Arden was in a great deal of pain. Whatever he’d anticipated, what he’d hoped for, Sigil had not supplied. She had her own accounting, and it would seem the Imperial Consort found him liable.

Or she was just bored.

Wheezing for breath, he watched her toy with an empty glass cylinder, her eyes distant as she rested against the wall. They were alone, just the two of them in her newly commandeered hovel. Every day she dragged him someplace different, every day she ate another part of him, while he screamed behind her palm.

She’d sleep with his torso serving as her pillow.

“What are those?”

Snapped out of her daydream, Sigil looked at the broken man, at the stump of his left arm and the remnant of his right leg, licking her lips. “These” her fist closed tightly around the vials, “are the reason you have survived my companionship for the last three days.”

In fact, though she was the cause of his misery, she was also the one who held water to his lips, who brought him food so he might regenerate. She even cleaned his wounds once her teeth were done ripping muscle from his bones.

“What you need from me is not food.” Arden forced his body to sit up taller, to uncurl. “How long has it been since a Brother has been inside you?”

She actually laughed, even if it was a soft, almost silent thing. “In your current state, do you really think you might perform? You are practically bloodless. You can’t walk. You can’t fight. How in the world would you survive being fucked by me?”

It was as if his pain was gone, the man soldiering to attention. “Then why keep me alive?”

An eye cold as ice winked. “I like you, Arden.”

“And I love you.”

Placing the vials carefully back inside her robes, Sigil leaned back against the stone wall. She let her hand rest on her stomach and eyeballed her captive as if tempted to feast. “Are you aware Sovereign believes I am pregnant?”

“Sigil,” Arden tried to reach for her, his body slumping as he squirmed close enough to brush his fingertips against her leg, “that is wonderful!”

Such hope bloomed in the male, such joy, that Sigil let him have his moment. She let him touch her, his shaking fingers reaching to feel her belly.

Even wan, pale, and drained, Arden’s smile was beautiful. “That is why you are so hungry, why you do not risk stealing food from the markets or dwellings.”

It was odd feeling his tentative fingers press to her stomach. “I steal food to feed you.”

As if enlightened to the secrets of the universe, the man nodded. “Just enough to go unnoticed. Just enough to keep us both alive.”

She let him believe his flesh was some greater sacrifice. It wasn’t.

“Do you feel her in there?” The man was taken with the little life, his body slumping until he might rest his head in Sigils lap. “Can you sense her?”

“My mother used to sing to me.”

“The Kilactarin birthing tube?”

Sigil let him hear that his assessment of her mother, calling her a birthing tube, had caused offence in her harsh reply. “It was constant—the effort that she focused all of her attention on when she had faculty to do it. I always knew she was there, even when I was in great pain, when I was lonely, when I lacked hope.”

He let his head fall into her lap, laying back as if they were intimates, as if he trusted she would never hurt him. “Are you singing for her now?”

“Something like that.” Sigil let her hands play in Arden’s long hair, her fist growing tight near his scalp. When she had a firm hold on him, she leaned down and hissed, “And every time you speak, you interrupt my focus. Tell me, Arden, how will they hear me if my song is thready and weak?”

It was not the pain of her pulling his hair that drained the joy from his face, it was her intent. “Is this why you’ve moved us every night to a different quadrant of the city? The Soshiia? I know how to find them, you don’t need to draw them to you?”

“Oh, but I do.” Sigil felt it even as Arden tried to bury such a feeling. The Herald was frightened.

“I don’t think that’s wise, Sigil.”

Loosening her grip on his hair, Sigil hushed him, gently stroking his face as if she cared. “What is unwise would be to follow anywhere you want to take me. I trusted you once, and now I am here, Pax is gone, and Que is dead.”

Golden eyes wide, Arden wrapping his only arm around her as if seeking comfort. “Please do not draw them here. I am begging you.”

Sigil smiled softly. “I can feel them edging closer, toeing the line, unpracticed and unable to decide if they should cross it. It won’t be long now.”

The Herald was shaking, pushing at her as if to force her away. “You need to run, Sigil. Leave me here and run.”

Easily catching his arm, Sigil pinned it to his chest. The way she grinned, the way she laughed, was terrifying. “And where would I run? To Sovereign?”

“I have a ship, a Tessan model with advanced cloaking abilities. Take it, go anywhere you wish.”

“You were shrewder when you had all your limbs.” She shoved him to the floor, kicking him away by the stump of his shoulder. “I would not last a month alone in space with no Brother to keep my mind steady.”

“THEN TAKE ME! Gnaw on me day and night if you must, but RUN NOW!”

Getting to her feet, arching her back like a stretching cat, Sigil cooed, “And here I thought you were going to take me to them yourself. Why now don’t you believe a meeting is such a good idea? It’s not very nice to think so lowly of my daughters.”

