Prologue
Gus stifled a yawn, the corners of her eyes watering. The argument below escalated, pulling her attention back to the trio standing on the amphitheater sands.
“We could force your hand,” one of her siblings was saying as Gus tuned back in.
A low angry snarl was her sister, Kira’s, response. “Try it.”
Kira wasn’t really her sister. No more than the forty-one other individuals seated around the amphitheater were. That was just what Gus called them. Her siblings by circumstance rather than blood or choice.
They didn’t always like each other—honestly, that was true the majority of the time—but they would protect one another. To the death if necessary. And they were loyal. That was more than most families could boast.
Down below, it was the same old story when Kira, the resident black sheep of the family, and the rest of Gus’s siblings were put in the same space. Why talk things out when you could threaten? Next would be a not-so-subtle prod from the forty-three’s side.
“Your actions affect us all, little sister.”
There it was.
“I don’t care. I won’t walk away from them. No matter what you say.”
The air around Kira buzzed in agitation, carrying a warning as something dangerous pushed its way to the surface beneath her skin.
Gus sat up straight, suddenly paying a little more attention than she’d been before.
According to the script, Kira and the forty-three should have traded a few more barbs before she stalked off in a fit of pique.
The monster inside Kira known as her primus, the alternative form that made her sister such a dangerous wildcard, should never have made an appearance.
Not unless she was physically threatened in some way.
And then, only if she, or someone close to her, was in mortal peril.
This level of anger wasn’t Kira’s style. She should have been begging at their feet for help in saving their niece.
That’s what Gus would have done. Prostrated herself in hopes the forty-three would take pity. Promised everything and anything they wanted regardless of her intentions on following through.
It’s what Kira had done when their sister, Elise, was taken prisoner during humanity’s war with the alien scourge known as the Tsavitee.
This change in Kira’s behavior alarmed Gus. At a time when Kira needed them most, she was doing her damnedest to shove them away.
Where was her control?
She’d always been impetuous but never this reckless. This was out of character.
Gus found herself curious. Something she almost never was. That curiosity led her to crack open the part of herself that she’d always kept carefully hidden. Not just from the monsters of her earliest years but from the rest of her siblings as well.
Sometimes even from herself.
In an instant, a thousand whispers flooded her mind. Dozens of secrets became hers to safeguard. Most were irrelevant. But on rare occasions, a few proved interesting.
As moonlight pierced the bank of clouds overhead to bathe the ruins of the amphitheater in soft light, Gus sifted through the many voices spilling into her mind.
She disregarded their stories of the far distant past when this planet was still inhabited by a race bearing a lot of the physical characteristics of the Haldeel.
She let the tales of the rise and fall of a civilization before a mass exodus flow past her.
Sinking deep into the flow of voices, Gus emptied her mind and waited.
There.
What was that?
Oh. Oh my. No wonder Kira was so out of sorts. She’d been too harsh on her youngest sister earlier. Given the circumstances, Kira had shown admirable restraint.
Gus came out of her meditation to focus on the drone floating idly above Kira’s shoulder. It looked oddly harmless, drifting in and out of the shadows as the moon played peek-a-boo with the clouds overhead. The forty-three’s youngest sibling was many things. Harmless, he was not.
It was something of a mystery as to how the soul of the boy she’d once known had come to reside in the military combat drone. If her siblings knew, they weren’t sharing.
None of that mattered, though. Because right now, Jin wasn’t Jin. His soul was missing.
No, not missing. Gone.
You poor, unfortunate woman, Gus thought at her sister. What a dangerous game you’re playing.
Jin was Kira’s closest confidant. Her partner in crime.
And, Gus suspected, a mitigating influence against some of Kira’s more, shall she say, unwise impulses.
The two were the definition of co-dependent.
Where one went, the other followed. Gus didn’t think one could survive long term without the other.
To be separated at a time like this, when Kira’s niece was in the grasp of the Tsavitee, was not just unexpected. It was unheard of.
Kira must be hanging onto her sanity by a thread.
