I had always hated going back home.

Many of the Shotet went to the observation deck to cheer as our white planet came back into view. The energy on the ship was frantic and joyful as everyone packed their belongings and prepared to reunite with the young and old who had to stay behind. But I was mournful.

And nervous.

I didn't pack very much. Some clothes, some weapons. I threw out the perishable food, and stripped my bed of its sheets and blankets. Akos helped in silence, his arm still wrapped in a bandage. His bag of possessions was already on the table. I had watched him pack some clothes and some of the books I had given him, his favorite pages folded over. Though I had already read all those books, I wanted to open them again just to search out the parts he most treasured; I wanted to read them as if immersed in his mind.

"You're acting weird," he said once we were finished, and all there was left to do was wait.

"I don't like going home," I said. It was true, at least.

Akos looked around, and shrugged. "Seems like this is your home. There's more of you in here than anywhere in Voa."

He was right, of course. I was happy that he knew what "more of me" really was-that he might know as much about me, from observation, as I knew about him.

And I did know him. I could pick him out in a crowd from his gait alone. I knew the shade of the veins that showed on the backs of his hands. And his favorite knife for chopping iceflowers. And the way his breath always smelled spiced, like hushflower and sendes leaf mixed together.

"Maybe next time I'll do more to my room," he said.

You won't be back next time, I thought.

"Yeah." I forced a smile. "You should."

My mother had told me, once, that I had a gift for pretending. My father had not liked to see pain, so I had hidden mine from him as a child-my face passive, even as my fingernails bit my palm. And every time she took me to a specialist or a doctor about my currentgift, the lies about where we had gone came to me as easily as the truth. Pretending, in the Noavek family, was survival.

I used that gift as I went through the motions of landing and returning home: going to the loading bay after we reentered the atmosphere, piling into a transport floater, making the public walk back to Noavek manor in Ryzek's wake. That evening I ate dinner with my brother and Yma Zetsyvis, pretending not to see her hand on his knee, fingers tapping, or the frantic look in her eyes whenever he didn't laugh at one of her jokes.

Later, she seemed to relax, and they left all pretense behind them, curled together on one side of the table, elbows bumping as they cut their food. I had killed her family and now she was my brother's lover. I would have been disgusted by it had I not understood, so well, what it was like to want to live. To need it, no matter the cost.

I still understood it. But now I needed something else more: for Akos to be safe.

Afterward, I pretended to be patient as Akos taught me how to predict how strong a poison would be without tasting it. I tried to seal every moment in my memory. I needed to know how to brew these concoctions on my own, because soon he would be gone. If the renegades and I were caught in our attempt tonight, I would probably lose my life. If we succeeded, Akos would be home, and Shotet would be in chaos, without its leader. Either way, it was unlikely that I would see him again.

"No, no," Akos said. "Don't hack at it-slice. Slice!"

"I am slicing," I said. "Maybe if your knives weren't so dull-"

"Dull? I could cut your fingertip off with this knife!"

I spun the knife in my hand and caught it by the handle. "Oh? Could you?"

He laughed, and put his arm across my shoulders. I felt my heartbeat in my throat. "Don't pretend you're not capable of delicacy; I've seen it myself."

I scowled, and tried to focus on "slicing." My hands were trembling a little. "See me dancing in the training room and you think you know everything about me."

"I know enough. Look, slices! Told you so."

He lifted his arm, but kept his hand against my back, right under my shoulder blade. I carried the feeling with me for the rest of the night, as we finished the elixir and got ready for bed and he shut the door between us.

I closed my eyes as I locked him in, went down the hallway to my bathroom, and poured my sleeping potion into the sink.

I changed into the same clothes I wore for training, loose and flexible, and shoes that would be silent on the floorboards. I braided my hair tightly so it wouldn't get in my way, then pinned it under so no one could grab and pull it in a fight. I strapped the knife to the small of my back, sideways, so I could grab the handle easily. I likely wouldn't use it; I preferred my bare hands in a crisis.

Then I slipped behind the wall panel in my room and crept through the passages toward the back door. I knew the way by heart, but I felt for the notches at every corner anyway, to make sure I was in the right place. I paused by the circle carved into the wall near the kitchens, the sign of the secret exit.

I was really doing it. Helping a group of renegades murder my brother.

Ryzek had lived his life in a daze of cruelty, obeying the instructions of our long-dead father like the man was standing over him, and relishing none of it. Men like Ryzek Noavek were not born; they were made. But time could not move backward. Just as he had been made, he had to be unmade.

I pushed through the hidden door and walked straight through the feathergrass stalks to the gate. I saw pale faces in the grass-Lety's, Uzul's, my mother's-beckoning me toward them. They whispered my name, and it sounded like the shuffle of the grass in the wind. Shivering, I typed my mother's birthday into the box by the gate, and the door sprang open.

