“Great marvels,” said Queen Bee. Stepping forward, she linked her elbow with Nova’s. Adrian tensed, panic surging through every nerve. “If you want her so much, here—you can have her.”

With a saccharine smile, Queen Bee shoved Nova forward. She stumbled down the few steps onto the long, narrow path that distinguished the choir from the nave. She caught herself and hesitated.

“Nova,” said Adrian, his voice thick with despair, his arms straining against the ropes. “Are you okay?”

She stared at him, swallowing hard.

She said nothing as she started down the aisle. She appeared tormented and unsure. He had never seen Nova, confident, brave Nova, look like that before.

But as she came closer, he noticed something else, too.

She was not tied up, like he would assume a Renegade prisoner would be.

She was not wearing her Renegade uniform, or even her usual civilian clothes, but rather a black jacket and a utility belt that seemed eerily familiar.

Adrian’s stomach gave a lurch. He would have backed away, but he was stuck, peering at her through the ropes that were as constricting as his own rib cage.

“She’s done well, hasn’t she?” said Ace Anarchy, speaking for the first time. His voice carried a lilt of amusement, but Adrian barely heard him over the truth and disbelief that had gone to war inside his head. “Your plan was a clever one, sneaking in through the catacombs. It might even have worked, if you hadn’t already told my niece that you knew about the escape tunnel. Now that you’re here, we’ll have to make sure that entrance is blocked off, so no one else thinks to follow in your footsteps.” He gestured to a couple of the villains. “Bind the others and secure them in the treasury for now. Take the Everhart boy to the east chapel and await further instructions.”

Ace Anarchy’s orders barely registered.

Nova was nearly to Adrian now. The fear he’d seen before was fading away, being replaced by her signature determination. Her jaw tense, her shoulders set.

Had he only imagined the torment before? The regret? The doubt?

“Nova,” he breathed, nearly coughing on the word as his own jumble of emotions stuck in his throat. “Who are you?”

She crouched so they were eye to eye. They were as close now as when they’d danced at the gala. As close as when he’d put noise-canceling headphones on her ears so she could finally sleep. As close as when they’d kissed in the subway tunnels, just outside the hidden passage to the catacombs.

The last shreds of denial shriveled up inside him. The truth won. Suddenly, he knew.

When Danna had first accused Nova of being his worst enemy, the villain he had been hunting for months, he had been angry. Mortified. At times, even disgusted.

Now, all that was left was a deep, devastating sense of loss.

His shoulders fell under the weight of the ropes that bound him.

Nova reached for Adrian’s hand, placing two fingers against his knuckle. He flinched at the touch and thought, just for a moment, he might have seen hurt flash through Nova’s eyes. But it was his imagination, because a second later her expression had hardened into something cold and impenetrable.

“Everyone has a nightmare,” she said. “I guess I’m yours.”

That was the last he remembered before darkness claimed him.

CHAPTER FORTY

“WELL, ISN’T THAT clever,” said Queen Bee, inspecting the bottom of Adrian’s bare foot. He did his best to ignore her. He’d been trying to ignore the whole lot of them, the ever-revolving door of Anarchists and villains, even as they’d attempted increasingly obnoxious tactics to get a reaction from him.

His eyes stayed resolutely on Nova whenever she was in the room.

Her eyes stayed resolutely away.

“Springs,” said Queen Bee, trailing a sharp fingernail down the sole of Adrian’s foot. He did his best to stifle a twitch. “To jump farther. Isn’t that clever, sweetie?”

He was pretty sure sweetie, in this case, was Nova, but it was hard to tell, as Nova seemed as determined to ignore Queen Bee as he was.

Having Honey Harper inspect the soles of his feet was the last in a long line of indignities Adrian had endured since his capture. He did not know what had become of Oscar and Danna, or where he was inside the cathedral. When he had come to, he was inside a small circular chapel. In comparison to the magnificence of the nave, the chapel felt like an afterthought, so dreary and insignificant that Adrian wondered if the saint it was named for might have done something that annoyed the architect in charge of honoring him. Besides a smooth black altar and a series of narrow stained-glass windows, it felt barren. Echoing stone walls, hard stone floors. The atmosphere wasn’t much improved by its moody dimness, either. Adrian had no way of knowing what time it was, as no sunlight, or moonlight for that matter, could permeate the structure Ace had erected over the cathedral, leaving them shrouded in constant darkness. Their only light came from a small gas lantern in the corner that sent their shadows flickering and shifting across the walls.

