova’s voice played in her mind.Ursla got inside Dahlia somehow.
No. NO!Yemi shrieked inside her own head. But she was already feeling like a smaller presence in herself. A wisp of conscience, void of control and drowning in her own darkness.
When it seemed the stone’s tendrils had all but filled her body, she pushed herself upward, sputtering water and leaking black blood from the cut in her hand. Nova was standing again, barely, supported almost entirely by Cutter. They both watched her in horror, and at once she knew.
The bug in Helene’s ear.
Ursla.
It had always been her.
The pounding in her chest ceased, and the corners of her mouth began to twitch in a shark’s grin she found terrifyingly unlike her own in the reflective pool. A marionette now, she felt her hands move to the sword and raised it. Against Nova.
“That’sbetter,” Ursla’s voice sighed from Yemi’s lips. Her movements became less staccato and more natural. More controlled.
“Now. We have to go now,” Cutter was saying, his face riddled with heartbreak.
“Witch!” Nova roared as Cutter struggled to drag her away. Her shattered hand was pressed against her ribs. “I made you a promise when we met.Expect me.”
