Kalan turned to Simon and spoke again. “Jessamyn’s reports tell us he shuts himself up in the girl’s rooms for hours at a time. She hears her screams, and she sees the Emperor emerge afterward, harried and crazed, but still the girl resists him. Is this accurate, Simon?”

Simon watched the man coldly. “It is.”

“And Ostia grows every day. Ravikant suspects it will soon open wide enough that the fabric of the empirium there will rupture, and the cruciata will spill right into the streets of our city. Isn’t that right?”

“If you are trying to steer me toward betraying my lord and Emperor, you will fail,” Simon said, his voice low and even. He rose from his chair. “It was a mistake for me to come here. It was an even larger mistake for you to call this meeting. I will give you one chance to persuade me that you have said these things in error due to fear and a misguided interpretation of the Invictus oath. If you fail to persuade me, I will bring the Emperor here tonight and have you slain on your steps.”

Kalan’s eyes blazed, his hands flat on the tabletop. “His mind is elsewhere, Simon. You know this. You see it yourself every day. All of us do. This obsession with traveling to the past and reuniting with his lost love… It has ruined him. If he were himself, if his mind were what it once was, he would have broken the Ferracora girl long ago. But he has not, and monsters encroach upon us from sea and sky. We must act. She must seal the Gate, and now Ostia too, or else it is death for all of us.”

Simon waited, half his attention on the tense council.

The other half listened for Jessamyn.

“Admiral Ravikant is already at work,” Kalan went on, sounding more confident now. He thought his argument was working. “He has assembled his strongest lieutenants. They believe that the combined strength of their minds will be enough to destroy him. But in order to do this, we will need your help.”

Suddenly, Vezdal shot up from the table and hurried for the doors. She kicked them, and they flew open wide, knocking Jessamyn to the floor.

The girl jumped to her feet just as Vezdal lunged, a long, slim blade flashing in her hand. Jessamyn dodged it, whirled and kicked. She missed, and Vezdal grabbed her leg, flung her hard to the floor.

“Fool girl!” Vezdal roared. “Traitorous scum!”

Kalan wrenched Vezdal back into the room, brought her whirling around to face him.

“We can use her, Vezdal,” Kalan hissed. “She has been assigned to the girl’s guard. She has been assigned to watch over her brother. Jessamyn is a valuable pair of eyes in the palace.”

Vezdal ripped her arm from his grasp. “Now she is a risk, and we must eliminate her.”

But Jessamyn had already fled down the corridor.

Vezdal ran after her, reaching for another knife at her belt. One of the other Five, a formidable archer named Telantes, followed hot on her heels. Simon heard the clatter of blades against the stone floor, the thin whip of arrows.

Kalan turned to Simon, his cheeks bright with anger, but before he could say anything, Simon pulled the revolver from his hip and shot him.

Before Kalan hit the ground, Simon had whirled and shot the others cleanly between their eyes—Mirzet at the window, and Praxia, still seated at the table.

Simon stalked across the room and stood over Kalan, who clutched his gushing belly. Simon raised his gun for a killing shot.

“My apologies, Kalan,” he said. “I could not allow you to work against the Emperor. You think Ravikant would be able to do what the Emperor has not? His mind is a bludgeon. He would kill the girl the first time he entered her thoughts, and then we would be defenseless before the oncoming swarm.”

Then Simon pulled the trigger. He was out of the room before the gunshot’s echo faded.

As he ran out of the Lyceum in pursuit of the others, a single thought screamed through his mind, and even with his feet pounding against stone, his gun hot in his hand, he could not shake it:

I shot him right in the gut.

I shot him right in the gut.

• • •

A maze of courtyards surrounded the Emperor’s palace—one Simon knew well.

He passed under a stone archway from one courtyard into the next, keeping his gaze fixed on Jessamyn. She was not far ahead of him; she’d taken an arrow in the thigh and was slowing fast.

Vezdal leapt out of the shadows and grabbed Jessamyn’s arm, spinning her around. Jessamyn dodged Vezdal’s knife, then jammed the hilt of her own into Vezdal’s nose with a sickening crunch. Vezdal staggered, her nose spurting blood, but she only hesitated a moment before running after Jessamyn’s limping form.

A shadow followed fast atop the courtyard walls—Telantes, a quiver of arrows on his back.

Simon cut through another courtyard, then emerged through an arch of ironwork dripping with flowers just as Jessamyn came staggering down a flight of white stairs. She ran into him, and he gripped her hard before she could fall.

“Invictus,” she panted, wide-eyed, her face pale from blood loss. “Ravikant.”

“I know,” Simon said calmly. “I was there, if you’ll recall.”

Then he moved her aside, took aim, and fired behind her. Two shots—one for Vezdal, the other for Telantes. The archer fell from the wall into a pile of flowers.

Simon helped Jessamyn toward the palace, his arm tight around her back. He glanced down. Her leg was drenched with blood; her eyes were glassy and unfocused.

“Our physicians will see to your wounds,” he told her, and then there was a stillness. A veil descended upon his mind. He knew it well. Its flavor, its scent. The astonishing power of its will.

Simon opened his thoughts to Corien, letting him peruse as he liked—the Rose Room, the frustration of Invictus, the treason of Ravikant.

I see. Corien’s words floated on a white river.

And then they were at the palace, stumbling into a small parlor near the southeastern entrance. Corien paced, his white shirt open and loose over his dark trousers, his hair a matted mess. He had been with Eliana; his eyes held a crazed gleam that appeared only after a day locked away in her rooms.

The palace nurses hurried forward, settled Jessamyn on a divan, and began at once to tend her wounds.

Corien stood over her, though Simon knew he was not looking at her. He could feel the distraction rampant in Corien’s mind, how entirely his thoughts were wrapped around two women—one dead, and one near it.

“Thank you, Jessamyn, for coming to warn me,” Corien said quietly. He pressed his lips to her hand, lingering over it for so long that the nurses—human, clear-eyed, stolen for their skill at healing—exchanged nervous glances.

Simon cleared his throat and stepped forward. “My lord? What are your orders?”