“That’s not what they are.”

It did not take her long to straighten her robes, to cease with her mocking and her play. Sigil grew serious, her eyes threatening murder. “I know exactly what they are.”

She was already out the door, Arden calling after her, “PLEASE! I didn’t know you were pregnant. YOU CAN’T!  You’ll hurt her.”

Sigil ignored him, his frantic pleading, his anguish, as she walked out onto the chosen place where the approach of the Soshiia would give her greatest advantage. The Herald’s screaming would draw a crowd, and in time Brothers would look to interfere. Still, the Imperial Consort made no secret of where she stood, she even left her hair uncovered so it might shine in the dark like a beacon.

Her girls were coming.

They had to climb to reach the rooftop, arms hooked like spider legs, to pull their bodies higher. When the pair of them crested the rooftop to stand before their mother, Sigil forced herself to look at what had been created because she had been too selfish, too wild, and too evil.

Condor was bloated and orange, the atmosphere abnormally settled, the evening sky bright enough she could see her daughters clearly. Both of them looked like her, they looked like Sovereign, even if they did not look like each other. But there was something in the way their bodies were configured that hung unbalanced and awkward. A slight hunch in the back, shoulders that were uneven, as if the girls were half formed between human and Sudenovan.

Their necks were too long, or not long enough.

Dr. Saniel would have laughed to see such shoddy work, then she would have killed them.

Even with the defects, the woman on the left was undoubtedly beautiful, staring back at her with the same icy eyes, the same cold calculation. Her sister was not as fortunate. Something had gone wrong with her face, leaving half of it distorted... as if her skull had begun to melt.

Behind them, still working their way up the building, were the last Unsalvageables in the city. Six tainted converts come to stand guard over their would-be queens.

The misshapen one spoke, half her face showing curiosity, the other half hideous. “I told you she’d want us.”

Sigil kept her face blank, her finger on the trigger of the plasma blaster hidden in her robes. “Which one of you killed Jerla?”

“Is that Arden we hear screaming?” Only menace rolled off the girl who stood as Sigil’s reflection. The pretty one didn’t care if she was wanted by the Imperial Consort. “We were not sure if he would find you, though he swore he could.”

Sigil ignored the question. “Sovereign will arrive soon.”

The pretty one stepped closer in her sudden wild-eyed eagerness. “And when he does, will you kill him as Arden promised?”

It drew out an honest smile, Sigil charmed. “I have met your mother, Lady Belloy. Jerla liked her very much.”

Such hate twisted the pretty ones’ face, such pain marring her sister’s. “The Tessan boy... is that all you can speak of?”

Speaking over her sister, the pretty one, hissed, “We gave the Herald the codes to shut off your implant. You owe it to us to end Sovereign and put us in our rightful place!”

In doing so, Sigil’s life would most likely be lost. “Is that what you want?”

“WHAT WE WANT? Where are our statues in the Adherents Cathedral, where is our recognition as your daughters? The Brotherhood ignores us!”

Sigil interrupted the pretty one, chiding, “If you continue to shout, they’ll find us more quickly.”

“We were cast aside!” The girl responded with venom, letting it pour out in jerking movement, in her screams, “Forced to live on a mud covered planet as if we were human—kept from a seat at court, from you.” Abject fury, made the pretty one hideous. “They call us Soshiia... half-formed. We are disregarded.”

“Enough.” Sigil could hear the self-entitlement, the sounds of a child screaming to have its way, to have more. It was ultimately disappointing. “Sovereign provided you with a good life, a family unit, and your chance to make a mark on your species.”

The pretty one smiled. “We did make a mark...”

She let her words coil around them like razor wire; Sigil let them hear the disapproval in her heart. “You used an incomplete serum made from yourselves on innocent Converts, to what, stir up a civil war? An army of them could not have stood up against five of your Brothers. You would have torn apart planets. Already your antics have cost the lives of millions, led to volatility in the empire that protects our species from extinction—the empire that protected you.”

Motioning towards her sister, the pretty one hissed, “For years Vara has tried to convince me that you could be reasoned with. I knew she was wrong. If you were dead, we would be necessary. We would be respected.” Raising her hands to gather cycling psionics, the girl showed just how much she could hate. “WE were the firstborns and no Tessan plaything should have replaced-“

Sigil could see her disfigured sister had noticed, that the one with the distorted face was already reaching out to warn her twin. But it was too late. Sigil was the superior warrior, had been modified and trained as her warped children never had.  Her arm rose, her finger kissed the trigger, and the one with the pretty face didn’t have a face anymore.

There was a scream of disbelief, the living twin falling to her knees to catch the headless body of her sister. “Why?”

Smoke came from the neck’s stump, Vara holding her hands to it, as if she might put her sister back together.

Sigil made herself witness the anguish, the pain, all of this mess born from her. It was like walking through a living nightmare—but it had to be done.

