“I don’t know, but I have to try, Father,” he replied, but it was not him.

In his head he saw the scene: a Royal Guard who looked like him, agitatedly twirling Eros, while a man with a braided beard and chains around his neck—the Iron Adviser—sat at the desk. The man from the memory of his lab.

“I can’t let innocent people die,” he said, and he felt the anger in his words. “If the Plague is a pathogen, or some sort of nano-tech, I want to help. What if it’s the Great Dark?”

The man scoffed. “The Great Dark—it doesn’t exist. It’s an old fool’s tale. If you leave, I can’t protect you. No, you’re staying here and that’s final.”

He stopped the spinning planet, shaking his head. “You can’t protect me from everything. I’m sorry, Father.”

And left.

Blinking out of the memory, he stopped the globe. His hands shook. The smell of moonlilies and rosemary filled his nose, the feel of that old man’s neck under his grip, how easily it snapped. He clutched at his chest, fingers curling into the satin of his blouse, that burning, aching feeling returning.

But he recognized the source now—

His memory core.

The room spun, and he leaned against the desk to brace himself.

“This room belonged to Lord Rasovant,” Mellifare said. Startled, he looked to the doorway where she stood, braiding her hair down her shoulder, with all the airs of a cat waiting outside a mouse hole, her face expressionless except for the slight tug of her lips into a smile. “Father, I guess he was.”

“Why . . . did you call him Father?” he asked. Why did I?

She cocked her head. “Because, in a way, he made me. He made me strong, and he made me many.” As she said that, her voice echoed in the hallway outside, from the Messiers standing guard. Then he felt his own lips move, too, and her voice come out of them—“He made me unstoppable.”

He quickly pressed his hands over his mouth.

She smiled in delight at his discomfort, and he felt her control leave him again. “Now, I know you were spying on our Empress. Do you know where she is going?”

“. . . Calavan,” he said slowly, not trusting his voice, but thankfully it was his.

“And pray tell, why would she go there?”

“I . . . do not know.”

It was not a lie, but he did not tell her he thought she was going to find the Goddess’s tomb, either. It was only a hunch, and he was only 83.76 percent sure. He did not want Mellifare going on a wild-goose chase, or so he convinced himself.

The Great Dark, humming its soft song in his head, did not seem to notice his lie—

Until Mellifare flicked her black-eyed gaze to him. “But I did notice, brother.”

And then her voice rang in his ears, I am in your head.

Between his code, pulsing with a red anger, was the song—