“Did Ryan send you?”
“In a matter of speaking,” Gus allowed after a moment’s thought.
She was sure if he’d been able to locate her, he would have issued an order along those lines.As it was, she’d been doing her best to avoid him and the rest of the forty-three.Excuse her, twenty-nine.She still hadn’t gotten used to the name change.
“He must not like you as much as I thought if he sent you after me.”
“Why is that?”Gus asked.
“He has to know you’re no match for me.He threw you away.Just like he did Thea.”
Gus placed her teacup down a little harder than necessary.Since their encounter on Titan, she’d done a little digging and now knew what happened between their other sister and Pallas.“Thea worked with the Osiri against our own.She threw herself away.”
“She recognized the inevitability of rebelling against gods.”
“Is that how you see them?As gods?”
“That’s what they are,” Cleo said.
Gus regarded her pityingly.“They’re not gods, Cleo.They’re devils and they can die.”
Cleo’s laugh held an air of exhaustion.“Oh, well.What you think doesn’t really matter.You’ll be dead soon.”
Poor Cleo.She really didn’t get it.
“I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy,” Gus murmured.
There was a lack of comprehension in Cleo’s gaze as her eyes darted toward the tea that she had yet to touch.
“The poison was never in the tea,” Gus kindly informed her.
Gus had nothing but time while waiting for Cleo’s arrival.Enough to fill the room with the deadly poison emanating from her skin.From the moment her sister opened the door, she was a dead woman walking.
Cleo tried to get up, but her legs refused to respond.
Gus nodded at the understanding she could see dawning.“Now, you’re getting it.”
“How?”Cleo gritted out as she lost sensation in her torso and listed forward.
Gus rose to catch her sister, gently lowering her head to the table.“Do you really think Esara would have spared his pet from his experiments?”
Hardly.He’d saved the worst for Gus.
“I was his pet not because I was weak, but because he considered me his greatest accomplishment.”
A delicate flower.Easily damaged.Easily broken.Yet oh so deadly in the right circumstances.
Esara had been fascinated by that dichotomy.He’d gone to considerable lengths to amplify her inherent abilities.Until he’d made her into something closer to a flower.One whose spores and pollen killed everything around it.
“Co-co-ward.”
“Yes, you’re right.I am a coward.”Gus stroked Cleo’s head in sympathy.“That’s why I am alive, and you are dead."
Gus bore vigil as her sister’s breaths slowed.Then stopped.When she was certain Cleo was dead, she headed to the weapon cache, breaking in to see what information she could gather about Cleo’s potential cohorts and their ultimate plan.Gus doubted Titan was the end.There would be another plot.This time she needed to stay in front of it.
All thought ground to a halt as she saw what was waiting for her inside.
A single white flower.
