He frowned. I watched his eyes dart, as if he were cataloguing all his wrongdoings since I’d left, already thinking up excuses for why he’d been on Vrano or Jrika. When what I wanted to talk about was much, much worse.

“What about?” Mira asked.

And as much as I hated to do it, I knew this was a conversation that only needed to be between Father and me. I wouldn’t keep the truth from my sisters. I would tell them immediately afterward.

But they didn’t need to witness this.

“I’ll tell you,” I promised. “Later tonight. But this cannot wait.”

Whatever Piper had heard in my voice, it was enough for her to pull Mira away. “Fran is making your favorite stew,” she told me. The words nearly broke my heart. “We’ll go help her in the kitchen while you two speak.”

I nodded, unable to tell her that I hadn’t had an appetite for days.

Then I followed Father into his office, tracing the familiar path after I set my trunk down by the door, every step closer hardening my heart, my sweaty palm clenched around the Halo orb as I stared at Rye Hara’s back. The way he stumbled a little as he took another swig of his whiskey and all I wanted to do was cry.

“What is this about?” he asked when we were safely tucked away in his office. Far from the kitchens. Far from my sisters.

I’d rehearsed on the ship. I’d rehearsed every single word that I would say to him, how I would bring it up, how I would ask him to turn himself in to War Crimes, how I would plead with him to let House Kaalium know where Aina had been buried. If she’d been buried.

But all that went out the window when I felt my throat burn.

There were no words for this.

And so, as my father turned his back to me to head to his glittering bar cart still perched in the corner—something that hadn’t been sold yet—and I heard the familiar clinking of his decanter and the swish of alcohol pouring into glass, I tossed the Halo orb into the air so it floated between us.

Then I played the black feed that Azur had given me access to. With the sound.

“He alerted her Nu device. She’ll come out soon,” came Rye Hara’s voice, the sound warbled with time. The black feed angle hadn’t been in the best place, an outdated model no doubt, which was why it had likely gone unnoticed by my father and his unit, who had taken out all the other cameras and scanned for others in the vicinity. “When she does, cut her wings so she can’t fly. Cut them quickly. She’s strong.”

The decanter clattered on the bar cart, toppling over on the glass. The confusion on my father’s face was evident when he turned to me, but when he saw the black feed, projected into the air between us, I watched his face through the pixels. I watched his face pale, becoming sickly. The whiskey glass in his hand shattered across the floor, but he didn’t even seem to notice when his footsteps crunched over it.

I watched him through the pixels as Aina appeared. His face crumbled when the first, piercing cry left her throat, as she was swarmed at her door in the deep, deep night, on the outer borders of Pe’ji. Her bellowing cry as a blade tore through membranes and tendons and muscles of her wings made my father’s hand clutch the edge of his desk.

“Get her down!” Rye Hara ordered, his voice a growl of an order. “Get her down now!”

Through the black feed, his eyes came to mine.

I waited until the horrific killing was ended, flinching when the sizzle of his plasma gun burst, giving way to silence before a member of his unit laughed, huffing his exertion.

The feed ended. The pixels collapsed like a glittering rain until the Halo stopped the recording.

The silence was deafening. My heart was breaking all over again, nausea swishing back and forth in my belly, like the waves crashing against the cliffs of the keep.

My voice sounded hollow, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Father.”

Chapter 44

Gemma

Rye Hara’s face crumbled.

His shoulders began to shake. His whole body started trembling. And the sound that emerged from his throat was one I could only describe as animal-like in its wailing.

I began to cry too. Fat, clear droplets that rolled down my cheeks as I watched, as I listened.

I didn’t know how long he cried. I hadn’t seen him break down like this since Mother’s death, his terrible roar echoing outside by the lake, waking me from a dead sleep.

My father wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm. “How…how…how did you find that feed? From the Kylorr you married?”

“Did you know who she was?” I asked. “Did you even know her name?”

His shoulders shook. He dragged in a deep, shuddering breath.

“It was war, Gemma,” he rasped. “It was war! You can never understand the—”

“The war was over,” I said, stepping forward, snatching the Halo orb from the air and pocketing it. “It was over. The victory had already been claimed. You didn’t answer me. Did you know who she was?”

Rye Hara swallowed thickly. I heard it across his office, and he stumbled over to his desk chair, sinking down, his boots crunching over glass.

“She was a war officer. A Uranian Federation officer,” he told me. “Brought on to try to rally the Pe’ji for one last battle against the United Alliance.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “She was a peace ambassador, tasked with negotiating the terms of the victory on behalf of the Pe’ji.”

His head shook. “No. No, that’s not…” He took a deep breath, wiping at his face. His hands were shaking and he reached for a whiskey glass that wasn’t there on his desk. “That’s not what Nb’aru said. I had my orders, Gemma. I was trying to save lives. Human lives. Not Pe’jian lives. So many had already died.”

“The war was already over,” I repeated, my heart cracking in my chest. “And you made her suffer. Your unit taunted her as she tried to fight back. And you stood there and let them.”

Enough fun, my father had growled at his unit when he’d finally stepped forward on the black feed, raising his plasma gun. Let’s finish this.

His expression shuddered. His eyes were so glassy they were practically glowing like an orb light.

“Her name was Aina,” I informed him, her name gentle in the room, where we’d just witnessed her tragic death all over again. “Her name was Aina of House Sorn. She was my husband’s aunt. His mother’s only sister. Her twin. She was protected by the Kaalium, and you killed her in the darkened streets of Pe’ji and then covered it up.”

My father swayed in his chair before he planted his palm on the smooth desk to steady himself.

“No,” he breathed. “No, it wasn’t like that. We…we were following orders, Gemma. I trusted my superior. This Aina was a war officer. She was coming to try to take back the victory. To deny the United Alliance and the Voperians their dues. And I…I…”

He trailed off, shaking his head, before he dropped it into his hands.

“Did Mother know?” I whispered in the sudden quiet. A question I’d wondered since I’d first seen the video, since I’d first discovered the ugly truth. “Did you tell her what you had done on Pe’ji?”

I couldn’t see his face. I could only hear his rasping breaths as he dragged them in deep.

“Yes,” he answered quietly. “She knew.”

I bit my lip, a fresh wave of pain stabbing me deep in my gut.

“She was horrified,” he said softly, his hands fisting in his graying hair. “Even after all the Pe’jians I had to kill, it was this death that made her not want to look at me anymore. She didn’t have the stomach for war. But she certainly liked the wealth it brought us.”

The bitter words felt me breathless.

Father dissolved into tears again. “I…I’m sorry, Gemma. I shouldn’t have said that. Your mother…she was…”