Page 53 of Destinies of Diamond
“But the technology wasn’t perfected, so you didn’t think it was that dangerous. Why did you keep it from us then?”
Brendan fell silent. He seemed to be struggling trying to form his next sentence. In the end, he didn’t have to say anything at all. His uncle interrupted our conversation. “It wasn’t the technology itself. It was what it meant.”
Both Brendan and I turned toward Archibald. Earlier, he’d looked pale and wan, and Pollux’s help hadn’t changed that much. His eyes were bound with a thick bandage, and he was leaning against the wall like he was about to fall over any moment now.
“Uncle, you should be resting,” Brendan said. “You pushed yourself earlier.”
“Please, let’s drop the masks, Your Highness. You know very well you’re not talking to your uncle.”
Brendan audibly swallowed. “Do we really have to do this right now?”
“I’m afraid we do. Archibald trusted you to have more morals than your father. It looks like he was wrong. Maybe I should take off this blindfold and get rid of you before you become a problem even bigger than your father.”
The threat made me shoot to my feet and step between Brendan and Archibald. I might have been angry with Brendan, but I wouldn’t allow any harm to come to him. “Back off. You won’t touch him. Over my dead body.”
“That could be arranged,” Archibald hissed, “but don’t worry. I don’t intend to do such a thing, not right now, at least. I still need you to get us out of this mess. Now, Brendan, do you want to finish this tale, or should I?”
Brendan shrugged. “Go for it. I’m personally not sure I have it right. Typhon never told me one way or another. I made a couple of guesses, but it was never clear.”
“Convenient.” Archibald clicked his tongue in disapproval, but let the issue go. “It’s quite easy. Chimeras don’t actually go dormant, not in the sense humans understand it. Our souls simply choose other bodies and not the metallic ones our would-be owners provide. Sometimes, we coexist with a secondary, human soul. Other times, the human shell belongs to us and no other. I have chosen the former approach. But it’s not something that’s very compatible with a long life, which is why Archibald has been having so much trouble lately, and why I needed Brendan to take the throne.”
“You’re a chimera. Right.” I remembered the crazy exchange in the infirmary. At the time, the Centaur’s words hadn’t made sense, but now, everything was becoming clearer. “And so is Selene? Is that why they took her?”
Much to my surprise, Archibald shook his head. “Selene is just a human. But her child… Her child carries a chimera soul—the soul of my son, Pegasus. That was why the Centaurs were hunting her. And my best guess is that Philip might know something about it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken her.”
“That explains a lot,” Jared offered from behind Archibald. “I always wondered why the Great Mother encouraged my relationship with Selene.”
The latter sentence was barely audible, almost as if he was thinking out loud and not talking to us anymore. It still pissed me off beyond belief, reminding me of what he’d done to her and why we were in this situation in the first place. My claws emerged once again and I almost launched myself at him.
If I refrained, it was only because Brendan got up and grabbed my arm. “Look, now isn’t the time to fight. We’re not at our best. Our only real advantage is that we’re together and alive. We’ve been seriously wounded and drained. Our chances of getting inside Hades Base when we’re like this are already small. We have to focus on our goal, not on our disputes.”
“I agree,” Jared said. “I’ll get better by the time we’re there, but I’m no match for a horde of Grand Chimeras.”
A memory niggled at the back of my mind, that of Jared, Selene and me in The Fields of Mercury. That day, Jared had managed to paralyze both Cerberus and Sphinx. I hadn’t realized he was the one to attack us until our trip to the Apsid Quasar, but now that I did, I had to admit the skill could come in handy. “Can’t you immobilize them like you did on Mercury?”
Jared shook his head. “I’m not close enough to the sun to exert that kind of photonic manipulation. It’s a minor miracle I managed to incapacitate the Centaur Herd.”
“Proximity to the sun,” Brendan mused. “That’s interesting.”
For the first time since we’d received news of Selene’s near-miscarriage, his voice had gained that speculative note that signaled the fact that he had an idea. Whenever Brendan spoke that way, the plans he came up with ended very poorly—for whoever we were fighting.
“I think I know how we can extract Selene,” he said, “but it will take all of us for this to work.”
I didn’t tell him he had my guaranteed support. Instead, as everyone gathered in the depths of the Venom, I stayed by his side, watching the others carefully and wondering where this would take us.
Commander Trevor had managed to put together a rudimentary prosthetic from some of the equipment on board the vessel. He showed no distress over having lost a limb and instead eyed Brendan with clear suspicion. Pollux and August were a little more enthusiastic, although they weren’t completely over Brendan’s secret-keeping. Odette seemed the most excited about the idea, even if her part was among the most dangerous ones.
“You can count on me, Your Highness,” she said. “I want to finish this.”
“If I’m wrong, Odette, and my father does know about your involvement with us, you’ll be compromised,” Brendan warned her. “We might not be able to get to you in time.”
“I’m prepared for that. I always was.”
Brendan nodded. “Okay then. Let’s start this thing. We don’t have much time at our disposal.” Shooting Jared an unreadable look, he said, “Good luck.”
Jared smiled crookedly. “I don’t need luck. I have enough anger to compensate for anything.”
The shields around the Venom fell. Jared took a deep breath, his form starting to glow once again. In a flash, he was gone.
