ALOUETTE SQUINTED THROUGH THE DARKNESS at the two officers lying by her feet. Unconscious but not dead. She peered at her hands, raw and thrumming from the energy still pulsing through them.
They hadn’t even had a chance to fight back. As soon as the general had disappeared down the terrace steps, the familiar sensation had bloomed inside of her like the brilliant rays of a Sol. Warm and strong and deadly. Her muscles had tightened and coiled. Her body had tingled with anticipation. And her pulse had slowed to a steady, even hum.
Within minutes, they were both on the ground.
Every time Alouette performed Tranquil Forme as a weapon, she felt as though she were separate from her body. Detached from her own mind and thoughts and emotions. Yet, at the same time, she felt as if her body and her mind were strangely part of everything too. The skies above, the ground beneath her, and even the guards she was fighting. They all seemed connected. But now, as she finally returned to herself and settled once more into her skin, her thoughts came rushing back as well. Everything that had happened in the past few minutes slammed into her like a tidal wave.
Lisole.
The Patriarche had called her by her mother’s name. He’d thought that she was Lisole. He had known her mother.
Her heart started to pound again.
Something was happening to her. Something she couldn’t quite explain. She suddenly felt like she was back on that voyageur, space bending impossibly around her, warping her thoughts, detaching her mind. She sank to the ground, leaning back against the pedestal of a nearby statue.
Black tendrils clawed at the corners of her vision. Her senses all tangled together until she could taste her fear and see her breath and hear the darkness rushing toward her.
The planet spun. Round and round and round.
Lisole.
Fired from the Palais.
Forced to sell her blood.
A fake funeral.
The Renards.
A giant crushing hole gaped inside Alouette’s chest. It was a hole that had been growing for weeks.
Ever since she’d discovered that Hugo Taureau was not her real father.
Ever since she’d aimed that rayonette at Inspecteur Limier’s head.
Ever since that message—When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall—had appeared on Marcellus’s TéléCom.
Ever since she’d walked into the Assemblée room to find that the sisters had been lying to her for twelve years.
Ever since the Patriarche—the most powerful man on the planet—called her by her mother’s name.
Wider and wider and wider the hole grew. Until it felt like it would drown her. Consume her. Become her. Until she no longer bore any semblance to the girl she thought she was. Where was that person now? Where was Alouette Taureau? Lost in the abyss? Swallowed by a truth that seemed to keep expanding and stretching and changing?
Every. Minute. Changing.
Who am I?
She’d been chasing the answer to that question for so long, she’d forgotten what it felt like to be content. To be satisfied with ignorance. And now that she was certain she was brushing up against the real answer—the complete answer—she wasn’t sure she wanted to know anymore.
Because suddenly the truth felt like a blazing hot atmosphere, ready to burn her alive upon entry. Ready to scald away any hopes of ever being satisfied with that blissful ignorance again.
She thought back to that small titan box whose ashes were now drifting and dancing through space. The one thing her mother had protected, guarded, defended. For all those years. Like a baby bird too young to fly.
Like a secret too dangerous to reveal.
Alouette shut her eyes and tried to remember the feel of the intricate design carved into the lid. Two lions facing off, claws outstretched, teeth bared.
The same symbol etched into that man’s green robe.
The Paresse family crest.
She squeezed her eyes tighter and forced her mind to go back to that ship. To that couchette. To that moment lost in time when she’d held the titan box in her hands and pried open the lid to find two strands of hair tucked inside. One dark and curly, like her own, the other a glimmering shade of auburn. The same shade she’d seen only moments ago. As the Patriarche had stood in front of her and called her Lisole.
She didn’t want to accept it. She didn’t know if she could ever survive the aftermath. But she knew now that she didn’t have a choice. You can’t unstrike a match. Or repack an explosion. You can’t unbreak a lock. Or stuff the contents back inside.
And you can’t unknow the truth.
Who am I?
I am the daughter of the Patriarche.
Who am I?
I am a Paresse.
Who am I?
I am the Lark who has finally flown home.
For minutes—maybe hours, maybe lightyears—Alouette sat perfectly still. As though this terrace floor that propped her up was made of nothing more stable than withered First World paper, and a single twitch might cause it all to come crashing down. As though every breath she took from here on out held a different meaning. As though the next move she made might decide the fate of a planet.
When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.
Sister Denise knew. She knew who Alouette was. That was what she’d been trying to tell her through the message on Marcellus’s TéléCom.
“Home” wasn’t the Refuge, as Alouette had believed all this time. Home was here. Ledôme. The Grand Palais.
Alouette was a Paresse. The Paresse heir. The only heir.
A petrified scream punctuated the darkness of the terrace, and Alouette leapt to her feet. More screams followed, and then Alouette heard the unmistakable sound of bodies colliding. Hundreds of them. She ran toward the stone staircase that led down to the gardens and froze. The Imperial Lawn was a blanket of blackness, pierced only by the flicker of glowing Skins. And in the dim light, Alouette saw her worst nightmare come to life.
Fists punching and hands clawing and mouths open in bellowing roars.
It was like Dr. Cromwell’s lab on Albion multiplied by a hundred. No, by two hundred. Two hundred guests turned into weapons.
The general had activated the TéléReversion program.
Breath shuddering in her chest, Alouette charged down the first few steps toward the lawn, readying herself to fight again. But a second later, something in the distance caught her eye, pulling her to a halt.
Far off, in the darkness of Ledôme, a lone star twinkled.
Alouette stood paralyzed and speechless, her thoughts blurring in and out of focus. It couldn’t be a star. It was too low in the sky. But somehow, it seemed to be calling out to her. Like a beacon. A monument of hope.
Twinkling just for her.
The Paresse Tower.
Suddenly, like a Sol exploding, sending shards of light to the far reaches of the galaxy, a thousand voices from a thousand moments in time rushed into her mind at once.
“… we need your help, Little Lark …”
“It’s called the Forteresse …”
“… you should always build a kill switch into any large-scale system …”
“He wanted this lock to only open for his direct descendants …”
“It makes sense to hide it, right?”
“We called it the Sovereign gene.”
“You are more useful than you realize, Alouette …”
“… it only activates after a Paresse heir has come of age.”
Alouette sucked in a breath, steadying herself on the handrail of the staircase as all the voices slowly morphed into one. One voice. One sentence. One destiny.
“We’ve just been waiting.… Waiting for you to be ready.”
Those were Principale Francine’s words to her that night she left the Refuge. That night she turned her back on the Sisterhood. On the Vangarde. On her planet.
When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.
Alouette now understood everything.
“Home” was both the Palais and the Refuge.
Denise knew, just as all the sisters knew, that Alouette was important to the fate of Laterre. To the war that was coming. To the revolution. But not only as the Paresse heir.
Because the truth was, Alouette was not just Paresse.
She was also a sister.
She was also Vangarde.
She was also the Little Lark.
And she would see the fall of this Regime.