Adrian was tied up with his back against the frigid altar. One of the villains had cut away the sleeves and collar from his shirt, revealing the tattoos on his arms and chest.

Nova frequently came in and out of the chapel, dressed in full battle regalia. Her belt was strapped with two different guns, ropes, darts and ammunition, gloves, flares, a hunting knife, and those awful throwing stars Nightmare had always been so fond of. But for some reason, she had left off the metal mask, and though Adrian knew he shouldn’t assign this any significance, he couldn’t help it.

Without the mask, he still didn’t see her as Nightmare. He could only see Nova.

Nova, who had betrayed him a hundred different ways. But still Nova.

He had tried to ask her where Oscar and Danna had been taken, if they were okay, but she seemed determined to stay silent. He wasn’t sure if she was there to keep him from trying to escape, or just to make sure he wasn’t being mistreated.

Perhaps the worst part was that Phobia came and went, too. It had taken Adrian a while to notice him at first, watching silently from a corner. The room was so dark, and he held so still, that at times the villain seemed more like a figment of Adrian’s imagination.

He was real, though. He was very real, and every time Adrian noticed him, a chill swept down his spine. Phobia’s cruel words, spoken as he stood over Callum’s body, echoed back to Adrian again and again.

One cannot be awed who has no soul, just as one cannot be brave who has no fear …

It was him. Adrian knew it now, had known it the moment Phobia said those hateful words. The note left on her body. The unbridled terror on her face.

Phobia had killed Adrian’s mother.

Adrian sneered, baring his teeth at the villain, whose only response was to spin the scythe in a steady circle over his head.

The news reports had said that Lady Indomitable had plummeted to her death from a seven-story building. There were no other wounds, no injuries that weren’t direct results of the fall. Whatever Phobia had done to her, whatever he had shown her, it had frightened her enough that, for a moment, she’d forgotten she could fly. She had been petrified. Scared, literally, to death.

What didn’t make sense was how Nova could possibly be on the side of that thing.

But he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. His mother had been a Renegade. Nova was an Anarchist. What did Nova care that Lady Indomitable had been murdered more than ten years ago? One less superhero to deal with.

He was grateful when Phobia finally left, vanishing from the room as silently as he’d come.

Cyanide, too, disappeared some time ago, muttering about an experiment, and Adrian hadn’t seen the mirror walker since they’d arrived. A handful of others had come and gone. A few of them he recognized from past Renegade trials—prodigies who, like the Crane, had not been accepted into the Renegades. A few of them he was sure had been wanted for various crimes around the city, frequently hunted by patrol units. It made him wish he’d done more as the Sentinel to track down known criminals and see them apprehended.

“Have I missed any?” asked Queen Bee, shining a flashlight over Adrian’s arms, twisting his wrists against the bindings. “Let’s see … that’s the fire, the castle wall thing, the jumping, the suit, the … what is this?” She dug a fingernail into his right forearm. “Oh, right, the laser thing.” Her expression switched from jovial to vicious. “I recall that one intimately.”

Adrian glowered back. “You were trying to kill my father,” he said, breaking his own vow of silence.

She clucked at him. “Your father shouldn’t have stabbed my Acey.”

“Ace was going to kill us all!” He shot a look at Nova, half expecting her to offer an opinion, maybe even an argument in his defense, but she stayed silent. Her back was to them, standing just inside the chapel’s arched doorway, staring out into a corridor lined with statues.

Queen Bee blew a raspberry with her ultra-glossy lips. “He was not going to kill us all,” she said. “Just you. And everyone you care about.” She winked, as if this were all a joke. A hornet was crawling up her earlobe, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Now then, Nightmare, dear, which one do you think we should start with?”

Nova moved almost imperceptibly toward her. “Which what?”

“The tattoos. We can’t let him keep them, after the trouble they’ve caused.”

Nova shifted again, studying Honey more intently, though her gaze never strayed toward Adrian. “What are you talking about?”

Honey sighed dramatically. “We have to cut them out.” She parted the thigh-high slit in her sequined dress and pulled a stiletto knife from her stocking.

Adrian tensed.

“You’re not serious,” said Nova.

Honey smirked. “What did you expect?” She tapped the tip of the knife against the immunity tattoo over Adrian’s heart. He gulped. “He’s immune to Agent N, so we can’t just inject him and be done with it. And we can’t risk him getting loose and ruining everything. So the tattoos have to go.” She planted a hand on her hip. “If you’re squeamish about it, you can busy yourself finding me some bandages.” She batted her lashes at Adrian. “We’re not savages, after all.”