“This way!” Riggs cried.
In the corridors, the Messiers stood guard like metal statues, blue eyes blazing as they watched. They didn’t move, they didn’t turn their heads. They simply stood—not wanting to kill her but not saving her, either. They were supposed to look impassive. The HIVE had planned this all along.
The booming sound of ships in the skies overhead quaked the walls of the palace in long, terrible growls. The lanterns bobbed frantically overhead, rushing faster as if they, too, knew something was wrong.
Her heart hammered in her throat.
Di . . . Di was . . .
“Why did you come for me?” she asked Riggs, whose mechanical leg made sharp thunks against the ground with every step. “You’re going to get yourself killed! Like Di . . .” Her voice cracked at his name, at the memory of those red-ruby eyes glinting from under that black hood. He hadn’t escaped after all.
If she hadn’t sent him away—maybe if she’d kept him close, maybe if she’d . . .
“Erik was right,” she croaked. “I destroy everything—”
Riggs grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her one good time. “Never say that. Never even think it. Wick wouldn’t let you, so I won’t either. We protect our family. We’re nothing without it.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes. But what about all the family who had died because of her? All the family who haunted her shadow, breathing across the back of her neck?
The old man pressed a kiss on her forehead. “You’re ours, Ana. And we’ll always come for—”
He choked, his reply cut short. Blood dribbled from his mouth. Ana gave a cry as Lord Rasovant pulled the dagger out of Riggs’s back, letting him drop to the ground. Rasovant stepped over him, wiping the blade clean on his pristine white ceremonial cloak.
“I am dearly sorry, Empress Ananke,” he said, turning the dagger on her, “that it’s come to this.”
Riggs went still on the ground, eyes open, as if he was staring into some great distance. Dead—he was dead.
Because everyone around her died.
“At first, I thought I wouldn’t have to kill you after all,” said Rasovant, and she gritted her teeth against the fire-hot hatred inside her. “I loved your father. Your parents were like a second family to me. I had to kill the Emperor, and the fire . . . it just seemed like the best story. It had to be done to stop the Great Dark,” he said as Riggs’s blood dripped from the blade. “It was only by chance you survived—Erik would have been a grand pawn. He still will be, when you meet your tragic end!”
He jabbed the dagger at her, but he was slow, and she was full of rage and heartache, and it made her blood pump fast as she dodged the attack and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the dagger.
“There’s nothing to fight! There’s no war,” she snarled.
“I have the will to save this kingdom from the Great Dark,” Rasovant declared, “and you will not stand in my way!”
She twisted the dagger out of his grip and slammed her foot into his gut. He fell back onto the floor, and she pressed her knee against his sternum, the dagger at his throat.
He looked up at her with wide, unblinking eyes, as if he’d never thought she had that sort of anger. “Mercy . . . ,” he gasped.
“Mercy?” She pressed the dagger deeper. “You killed my family for nothing. You killed Di for nothing!”
“Mercy,” he repeated. “Goddess, have mercy . . . The Great Dark is coming—”
“Then we’ll defeat it with iron, not blood!”
Her hand holding the dagger shook.
If she let him go, he would keep hurting people. He would keep taking Metals away until the only ones left were ones run through with the HIVE. He would keep preaching his fear of the Great Dark, a sort of fear that ensured that the only thing that burned bright was fire, consuming everything it touched.
But in the corner of her eye she could still see Riggs, and she couldn’t bring herself to shove that extra inch into this horrid man’s neck. Because if she did, then she was no better than Rasovant.
Then she would be like him, too.
And Di had saved her from those sorts of monsters.
Slowly, she eased the dagger away from his throat.
“You will tell the kingdom what you did,” she said, getting to her feet, trying to make her voice as strong as she could. “You will tell the kingdom what Metals are—who they are. You will tell them what happened the night of the Rebellion. That you killed the Emperor, and that your HIVE set the fire.”
Lord Rasovant staggered to stand, rubbing the thin cut from the dagger at his throat. He gave her a sharp, dark look.
“And then you will end the HIVE, and you will never be seen in this kingdom again,” she finished. “Do you understand?”
For a moment, the Adviser didn’t say anything at all. Until his lips twisted into a scowl and he said, “She was right. You should have burned!”
Then he reached into his robes for the outline of a Metroid at his side and she was turning her dagger on him.
Captain Siege told her to count her bullets. A dagger wasn’t a bullet, but no bullet aimed as true.
Goddess bright, she prayed the moment before her dagger sank into Lord Rasovant’s stomach, give me a heart of iron.