Page 51 of Souls of Steel
Jared Glass left behind no dead body to bury. His ashes scattered in the wind, like he hadn’t been there at all. I clenched my jaw and forced myself not to cry.
Maybe this was what Sphinx had meant when she’d told me I’d need a soul of steel at the academy. This sort of thing would keep happening. If I wanted to keep my lovers safe, I had to become stronger, no matter what.
* * *
Brendan
In the wake of Jared’s death, the third stage of the tournament was postponed, presumably to make sure there were no other casualties. A few other men had received severe injuries following the trial of the mirrors, leaving only thirty-three people to compete in the finals.
At the academy, very few people cared about the details. Jared’s sudden demise had hit everyone hard. There had been deaths during tournaments before, but never among the students. In the past, when we lost people, it was during actual battles, not something as useless as a contest.
For the first time in ages, Jared’s cousin, Vincent, approached us on his own. “I bet you’re happy about this, aren’t you, Terran whore?” he snarled at her. “You must be so thrilled he’s gone.”
“Flight Lieutenant Glass and I had our differences, it’s true, but as far as I’m concerned, we fought for the same goal, to protect Earth,” Selene answered. “I take no joy in his death.”
I could understand Vincent’s grief, but I had no intention of allowing him to take it out on Selene. “Enough. Ms. Renard is an integral part of the Grand Chimera Unit. She had nothing to do with the trial. Your cousin was aware of the risks involved in the tournament. He will be missed, but his death is nobody’s fault, and certainly not Selene’s.”
Technically, it was my father’s fault, for coming up with such a stupid contest. But even as a prince, I couldn’t say that, so we just had to sit here and pretend we were okay with this.
Shaking off my dark thoughts, I focused on the positive side of today’s debacle. Yes, Jared had died, but people died all the time. It wasn’t that big of a deal. What mattered was that Selene had lived. She’d gotten through the first two stages of the tournament unscathed and that was something we needed to celebrate, no matter how fucked up everything else was. Of course, before we could do that, we had to deal with the bomb Selene had dropped on us earlier. She hadn’t explained how she’d known about my plan, but it wasn’t something I could just ignore.
After we had a brief dinner in the mess hall, I ushered everyone back to our dorms. Selene was quiet, lost in thought and still almost as pale as she’d been the moment she’d watched Jared die.
Maybe it was unkind to confront her now, when she was having trouble processing what she’d seen. She might be a student at Chimera Academy, but she’d never witnessed something so gruesome before.
“Are you okay, Selene?” I asked her.
She looked up at me, and for a few moments, her eyes seemed red-rimmed. I blinked and a heartbeat later, the familiar glow had vanished. “Yes, I’m fine,” Selene told me. “Just… lost in thought, I suppose. I’m sorry for getting distracted.”
“It’s fine,” Pollux assured her. “We understand. That whole thing earlier… It must have been difficult for you to witness.”
“Well, sort of. I mean, I’m not sure how I feel.” Selene dropped down on her bed and leaned against the wall. “I get the feeling he didn’t hate me nearly as much as he tried to make it seem. He told me something strange when we were in the labyrinth, but I never got the chance to ask him what it meant.”
“Something strange?” I repeated. “Like what?”
“He mentioned… a mission. He said he couldn’t complete it, but he would entrust it to me.” Selene bit her lower lip. “Do you have any idea what that might mean? Was he involved in a special project or something like that?”
A shiver ran down my spine. “Not that I know of. Well, other than the Sphinx project, but I don’t think that’s relevant at this point.”
Selene blinked at me in confusion and I mentally cursed. I’d forgotten she had no idea how this whole mess had started in the first place. “The Sphinx was originally a dormant chimera. Countless men have tried to activate her, but none succeeded. It’s not unusual for chimeras to go dormant, but the Sphinx holds the record in terms of inactivity. So since she was considered out of commission, my father thought it was a good idea to try to use her to lure the terrorists on Terra out.”
Selene stared at me in disbelief and horror. “Are you serious? But so many people were injured and killed at that presentation!”
I nodded. I’d seen the casualty report, and the numbers of dead had been lower than I’d expected. That was because of Selene and for that, I was grateful. But the silver lining didn’t change the fact that there had still been a lot of dead among the men who’d come to see the Sphinx in person. “My father doesn’t care, Selene. For him—for us—Terrans aren’t that important. There are enough of you that you’d be able to continue reproducing and terra-forming even if you’re the victim of a terrorist attack. Should there ever be a more serious incident, The Grand Judiciary could just loosen the reproduction laws and that would be that.
“All the men who came to the plaza that day were useless to us. None of them would’ve qualified for the Star Fleet program, because if they had, they wouldn’t have been there in the first place. So it didn’t matter to the king if they died. They were replaceable.”
“They were still people, Brendan,” Selene argued. “It’s not right.”
“I know,” I replied. “You don’t have to tell me that. It’s just the way it is and there’s very little I can do to stop it.”
“To tell you the truth, Selene, that was my main purpose in that battle,” Knox explained. “Brendan sent me there to take care of the terrorists quickly, so that the civilians wouldn’t have to suffer a lot. We didn’t have authorization to do more. Even we have to follow rules.”
Selene’s shoulders slumped. “Oh.”
She fell silent and I ached for her, feeling wretched and inadequate. She had just been through a very traumatic experience and now, I had to go and dump this new information on her. I was an idiot.
I fully intended to apologize, but Selene stopped me. “So how does Jared fit in all of this?” she asked. “What was he supposed to do?”
