Sofia doesn’t bother to hide the hatred in her own expression, but her voice is even. “No. I tried to hurt you.”
“So shortsighted,” LaRoux replies, and if it weren’t for the setting, the blank-eyed senators and their staff, the guns trained on LaRoux, the shuttles whirring to life behind him, it’d sound like he was scolding a schoolchild. “Killing me would do nothing but brand you all murderers. Even if you destroyed every person standing here, enough good senators are already on their way back to their planets.”
“Why are you doing this?” I demand. How many times did I tell Sofia that nothing would be solved by killing one person? Right now, it’s sounding like a better idea than it did before. “You already have more power than anyone in history. What more could you possibly want?”
“I want peace!” LaRoux’s voice is sharp and quick.
Half a dozen senators turn in unison, as if on some inaudible command, to begin piling into the other orbital shuttlecraft. The third, smaller craft is just a transport, not designed to break the atmosphere—LaRoux isn’t leaving Corinth. Not yet.
“Peace,” he repeats, regaining control of his voice, pitching it just loud enough to be heard over the shuttle engines. “You children, you have no understanding of loss. Of the tragedy of war, the innocents who get caught in the exchanges of pointless violence.”
“We have no understanding of loss?” Jubilee gives a sharp bark of laughter. “There’s not one person here who hasn’t lost someone to the pointless exchange of violence, LaRoux. You think age is necessary to learn pain?” Her gun doesn’t waver as she moves forward, ranging to the side so that between them she and Tarver have him covered.
LaRoux barely notices.
“Their brothers,” she says, tilting her head toward Tarver, and toward me. “His sister.” Flynn, not far from Jubilee’s side, exhales, his spine straightening. Jubilee swallows. “My parents.”
“My father,” Sofia whispers, making me long to reach out to her.
“And my wife,” replies LaRoux, his voice cold. “Lilac’s mother.”
Tarver shakes his head. “Lilac’s mother died in a shuttlecraft accident on Paradisa. When she was seven. She told me.”
LaRoux slips his hands into his pockets, legs braced as his head dips for a moment. “She did die in a shuttlecraft. But it wasn’t on Paradisa. And it wasn’t an accident.” His gaze flicks up, the line of his mouth grim with a pain as real as any of ours. “I was visiting one of my research stations on a LaRoux Industries planet, and she’d come with me. Riots broke out—rebels protesting God knows what—and I had my people put her on a shuttle back to the spaceport to keep her safe. The shuttle was sabotaged.”
Jubilee’s shifting her grip on her gun. “What planet?”
“Does it matter?”
“What planet?”
“Verona. It was—it was Verona.”
Jubilee lets out a curse, voice strangled, gun dropping for a fraction of a second before her training steadies her and she clamps down on the shock and confusion in her expression.
“You never told Lilac?” Tarver’s not wavering even an inch.
“Why would I?” LaRoux’s eyes shift toward him. “Why would I hurt her, give her reason to hate anybody? Lilac is kind, and generous, and innocent—the truth would only cause her pain. An accident—you can let that go. Why would I ever tell her that her mother was murdered by the very people I was trying to help?”
“Help?” Jubilee grinds out.
It’s Flynn who has to take over, his partner’s anger too thick for her to speak through. He takes one of the same slow, careful breaths I recognize from the Avon Broadcast before he speaks. “Your ‘help,’ sir, has led to countless deaths on Avon. Your experiments, the Fury, the return of a rebellion that we would’ve easily, instantly given up in exchange for the tiniest bit of humanity—”
“Avon.” LaRoux’s lip curls a little. “Avon’s nothing. A few thousand people. Yes, I built a rift on Avon, moved the entities there from Verona. You can’t tell me it would have been better to leave them in a place where millions, instead of hundreds, would die?”
“Why did anyone have to die?” Sofia blurts, eyes reddening, the blood rushing to her face.
“To save billions,” LaRoux snaps. “I discovered these creatures, found out what they could do, if only I could harness them. If a fraction of us have to fall in order to elevate the rest? It’s a sacrifice, and a horrible one. Most people could never bring themselves to make that choice. Most people don’t have the vision—most people aren’t strong enough to weigh life against life. But imagine a golden era, a time of absolute peace—imagine no murder, no sabotage, no pain. No grief. Imagine—imagine never having to lose a loved one ever again.” For the first time, LaRoux’s voice falters, cracking.
“It’s not for you to choose what sacrifice is worthwhile, who should die,” says Tarver. “You might have tried to keep Lilac by lying about her mother, but you lost her when you murdered Simon Marchant.”
LaRoux’s eyes flicker toward me, and I realize his nonchalance on the Daedalus was at least partly an act—there’s guilt in his gaze. He knows exactly who I am. “I—Simon Marchant was a mistake. I intended for him to be sent away. I didn’t expect…His death was an unforeseen side effect.”
Side effect. The words burn through my brain, wiping out everything else. I can’t move, can’t speak, an anger and grief I thought I’d put behind me surging up like a tide. It’s not until I feel a touch on my hand that I realize I’ve closed my eyes; I know before I open them that it’s Sofia, her fingertips brushing against my palm, opening my fist, interlocking her fingers with mine.
“Enough.” Tarver’s voice is quiet, almost gentle if not for the hint of ice behind it. “Where is Lilac?”
“She’s safe.” LaRoux’s gaze meets that of his onetime future son-in-law. The piercing blue of his eyes is all the more intense in the morning light, and the look he directs at Tarver is just a little too wild, a little too fierce. “She’s happy. That ought to be enough for you, if you truly love her.”
For a moment, everyone is silent, shocked. I find myself staring at LaRoux, searching his face for signs of the self-delusional madman inside. For him to believe that his daughter’s change of heart, her sudden willingness to go along with his plans, stemmed from anything other than the whisper taking control of her…He’s insane.
“Happy?” Tarver’s still cold, calm. Ruthless. “She’s one of them. The creature in the rift, that’s what stood at your side, smiling at you, calling you ‘Daddy.’ You say you never wanted Lilac to hate, but that’s all she is now—the thing inside her is nothing more than hate. And you’re what she hates more than anything in the universe.”
LaRoux’s eyes widen even as his brows draw together, and he takes a step back toward the transport behind him. The handful of husks still remaining draw closer around him, clearly ready to shield him if Tarver’s finger tightens on the trigger.