Waiting a few feet away, in the dark, were Teka, Tos, and Jorek, faces covered. I jerked my head to the side, and they filed past me, into the feathergrass. I closed the gate behind them, then overtook Teka to show them the back door.

It seemed to me, as I led them down the passageways to my brother's wing, that such a monumental thing shouldn't take place in complete silence. But maybe the reverent quiet was an acknowledgment of what we were doing. I touched the corners, feeling for the deep grooves that suggested upcoming staircases. I traveled by memory, sidestepping protruding nails and cracked floorboards.

At the place where the passageways split, the left leading to my part of the house, and the right leading to Ryzek's, I turned to Tos.

"Go left, third door," I said. I handed him the key to Akos's room. "This will unlock the door. You may have to be a little forceful with him before you drug him."

"I'm not worried," Tos said. I wasn't, either-Tos was big as a boulder, no matter how skilled Akos had become at defending himself. I watched as Tos clasped hands with Teka and Jorek, in turn, and disappeared down the left passage.

When we drew closer to Ryzek's part of the house, I moved more slowly, remembering what Ryzek had said to Akos about the advanced security near his rooms. Teka touched my shoulder, and slipped past me. She crouched, and pressed her palms flat to the floor. Her eyes closed, she took deep breaths through her nose.

Then she stood, nodding.

"Nothing in this hallway," she said softly.

We walked that way for a little while, stopping at each corner or turn so that Teka could use her currentgift to sense the security system. Ryzek would never have anticipated that a girl who lived slathered in grease and crowded by wires could bring about his undoing.

Then the passageway came to an abrupt halt. Boarded up. Of course-Ryzek had probably ordered the little hallways closed after Akos nearly escaped.

My stomach lurched, but I didn't panic. I slid the wall panel back, and stepped into the empty sitting room beyond it. We were only a few rooms away from Ryzek's bedroom and office. Between us and him, there were at least three guards and the lock that only my Noavek blood could open. We wouldn't be able to get past the guards without causing a disruption that would draw the others to us.

I tapped Teka's shoulder and leaned in to whisper in her ear, "How long do you need?"

She held up two fingers.

I nodded, and drew my knife. I held it near my leg, my muscles twitching in anticipation of sharp movement. We walked out of the sitting room, and the first guard was there, pacing the hallway. I walked in his footsteps for a few seconds, matching my gait to his. Then I clapped my left hand over his mouth and stabbed with my right, sliding the blade under his armor and driving it between his ribs.

He screamed into my hand, which was only good enough to muffle, not to silence. I let him fall, and sprinted toward Ryzek's quarters. The others followed me, no longer bothering to be quiet. I heard shouts up ahead. Jorek ran past me and barreled into another guard, knocking him off his feet with sheer force alone.

I took the next one, seizing him by the throat, currentshadows pooled in my palm, and hurling him into the wall to my left. Then I stumbled to a stop in front of Ryzek's door, sweat curling around the back of my ear. The blood sensor was a slot in the wall, just wide enough and high enough to accommodate a hand.

I guided my hand toward it, Teka breathing heavily over my shoulder. All around us was shouting and running, but no one had reached us yet. I felt a pinch as the sensor drew my blood, and I waited for Ryzek's door to spring open.

It didn't.

I withdrew my hand and tried again with my left.

The door still didn't open.

"You can't open it?" I said to her. "With your gift?"

"If I could, we wouldn't have needed you!" she cried. "I can turn it on and off, not unlock it-"

"It's not working. Let's go!"

I grabbed Teka's arm, too frantic to care about the pain my touch caused, and dragged her down the hallway. She screamed, "Run!" and Jorek bashed the guard he was fighting with the handle of his currentblade. He sliced another guard's armor, then chased us into the sitting room. We ran through the passages again.

"They're in the walls!" I heard. Lights burned through the cracks in every secret door and panel. The whole house was awake. My lungs burned from the effort of sprinting. I heard scraping behind us as one of the panels opened.

"Teka! Go find Tos and Akos!" I said. "Turn left, then right, go down the stairs, turn right again. The code for the back door is 0503. Say it back to me."

"Left, right, down, right-0503," Teka repeated. "Cyra-"

"Go!" I screamed, shoving her back. "I get you in, you get him out, remember? Well, you can't get him out if you're dead! So go!"

Slowly, Teka nodded.

I planted myself in the middle of the passage. I heard, rather than saw, Teka and Jorek run away. Guards stormed into the narrow passage, and I let the pain build inside me until I could hardly see. My body was so flush with shadows that I was darkness manifest, I was a sliver of night, utterly empty.

I screamed, and threw myself at the first guard. The burst of pain hit him as my hand did, and he yelled, collapsing at my touch. Tears streamed down my face as I ran toward the next one.

And the next one.

And the next one.

All I needed to do was buy the renegades some time. But it was too late for me.

CHAPTER 25: CYRA.

"I SEE YOU'VE MADE some updates to the prison," I said to Ryzek.

