“I saw it when I touched her, when I was pulled into the memory.” I grit my teeth. “Her parents. She killed them, didn’t she?”
Neo hangs his head. “She did.”
“And she wanted you to remove the memory.”
“She did.”
Despite myself, I can’t help but press further questions. “Why did she do it?”
“Does a firstborn inheritor of the shadow throne need a reason? By eliminating them, she secured the imminence of her own succession.”
“But what she did … I felt it all, in the memory. There was no … exultation. It was like watching someone else kill them,” I say. “It split her in two.” Adria did tell me that her parents were tyrants, their defeat a necessity. But was that really the whole truth? And did their deposition truly necessitate killing them? I lean forward, placing my handson Neo’s armless shoulders, unable to stop the words from spilling out. “You’ve seen that memory more times than I have. Tell me what you know, Neo. Please.” I blow out a shaky breath. “Tell me the girl who’s wrecked all my plans didn’t spill family blood for the hell of it.”
Eyes drifting shut, Neo inhales deeply. “All right, dayfolk princess. I will tell you a story.”
He leans his head back, eyes open now and staring blankly at the ceiling above us. Or where I imagine the ceiling would appear, if I could see more than an arm’s length through this suffocating dark—lit only by the shimmering blue freeze wall that traps us both.
“The queen’s late parents wanted to inflict the Diakópsei’s unfiltered strength on their entire army. They planned to march on the Daylands, killing its citizens and seizing its preserved memories for the nightfolk.” A vein in Neo’s neck visibly tenses. “So the queen became that which she feared anyone else being forced to become. She committed the ugliest act that cannot be undone. But she meant to save us, her people, and even yours.” He blinks hard, and it takes a moment for me to realize he’s now the one crying. “It tortures her soul.”
The words land with tangible substance, pressing down on me, but it’s a relieving kind of heaviness, like a weighted blanket, grounding me to this moment despite my racing heart and ragged breaths.
“She can’t carry that alone. No one could.” I groan, covering my helmet-masked face with my hands. “She wanted to share the burden—to let herself care for someone with no connection, no stake, in any of this bloodshed—and be cared for in return. I know she felt it. Isaw it, before she cast me in here with you.”
“She has chosen her path.” Neo’s soft voice scrapes like sandpaper anyway. “One that diverges from yours. Unless she turns back, I’m afraid there is nothing you can do—nothing but hope to arrive home in one piece, and perhaps use your own technology to forget any of this ever happened.”
Jaw rigid, I shake my head. “I don’t want to forget.”
“Forgetting is easier.”
“I don’t wanteasy.”
“Then I am sorry for your pain,” Neo says, every syllable dripping with compassion that somehow still feels like condescension. “But I cannot change your choice, any more than I can change the queen’s.”
I want to argue with him. I want to scream and punch and throw myself into the freezeshot barrier until everything hurts so much that I just black out again. Instead, a fresh wave of sobs rises and overtakes me, and I don’t know how long I lie here on the floor, rocks biting into my armor, throat constricted with grief.
Suddenly, the cell’s foundation lurches and undulates beneath us.
Adria’s fortress is under attack again. And unlike last time, neither of us is there to protect the other. I’m trapped in a prison cell with a stranger—with the walls, warped floor, and freezeshot barrier all exasperatingly intact—and she’s … stars above, I don’t know.
“This is all my fault,” I blurt without thinking, even though it patently doesn’t make sense.
I’m taken aback when Neo counters, “Actually, Princess, it’s mine.”
The blood drains from my face. “What?”
“When Adria touched the Diakópsei herself and became what she is, the Depths were in turmoil. Adria fighting off her parents and their soldiers. The Elysians scrambling to defend the asteroid from further misuse.” Neo’s whole body shakes. “I was among them. The Elysians. Devoted myself to them, many cycles ago, rather than fulfill my duty to the military. But in Elysium’s greatest moment of trial, called upon to defend our god …” He shrugs heavily. “I had to know.”
“And you overcharged yourself.”
“Yes. In the chaos, I touched god, and the power was every bit as overwhelming as my elders had forewarned. I could hear …everything.The soldiers. The Elysians …” He shudders. “All the way to the prison quarters. Where a tortured tendril of thought branched out, and wrapped itself around my skull, andsqueezed.Mourning half a lifetimespent paying for crimes against the old crown. Pleading with me to give him another chance to be reborn on the surface.”
My stomach drops. “Azarii.”
Ashamed, Neo avoids my eyes. “The rebellion would not exist without me. Overcome with the onslaught of voices, I unleashed its catalyst. That was why Lail sought to trade for your memory in the first place, Kori. To ease my mental chaos. To … balance me.”
Just as I used Lail’s sphere of raw, undiluted hope to balance Aspect. Neo and I aren’t so different after all.
Neo shakes his head rapidly. “Azarii’s rebellion cast Adria as the ultimate abomination. Considering her parricide, my sister and I were inclined to believe it. But just as Lail still saw me as her brother, despite the terror of my overcharge …” He sighs. “So I found, when I plunged into my queen’s mind, ordered to purge the memory of her murders … that Adria, too, was not merely monster. That she and I were quite alike.”
