Jai Misha is a slender man in his midforties, but if not for the hints of silver creeping into his dark hair and carefully groomed beard, the spring in his step would make him seem much younger. There’s a sense of barely contained urgency about him, from the sharpness in his small, dark eyes to the wild gesticulations he makes even when speaking quietly. Today he wears a cream-colored suit with a pattern of flowers that glint metallic in the light, a perfect complement to his brown skin. He clomps his way into the meeting room in a pair of platform boots with dramatic heels.

The Paxian rep is the only one who appears unruffled by his late entrance. In fact, she favors him with a smile that seems surprisingly friendly. The two Nibiran council members exchange uncertain looks, though neither seems eager to speak up. When the camera shifts to Leonis once more, my stomach goes cold with hatred at the sight of her face, the emotion intense enough that I can’t savor how thoroughly annoyed she seems with this whole ordeal.

Leonis used us as her tools. Tried to kill us. And right now, I can’t even hope that this council will punish her for it—both because I doubt it will ever happen, and because, as I told Corvus, we need her.

Then the camera view shifts, and I freeze. There, on the screen, is a very familiar face among the small Gaian delegation waiting on the council’s sidelines. Shey Leonis is here. On Deva.

And now I have an inkling of a plan.

But it’s a plan dangerous enough that my siblings don’t need to be involved. I glance around, and find all of their eyes locked on the screen as the council begins. Corvus’s expression is stormy, Lyre’s pensive, and Drom is fighting her way to the bar for a drink. I take a deep breath and head for the door, stealing two more shots along the way. Right now, I can use all the courage I can get.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Diplomacy

Corvus

In a crowded bar full of drunken revelry, I watch foreign politicians judge my people. The chatter of the Devans around me fades into background noise as I strain to follow the conversation on the screen. In cold, clinical voices, the representatives discuss how they initially learned of the destruction. Leonis noticed it first, she says, when an unmanned delivery drone to Titan was never received by local officials. She sent word to the other planets, who sent their own drones to investigate.

They all reported back the same thing. The icy tundra is untouched; the underground cities and armored forts still stand. The Paxian representative even reports finding signs of animal life and untouched greenhouses, sparse as they were on Titan to begin with.