Their code, his and hers. Discordia would go to some coordinates under some pretense of it being an order.

This time, it meant he found Damocles.

Had Xander killed him? Or was he waiting for her to finish the job?

She took the single-passenger aircraft and keyed in the coordinates. She suspected Damocles was still alive. Xander was not like her. He couldn’t bear the weight of killing. It would be an albatross, heavy on his mind.

Another nightmare to add to Xander’s fitful sleep.

The building was quiet when she arrived. It was some old factory on a moon called Pollux—where munitions and other military necessities used to be made before the moon’s resources dried up. Xander always directed her somewhere there was little chance of discovery: outposts on backwater planets, abandoned buildings that were no longer useful to the Empire, or his camp set up in a place that was difficult to track.

Discordia pushed the metal door open and stepped into the dark interior. Something immediately felt wrong; Xander always came to greet her.

But as Discordia reached for her Mors, a voice behind her spoke. “Discordia.”

She wheeled around, swallowing the gasp in her throat. Damocles stood in the light of the double moons streaming through a broken window, his face hard. Behind him, Xander was bound to a chair, his lips sealed with the gel they used to muffle the screams of their prisoners.

Discordia wanted to dart forward and untie Xander and count his injuries. Each cut on his face would be a small promise: a stab of a blade for each one, a whisper of a threat. Every bruise would have been a finger lopped off, a torture made worse. Discordia had never vowed revenge—such a thing was meant to be above the Archon’s Heir. It hadn’t stopped Damocles.

She had killed so many of her siblings, but she wanted to make Damocles’s death painful. She wanted him to suffer like Xerxes had.

“You caught Xander before I did,” she said, straightening. She closed her expression, pulled her shoulders back, and gave him the arrogant tilt of her chin she had perfected on Myndalia.

Damocles shrugged. “I couldn’t risk him running again. Thought you might like to join me in finishing him.”

“Why is he gagged?”

“His pleas grew dull.” He lifted a hand and roughly wiped the silencing gel from Xander’s lips. “There. Hello, brother.” At Xander’s silence, Damocles threw Discordia a look. “Not even a greeting. This one’s rude, Discordia. We ought to make him pay for that.”

She slipped her hand behind her. The Mors was too obvious; he’d notice her draw and dodge it fast. One of her blades had to distract him first, just long enough to put a Mors blast through his brain. “You never wanted my help killing our brothers before.”