My mother and father had taken me here, to the row of cells beneath the amphitheater, when I was young. It wasn't the official Voa prison, but a special, hidden compound in the city's center, made only for enemies of the Noavek family. It had been stone and metal, like something out of a history textbook, the last time I saw it.

Now the floors were dark, made of a material like glass, but harder. There was no furniture in my cell except for a metal bench and a toilet and sink, hidden behind a screen. The wall that separated me from my brother was made of thick glass, with a slot for food, now open so we could hear each other speak.

I was on the bench now, wedged in the corner with my legs sprawled in front of me. I was heavy with exhaustion and dark with pain, bruised from where Vas had grabbed me in the hidden hallways, to stop me from hurting more of his guards. A lump on the back of my head-from where he had slammed me into the wall to knock me out-throbbed.

"When did you turn traitor?" Ryzek was in the hallway, dressed in his armor. The pale overhead lights tinted his skin blue. He put his arm against the glass that separated us, and leaned in.

It was an interesting question. I didn't feel like I had "turned" so much as finally moved in the direction I had already been facing. I stood, and my head pounded, but it was nothing compared to the pain of the currentshadows, which had gone haywire, moving so fast I couldn't keep track of them. Ryzek's eyes followed them over my arms and legs and face like they were all he could see. They were all he had ever been able to see.

"You know, you never actually had my loyalty to begin with," I said, walking toward the glass. We were just feet apart, but I felt untouchable, for the moment. Finally, I could say whatever I wanted to him. "But I probably wouldn't have acted against you if you had just left us alone, like I told you to. When you went after Akos, just to control me, though . . . well. It was more than I could accept."

"You are a fool."

"I'm not nearly as foolish as you believe."

"Yes, you've certainly proved that." He laughed, gesturing wide, to the prison all around us. "This is clearly the result of your brilliant mind."

He leaned into the barrier again, and hunched so he was closer to my face, his breath fogging the glass.

"Did you know," Ryzek said, "that your beloved Kereseth knows the Thuvhesit chancellor?"

I felt a pang of fear. I did know. Akos had told me about Orieve Benesit when we watched the footage of the chancellor declaring herself. Ryzek didn't know that, of course, but he also wouldn't have brought it up to begin with if Akos had made it out of Noavek manor with the renegades. So what had happened to him? Where was he now?

"No," I said, my throat dry.

"Yes, it's very inconvenient that the Benesit sisters are twins-it means I don't know which one to strike at first, and Eijeh's visions have made it very clear that I must kill them in a particular order for the most desirable outcome," Ryzek said, smiling. "His visions have also made it clear that Akos knows the information I need to accomplish my goal."

"So you still haven't taken Eijeh's currentgift," I said, hoping to stall him. I didn't know what there was to gain from stalling him, just that I wanted time, as much time as I could get before I had to face what had happened to Akos and the renegades.

"I will remedy that soon enough," Ryzek said, smiling. "I have been proceeding with caution, a concept you have never quite understood."

Well, he had me there.

"Why didn't my blood work in the gene lock?" I said.

Ryzek only continued to smile.

Then he said, "I should have mentioned this earlier, but we caught one of your renegade friends, Tos. He told us, with some encouragement, that you were participating in an attempt on my life. He's dead now. I'm afraid I got a little carried away." Ryzek smiled still wider, but his eyes were a little unfocused, like he was on hushflower. As much as Ryzek acted like he was callous, I knew what had really happened: He had killed Tos because he believed it was necessary, but he had not been able to stand it. He had taken hushflower to calm himself down afterward.

"What," I said flatly, finding it difficult to breathe, "have you done with Akos?"

"You don't seem to have any regret," Ryzek continued, as if I hadn't spoken. "Perhaps if you had begged for forgiveness, I would have been lenient with you. Or with him, if you chose. And yet . . . here we are."

He straightened as the door at the end of the cell block opened. Vas marched in first, his cheek bruised from where I had struck him with my elbow. Eijeh came in next, hoisting a sagging man at his side. I recognized the hanging head, the long, lean body that tripped beside him. Eijeh dropped Akos to the floor in the hallway, and he went down easily, spitting blood on the ground.

I thought I saw a flicker of sympathy on Eijeh's face as he looked down at his brother, but a moment later, it was gone.

"Ryzek." I felt wild. Desperate. "Ryzek, he didn't have anything to do with it. Please don't bring him into this-he didn't know, he didn't know anything-"

Ryzek laughed. "I know he doesn't know anything about the renegades, Cyra. Haven't we been over this? It is what he knows about his chancellor that I am interested in."

Both of my hands pressed to the glass, I sank to my knees. Ryzek crouched in front of me.

"This," he said, "is why you should avoid entanglements. I can use you to find out what he knows about the chancellor, and him to find out what you know about the renegades. Very neat, very simple, don't you think?"

I backed up, body pulsing with my heartbeat, until my spine touched the far wall. I couldn't run, I couldn't escape, but I didn't have to make this easy for them.