It was too late to change the design back or come up with something else.

“Send the updated schematics to Kyla,” Eris said to Ariadne. “If something goes wrong, we’ll need the engineers at Nova to know what they’re working with and give our side a fighting chance.”

Ariadne nodded and sat next to Clo, the same guilt radiating off her small frame. She pinged in Kyla’s details and sent off the design. The whole command center was quiet—every woman lost in her own thoughts.

“You don’t have to come,” Eris said as Clo checked over the weapon. “I know Damocles murdered your friend. If this is too much, you can stay on the ship with Rhea. The others and I can handle this.”

Clo pressed her lips together. Briggs. She missed him so much that every year, on the anniversary of his death, she got completely sluiced just to forget.

“No,” she said. “Anything goes wrong with the weapon, I need to be there to fix it. I made changes to Ariadne’s design.”

“Okay.” Eris helped Clo settle the weapon into a suitcase, and they sealed it up tight. “Clo?” she said softly. “I’m sorry for this.”

Clo blinked in surprise, then ducked her head. Eris was holding their creation, and she knew how it was going to be used. Yet more sacrifices to the God of Death. “So am I,” Clo replied.

They arrived again at the palace, per Damocles’s instructions. The guard led them to a grand conference room that curved around the north side of the compound, giving them a glimpse over the mountains. During the few days they’d spent on Macella, Clo had pondered this view as closely as she had Ariadne’s weapon schematics. This time of day, mist began to coil along the ground. By the time they returned to their ship, it would be knee-height.

Macella was the most populated planet in the galaxy—even more so than Tholos. Aside from the courtesans in the Pleasure Garden, the Archon allowed only the upper echelons of the Empire to reside on that planet with him. Macella, in contrast, was home to even the aedifex and opifex classes. The buildings rising from the mist were not as precarious and tight as the slums on Myndalia, but they spread as far as the eye could see.

The Three Sisters had very little farming land aside from the two moons that orbited Macella and Tholos, so most had to be imported from other planets. It was a weakness the Empire was well aware of—if a bottleneck were ever created with supplies, the population of these three planets would grow hungry quickly, and it would weaken the rest of the Empire.