52. Hospes

hospes ~itis, m. or f.

1. a host

2. a visitor

Rax Istra-Velrayd follows his father down the hotel hall, fists in his pockets, trying and failing to push Synali out of his mind. He needs her to stay alive. To fight her. His body needs to fight her on the tilt like it needs to breathe, but she wants to win so terribly—she wants to destroy House Hauteclare even if it means she’s destroyed, too.

He glances down at his vis—no ping from her. No ping from Yavn, either—and he’s starting to worry. Yavn isn’t the type to keep silent.

The hotel brims with the exhausted quiet of a weekend morning, the only sound the dull hum of a lone maid’s hovercart.

“Still don’t know why I’m here, Pops,” Rax says. He watches his father’s back stiffen—it used to be two days locked in Sunscreamer for an informality like that, and now it’s just a flinch.

“You’re getting married soon,” his father retaliates. “It’s about time you learned how to foster relationships with other Houses.”

“You mean get sent places by Duke Velrayd to negotiate his sketchy deals for him.” Father ignores him—a privilege Rax knows he’s earned on the tilt. But he knows the limits, too, and so he looks appropriately repentant. “Who’s the lucky House today?”

“Have you spoken to Yavn lately?”

Rax frowns—how much does Father know? “No—said he’d be busy at work this week.”

“Really? Because he sent the House elders a ping saying he’d be taking a vacation to Omega-1 for the rest of the month.”

Rax manages a laugh. “He’s a weird one. Maybe he changed his mind and said fuck it.”

“Less swearing, Rax. I’ve told you a million times it makes you sound of low birth.”

“Yes sir.”

Yavn never pinged him, but he pinged the elders? He hates the elders. And Omega-1 is nothing but a lavish playground—why go there now, in the aftermath of Theta-7? It rings every suspicious alarm in his head, but Rax doesn’t have time to dwell; Father stops at the penthouse door and looks sternly at him.

“I’ll do the talking. Don’t speak unless he addresses you directly. And even then, use caution.”

Rax’s brow shoots up, but he says nothing. Father’s not one for fear—groveling and brown-nosing, absolutely, but not fear, and not like this, tense and snapping as if he walks a tightrope.

He knocks on the door, and a voice growls, “Come.”

The moment they step into the room, Rax can smell it: the sting of spilled booze and stale sex stabbing over a perfect view of the green hills of the noble spire and the palace plateau. A massive bed faces it all. Tangled in the sheets are three women sleeping, naked. A man rises, just as naked, his long yellow hair cascading and his back rippling in countless tattoos—numbers, symbols, pre-War writing, but the most impressive of all is the tiger crawling down the man’s spine with stripes like night and eyes like blistering murder.

“Lord Axton.” Father bows to the man and nudges his son to do likewise. Rax stumbles into it.

The air in the hotel room is still as death, and then the man speaks. “Have you come to put me back in the cage, Velrayd?”

“Not at all, milord,” Father says quickly. “I simply wished to ascertain if our gift was to your liking.”

The man’s gaze slides over his shoulder, and Rax’s childhood snaps into place—a childhood spent watching the man before him on the tilt, riding a black-and-yellow steed. A steed he broke the waspish action figures of so many times playing too roughly.

The man is Helmann von Axton.

Rax remembers him well—when Helmann was a teenager, he dominated each and every tourney, riding his Dreadnought as lightly as if it was a Frigate. He was a heartthrob and a sensation and an exemplar all in one, like a celebrated knight of the War. He was Rax’s idol—the entire reason he naively agreed to first step into Sunscreamer. For Rax, before the endless training and endless darkness alone in the steed, before they found his “talent,” before the academy and all its mind-numbing accolades—there was Helmann von Axton.

And for Helmann von Axton up until now, there’d only been the royal prison. Nine years ago, House Axton’s manse went up in flames, killing thirteen women. All noble. But later investigation revealed that the bodies weren’t charred—they were in the fireproofed basement, packed into preservative caskets by Helmann himself.

“What does your duke want from me, Velrayd?” Helmann rumbles.

Rax whirls to his father in disbelief. They’re bargaining favors with the Station’s most infamous mass murderer? Helmann’s twin brother is riding in the Supernova Cup—Brann von Axton. He’s a far inferior rider to Helmann, desperately trying to claw his way out of the dishonor pit from his brother’s murders, but still good enough to have gotten four seeds ahead. And if Rax isn’t mistaken, Brann is Synali’s next—

His windpipe sucks shut. Father takes a polite step forward.

“Sir Axton, the Duke Velrayd has been…commissioned. In the downfall of a certain rider.”

Blood rushes to Rax’s head. Helmann watches him, black glass eyes as deep and hypnotic as his voice. “The pretty Lithroi rabbit, right?”

Rax’s nails bite into his palms.

What made Helmann so good wasn’t his impacts or his slick maneuvers—it was reading his opponent’s mind. He could sink into their head, read their intentions and their wants and fears as clearly as a vis ping. It hits Rax now—the full force of it. The invisible weave between riders—the weave only they can see in each other—is brutally plucked by Helmann’s gaze, and Rax feels himself slipping away, falling in. He’s not a person anymore; he is how he stands, how he blinks, how he breathes—all of him laid out in nerves and habitual motion like a clear map for Helmann to read.

And then the release as Helmann looks to Father.

“Do I get to have her before I kill her?”

Rax goes hot down to his fingers, and it’s all a blur, a jolt, an instinct. Father pulls him back by the collar, hard enough to rip fabric at the seams. Helmann smiles slow with all his teeth and then laughs, the sound sending a woman in the bed to stir.

“What’s wrong, little hawk? Does your prick have designs on her?”

His words stab into Rax, slickly searching for something to pull out. Helmann is in his face in one stride. “She is nothing like you.” He jerks a thick claw at his black irises. “You can see it in the eyes. She and I are two of a kind—we threw ourselves over the edge on purpose. You’ve only ever wondered at it from afar.”

Rax moves in—chest to chest with the massive man. Father stands behind Helmann’s shoulder, face pale and waiting to see if his son dies.

Helmann purrs in Rax’s ear. “I’ve seen her impacts. She burns herself alive on every. Single. One. It’s beautiful. She rides like none of you arrogant cowards do—lets it consume her.”

Rax flexes his jaw tight, holding for impact, and it comes in Helmann’s slithering whisper.

“You wouldn’t know what to do with fire even if it let you hold it in your hands, little hawk.”

A scream that’s none of theirs shatters the air. One of the women in the bed sits up, shrieking at her hands covered in crimson. The other two are deathly still, a streak of red crawling through the sheets. Death. Father brought him women to—never, never, he knew his parents would do anything for status but this, this, this—

Helmann turns to the last woman, red gleaming in the tattoo tiger’s eyes, and Father ushers a frozen Rax out, his brain a numb buzz. Not others. If they want to hurt me, fine. Me and only me. Not them, too.

When they’re home, Father acts as if nothing happened. Mother doesn’t so much as blink in Rax’s direction. His frantic pings to Hauteclare keep bouncing—she’s blocked them? He takes a shaky shower to calm down, to wash the smell of Helmann off. Rax knew. He knew, but he didn’t know.

It will never be enough. He will never be enough—the family will always want more and more and more; no matter how high he rises, no matter how well he rides and earns them power, it will never be enough. They’ll kill anyone in their way.

They’re going to kill her.