Golden Son

I prepared the trap before I even left the fleet. All secrets find themselves whispered into Pliny’s ears and he would wish for nothing more than my timely demise, particularly after I provoked him in the ArchGovernor’s meeting. So he did his work. He schemed and plotted and found himself an ally against the big bad Darrow au Andromedus in the Sovereign herself, a fact that I will be happy to share with Augustus as soon as possible.

The Sovereign’s ships hid themselves among the ruins of a derelict space station that was once used as a base of terraforming operations. Kellan au Bellona was smart, but predictable. My larger secondary force—a detachment of Telemanus ships—which I hid behind another smaller moon’s mass, will ambush the Bellona force in sixty seconds, slingshotting around the other side of the moon by using its gravity to gain velocity. With Roque in command, I’ll have ten Bellona ships to add to my personal armada by day’s end.

“You knew,” Lorn accuses me quietly, his thick hand gripping my uniform at the neck and shaking me. “You knew.” And he knows what this means for him. It is not simply my victory. It is his defeat. One way or another, he must ally himself. And I’ve made it easy for him to pick a side.

“ ‘If you’re a fox, play the hare.’ Isn’t what you taught me? But it will look like you knew I set a trap for her. That you slipped news of her trap to me.” I touch his shoulder as he releases me. “I am sorry, friend. Truly. But you are part of this war.”

His jaw works, but he says nothing.

“The Sovereign will send her Praetorians again to Europa once I have left,” I say. “Only this time they’ll come for you and yours. Their black-and-purple ships will shell you from orbit till your islands and your cities on the archipelagoes and mainland and the rising mountains in the south are made of glass and swallowed by the seas. The waters will weep over your shattered towers, and of your house, there will be nothing but crypts in the deep. Unless we win.”

His eyes seek in me something to give him time. But instead he sees only what made him take me under his wing from the start—himself. Most men would give anything to see that, but here and now, he wishes to see anything else.

“I put my family at risk to help you escape. I took you in, taught you. And you betray me like the others. Like Aja.”

“You look for pity? You let me come here, Lorn. You would have consigned my friends above to torture and death even as you gave me a path to escape. But my friends will not be prisoners.”

I point upward to the fiery gashes in the night sky as my secondary force rockets around Europa.

“Hate me, but fight at my side,” I tell Arcos. “Only then will your family survive.” I put a hand out for my former teacher. He pulls out his razor.

“I should kill you.”

“Can I come and shoot the geezer?” Sevro asks over the com.

“Hold,” I tell him.

“You forget.” Lorn pulls his own datapad from his pocket. “I could have my fleet destroy yours, boy.”

“Not before mine takes the Sovereign’s.”

“But she would know then where House Arcos stands. She would know that you tricked me. That my house is not part of this.”

“Then do it,” I tell Lorn. “Launch your ships if you think my cause evil. Put me down if you think me a monster.” I step forward, close to him. “But you know the heart that beats inside. Choose me. Or choose that darkness.” I nod down the hill of the forest garden to where we entered the place. Twelve Obsidian Praetorians file through the same glass door we used. Huge men and women in black-and-purple armor, skull helms. Only one Stained—this one thinner than the others, like a winter asp standing on its tail. His armor is white and splashed with colors like blood.

They are less than fifty meters away. With them, shorter than the rest, but more glorious, is the Protean Knight in her golden gear. Her razor shimmers with the colors of a nebula, and her armor writhes like the waves that batter the white walls of Lorn’s island. Aja peers up to the night sky, where she sees my ambush unfolding. She lets her helmet recoil into her armor.

“And then the traitors were two,” she calls. “House Arcos has embraced treason as well. Lorn. You stand with the lions?”

“The House Arcos stands apart,” Lorn calls back.

“Apart?” Quinn’s killer frowns and tilts her head so I can see the dueling scars on the right of her neck. Her cat eyes scan the woods for signs of a trap. “There is no such thing.”

“I was as deceived as you, Aja!” Lorn calls. “Darrow knew you were here. I don’t know how. But I am not your enemy. I want only to be left alone.”

“That was never a choice!” Aja calls. “You know this better than anyone. You are with us or you are against us, Lorn.”

“Aja. No. I have no part in this! None!”

“The strong always have a part,” I mutter.

“I will not have my hand forced.” He cuts me with a wrathful stare. “I have no quarrel with either of you. I am a man of peace now.”