She stood over the only remaining Soshiia. As if to offer pity, Sigil explained. “Child, through no fault of her own she was infected with my madness.”

The girl was sobbing. “She was your daughter.”

“No.” Sigil took in the smell of burnt flesh, took in the carnage. “She was me, and I deserve to die.”

They were no longer alone, the Brotherhood teeming like ants racing up the walls, over the balconies... the sad remnants of the twins Unsalvageable army already eaten up by the swarm. A single ship hovered above, its gate down, the Brothers inside shouting down to her to take their hands.

Sovereign raised himself to the roof, his voice so loud it cut through the girl’s screams. “Sigil you must not!”

She did it gently, resting a hand on something that was half her child and half herself, just as she’d cupped the neck of her mother years ago after the crash. The compression of her fingers, the wrench required to completely sever the spinal cord was instantaneous. The one called Vara even had the gift of looking her mother in the eye, of projecting her feelings of betrayal as Sigil projected the very emotion Sovereign had taught her was love. And then that girl too fell dead, the body headless like her sister’s.

Standing there, towering over them Sigil lay down the misshapen daughter she’d never know, and made herself look at what she’d done. No mental rampage came, no loss of control, only detached clarity and the feel of Sovereign’s arms coming to restrain her and drag her away.

There was chaos in those extended seconds, so many shouting, Sigil offering no resistance and no explanation. She could feel Sovereign weeping, knew without turning her head, that he looked at the girls she’d destroyed.

When they were at a distance, shots were fired. He fell to his knees, taking her with him as the Brotherhood swarmed nearer to close around the pair.

Sigil’s eyes traversed the crowd, settling on Tiburon. Anchoring her attention, he nodded, not in praise, but in understanding... a part of him even hinted at gratitude that she did what was best for them all—what they could not do themselves. The great beast at his side, the massive Karhl, did not reflect the sentiment. Like his counterpart, he stared, as if waiting for her to lose control—because there was some unseen problem.

Karhl raised his weapon, a plasma rifle so large a human could never have lifted it, and he pointed it at the ship hovering above his female. He pointed it at his own Brothers.

She had not noticed any sound over Sovereign’s desolation, but it was there... Arden was shouting down at her from the ship. “KILL HIM! You must kill him now while your implant is still offline! Save us all!”

That was why Tiburon did not want her to look away, the Lord Commander needed her to see him. He needed her to see only him so he might mouth the words. “It was Arden who killed Que.”

Her emotionless control had been so precise, so cold and perfect any Axirlan would have approved. And then it was gone, snapped away from her because Tiburon never lied, at least not to her.

Head snapping back, Sigil looked at the ship and saw the golden one. The Herald used his psionics to forge a leg made of pure energy, a Brother she did not recognize helping to support his weight. Arden reached out to her, imploring for her to finish it and set them all free. “YOU MUST KILL HIM NOW!”

It rolled through her, a wave of something so far beyond misery that no language possessed a word for it. Sovereign sensed the change. He took a grip of her head, as if to wrench it from her shoulders as she had done to her half-formed child. Lips pressed to the shell of her ear, he began to rattle off a code, a mixture of sounds that was no tongue she knew. Her skull was on fire, but physical pain could not register beyond the wrath eating her up inside.

Arden saw her face, Sigil’s frosty eyes brimming with rage, and took a stuttering step back. Breaking her arm free of Sovereign’s hold, her hand shot forward. She locked her psionics onto the ship, intent on pulling it down right on her head—so that as Arden was crushed and burned she would see it, feel it, and relish her own bones breaking.

All Brothers on board began to panic, several pulled from their perch on the open gangplank, only to fall and be crushed by their own kind. The door’s mechanics were failing, the ship’s boosters firing up to fight the sudden loss of gravity.

She almost had them. She almost pulled that ship from the sky.

She would have, had Sovereign not spoken the final words, had her implant not come online to squelch her true power.

Like a fraying tether, her hold on the ship weakened, twisted, and snapped.

Arden and the traitors with him jumped into hyperspace before even clearing the atmosphere.

Their course had already been plotted, their plan for immediate escape in place—because they had planned to take her away... so she might be coupled with a new Sovereign, tied to a new group of males who would keep her to themselves no matter the consequences to the empire or Convert humans.

The light of the ship’s drive faded, Sigil lying in Sovereign’s arms, covered in the blood of her child, and trying to fight him off like a madwoman.

“Hush, beloved. It’s over now.”

Even lost in his own pain, grieving that he had not arrived in time to prevent what Sigil had done, Sovereign fought to draw her back. It was not a quick transition from insanity to lucidity, but it was an agonizing one. When she could no longer fight, Sigil found her arms were fast around Sovereign, that she was weeping into his shoulder as he rocked her and let her cry.