“She is not here,” the Emperor replied.

Then, from behind the abbess, a Messier grabbed the old woman by the head and with a twist snapped her neck. The abbots shrieked and stumbled over their own feet as they fled the sanctuary. Two Messiers cut them down before they could escape.

Mellifare picked up one of the candles on a picket stand and tossed it behind the pulpit and onto the purple tapestries of the Goddess’s story. It lit up in a whoosh. Fire crept along the curtains and reached into the rafters, crackling and popping, a sound that reminded her so pleasantly of the fire that had torched the North Tower seven years ago. There was something about fire that soothed her—the way it devoured, leaving nothing but ash in its wake.

A blank slate to start anew.

As Mellifare and the Emperor left the shrine, the flames caught on the banners of the Goddess, scorched the icons, melted a thousand candles, and burned it all away.

Ana

“I should have let you burn,” a voice whispered across her ear.

Ana quickly glanced over her shoulder, but the street was empty and dark, save for a group of people warming themselves by a thermal heater. She swallowed the fear lodged in her throat.

E0S hovered beside her and beeped curiously. She shook her head.

“It’s nothing,” she told the small bot, and pulled her thick fur-lined cloak around her tightly. The voice was nothing even though it sounded like her best friend. It was nothing even though he had tried to kill her six months ago.

E0S didn’t believe her, and she really didn’t believe herself, either.

A bone-deep chill wind swept through the narrow streets, ruffling her short black hair, and she shivered. She hated the cold—almost as much as she hated flash-frozen fruits and corsets.

But she couldn’t bring herself to hate Neon City.

It was on Eros, but it didn’t feel like the rest of the dreamy, green landscape. Located in the southern quadrant of the planet, Neon City constantly smelled like damp cement, sewage, and fresh rain, but from a distance the city was beautiful—outlined in lights that reflected in the puddles and through the mists that drifted along the streets. Buildings jutted up into the sky like piercing daggers, slick and glittery with rain. It gave the city an eerie, haunted radiance. In the outskirts where Ana walked, darkness clung to the streets.

It had been six months since Di’s ascension to the Iron Throne. Six months since he’d almost killed her when he drove a lightsword through her stomach—no, she couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t. Or the scar on her stomach would throb, and she would remember the HIVE red of his eyes, and the way he whispered so softly against her ear, “You should have burned.”

And Di—her Di—was lost to the HIVE forever.

She barely even understood what the HIVE was—part AI, part brainwashing virus. Lord Rasovant had created it to subdue difficult Metals, but the program stripped them of their thoughts, their memories . . . everything. Until they were nothing more than puppets. It wasn’t until the palace that Ana realized Lord Rasovant didn’t control the HIVE at all, but something else did.