They crept back to the palace’s loading bay and long-term storage of other visiting ships. Security was present but not as tight as back near the palace or at the Myndalian base.

Clo crouched down and picked up a handful of dark mud, smearing it on her already-filthy jumpsuit.

“What are you doing?” Ariadne whispered.

“Follow my lead, remember?” Clo started drawing designs on the muck on her face, hoping it was vaguely symmetrical. Almost like tattoos. Two winged scythes down her cheeks. A circle of a dark moon on her forehead. Ariadne caught on.

“We’re pretending to be gerulae?” she asked.

Ariadne had helped create those ghosts in human form. She knew how deep the Oracle’s programming went. She’d checked the code. Unlike an average Tholosian citizen, there was no way to break it and bring them back. There was nothing left.

It would never occur to someone raised in the Three Sisters to impersonate a gerulae. Nyx would have recoiled at the thought. Even Ariadne hesitated.

Clo’s expression gentled. “Impersonating a husk is no worse than pretending to be guards. It’ll get us back to the ship and that’s all we need.”

“Don’t call them that,” Ariadne said sharply.

She didn’t like that casual slur, the implication they were too stupid to be human. They had been, once. She’d watched the humanity leak out of them. On some level, she’d been responsible.

“Sorry,” Clo muttered, as if she hadn’t realized what it meant.

Maybe she didn’t. From Rhea, Ariadne knew that Clo had grown up on Myndalia.

Ariadne just nodded and let herself turn the idea over in her head. “It is a good plan, though.”

Clo said nothing as she finished the last touches on their impromptu disguises. Clo dipped her fingertip in the mud and drew scythes on Ariadne’s cheeks. A brand to the world that they were nothing more than biological machines.

They stood and made their way to the visitor ships’ hangar. They held their faces down and turned away, subservient. They kept to the edges of the rooms, close to the walls. They needn’t have worried: No one said a word to them. No one even glanced their way.

Mud-splattered, tired, and cold, they walked right up to their ship, slipped behind, and climbed into the small service hatch on the hull. Ariadne’s stomach twisted as they crawled through their stolen ship.

Citizen or gerulae—they were all the same to the Empire. Expendable. Unfeeling.

Not even an echo of an echo.

31.

RHEA

Rhea had never seen anyone die before.

When they had commandeered Zelus, Nyx had urged Rhea and Ariadne into an empty meeting room and slammed the door shut. That had been a kindness. She’d found blood spattered across her dress later, from walking down the corridors lined with masked corpses, but only seeing the aftermath had not stopped the horror from sinking in.