0. Caeruleus

caeruleus ~ea ~eum, a.

1. blue

2. connected with the sky; celestial

The recluses have come for Rain at last, in this alleyway behind the studio, and they will find him an easy kill.

He should fight. His survival instincts shout to swing whatever way in whatever hardness to drive back the danger, but the part of him that is Spider and not human—the part of him that is Father and not son—knows: there’s no use in fighting. He’s lost everything. No Web. No family. Green-One has killed him better than any dagger ever could, and he’s staggered from pipe to pipe, scraping life off the walls—water and mold, anything to stop the dust cravings gnawing at his organs. He’d seen Synali’s face on the holoscreen, and some dim part of him crawled his body to Mid Ward in one last attempt to reach her. But the recluses cannot be stopped, only delayed, and they are here now. He hears their footsteps too late—too good to be noticed before now. They’re better than him.

Rain stoops, hood dripping rust, and steadies himself on a wall with a shaking hand.

“It is a spider’s fate to eat other spiders,” Father said once. “That is how they survive—cannibalism. What we humans consider unthinkable, a spider does to continue living.”

As the footsteps come closer, he feels something stir in him—regret for dying now. For not taking Green-One with him. For never telling Synali the danger she was in, for never stopping it. And then, through that crushing spiral of regret, something is strange; the footsteps of the recluse are joined by a third step, a hard wooden step on broken asphalt…a cane.

A disguise? Perhaps, but a recluse would abandon such props upon approaching the prey. Rain whirls too late, dagger drawn too late to stop the buzzing heat of a projection sword against his sweating throat, the handle bedecked in sapphires. A washed-out, watercolor sort of man holds it, his face mild and soft as he smiles up at the assassin.

“Good evening.”

Rain keeps deathly still, the edge of the sword testing its teeth on his Adam’s apple in burn marks. If this man wanted to kill him, speaking would have no point. He’s not a recluse; he’s a noble—the sapphires give that much away. But a noble this good? Which House? Blue sapphires…Trentoch? No—they are indigo and aqua, and this cane wood is silvery, old moonlight like Synali’s steed. Lithroi.

The oft-rumored exiled prince.

“I know you,” Rain says softly.

Lithroi chuckles, the echo chilling the alleyway. “That makes things quite a bit easier, doesn’t it?”

“You’re the leader of Polaris.”

“There are no true leaders in justice,” the man corrects. “But I am its smokescreen.”

Something of Green-One’s lie remains in Rain—nobles playing games with lives—and his heart rankles weakly. “Is that what this rebellion is to you? Just a smokescreen?”

“Forgive me. I misspoke—it is a very important smokescreen. It must be. My father is not a man easily distracted by anything less than the direst of situations, you understand.”

The holoscreen flickers above them with a replay. Synali’s face sweat-drenched and her thrown lance piercing the princess’s tasset.

“You’re using her,” Rain says. The man smiles wider.

“You of all people would know of ‘use,’ Sir Spider, and what that truly means.”

This man’s plans will kill everyone. He cannot tell Synali, but he can stop it, here, now, with what’s left of him. A spider eating another spider.

No weapon, but his bones are still sharp. The projection sword cannot be dodged, but it can be leaned into, just enough to get space but not enough to pierce skin, and Rain ducks, throwing a punch beneath the man’s gut, but the sword is there, already, his knuckles sizzling down to the bone and the smell of burning flesh everywhere. Rain gets around him, but the sword is there, again, and the blade burns through his coat and skin and sinew until it reaches the white bone of his elbow. Cold, sharp air hits it like salt in a cut, and he screams, unlike him, not a spider anymore but something louder and clumsier and with less legs, less web, less family. The sword cuts his Achilles tendons both, and he staggers to his knees, glaring up at the prince with an icy gaze.

“Y-You…bastard.”

Lithroi smiles. “And you the same. You are Synali von Hauteclare’s half brother.”

Rain’s eyes flicker to the hovercarriage pulling away from the studio, silver and blue. “No. You lie.”

“Often. But not now.”

“I can’t be—”

“You very much can. All it takes is one night and two people. Duke Farris Hauteclare was not known for his discretion. Unlike Synali’s mother, who fled the brothel and hid, yours died in childbirth. The madam contacted House Hauteclare, and they handed you over to the Spiders.”

Rain feels his heart crack in two for the woman he’s never known, for the girl who was his sister, always and truly. The Lithroi man smiles wider.

“Allow me to give you a choice: die here or aid me in protecting her.”

“Protect?” Rain spat blood. “You’re using her to start another war. The steed your mother made—the thing inside it—” His lungs give a rattling gasp. “I saw. The last one alive controls all of them—tells them what to do. Keeps them docile. The queen didn’t overload—she fed the one inside Heavenbreaker. Synali’s been feeding it this whole time…just like the king’s riders. The one in Hellrunner is well-fed, stronger—so much stronger. But you’re trying to birth a new one to overthrow it.”

Lithroi just smiles down at him patiently.

All the places Rain’s flesh is now cauterized pull tight, painful with every breath as he says, “You cannot bring back the dead.”

The man smiles big enough to slit his eyes.

“Ah, but Sir Spider—what if they were never dead to begin with?”