“This is your only warning. Stand in my way again—and I’ll treat you the way I would an enemy,” Kira threatened before stalking out of the room. The drone followed with jerky movements that were nothing like the smooth operation of their youngest brother’s.
“Ahh, there she goes again,” Wrath crooned, pulling Gus’s attention away from Kira and Jin’s departure.
“Should we drag her back? There’s enough of us. We could probably do it,” Iris drawled.
The emperor’s Face bared his teeth in a threatening smile. “I would advise against that.”
He knew Kira’s secret.
At least, Gus thought he did.
Her gaze moved to Pallas sitting nonchalantly in the stands. Did he?
Gus suspected not. None of her siblings did.
What a sad commentary on the state of their relationship with their youngest sister; that Kira hadn’t trusted them with such explosive news.
Then again, in Kira’s place, Gus didn’t think she would have either.
As unified as the forty-three pretended to be, they were one argument from fracturing into a thousand pieces. Gus didn’t know when it had started, but factions had been forming. The forty-three were no longer those lost waifs who counted on each other for survival.
Not that Gus had ever been included among their ranks. Widely considered the weakest, she’d always stood on the outside looking in.
She was okay with that.
Sure, it was lonely sometimes, but she thought that was preferable to the scheming and backstabbing that sometimes happened when overly aggressive, violence-prone individuals with little in the way of social skills or emotional maturity spent time together in close quarters.
When you grew up the way they had, you learned that it was preferable to be the one to stab first rather than the one getting stabbed.
Gus rather liked the current status quo. Better to be overlooked and forgotten than noticed and toyed with. Your bones shattered and your spirit broken.
Ryan, the forty-three’s de facto leader, stirred among his shadows.
“We’ll put it to a vote,” he announced
As always, he started roll call with the strongest among them.
“Alexander, what’s your opinion?”
Their brother glanced at Selene, seeking her approval.
For a moment, Gus was enthralled with the way the air between the two seemed to spark and glow with a rosy warmth. She was inexperienced in such matters, but she thought that the feeling they always gave off when in each other’s vicinity was love.
“My decision was made months ago,” Alexander said after a moment of thought. “The forty-three face a new paradigm. I am willing to see where Kira’s path leads us.”
Ryan moved onto the next person. “Marie.”
“Against.”
“Cole.”
“I have no opinion one way or another at this time. I reserve my vote.”
After that, Ryan didn’t call out any more names. He didn’t need to. With a few exceptions, the forty-three answered according to an order established long, long ago.
Gus was the last to give her answer.
“For.”
Silence fell.
Gus pretended not to notice as several of her siblings looked at her in surprise. Even through the shadows he’d wrapped around him to hide his face, she could feel the weight of Ryan’s stare, his confusion and curiosity sending a nervous flutter through her stomach.
She did not like being the focus of his attention.
Actually, she disliked attention from any of them.
Swallowing hard, Gus spared a brief moment to be grateful for the foresight that had compelled her to don the mask she kept on hand for occasions such as these.
It was a little more ornate than a gathering like this strictly called for.
Careful contouring gave the impression of a bird’s beak.
The raised swoops and swirls along the forehead and cheeks made it seem more elegant than it deserved.
It covered the entirety of her features.
The only thing left visible were her eyes, which were the pale green of a dewy morning.
Before arrival, it had seemed like an unnecessary precaution since everyone here already knew what she looked like.
Or at least they had. At one point.
It had been years since she’d shown her face to the forty-three. So long that some of them whispered that she must be hiding hideous scars. Otherwise, why else would she go to the trouble of concealing her features?
With the emperor’s youngest Face in attendance, a man she only knew by reputation, but who was said to be both calculating and ruthless, she was glad she’d taken precautions.
The mask coupled with the head-to-toe cloak that covered her entire body would hide any identifying traits, making her more difficult to hunt later.
Graydon was not a man she wanted on her tail. Unlike the rest of her siblings, Gus didn’t have many natural defenses.
Her skill set lay in a, let’s say, alternative, direction.
That made her no less dangerous, but she didn’t want to test that assumption.
Better to be a ghost. It was safer.
Gus liked safety.
Something that felt like it was in critically short supply now that all eyes were on her.