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“You encouraged her to hit me,” Kuen said, outrage warring with amusement as he helped Gaspare shove Eshana’s body into a body bag.

“You deserved it and I felt she’d earned the right to be the one to deliver the first blow,” Gaspare said. “I’m going to pound you through the mats and into an early grave. I didn’t want to deal with this tonight. Losing Aoi was bad enough. You had to pick a fight with her.”

Kuen scowled. “She started it.”

“I doubt that. Grab your keeper’s ankles.” Gaspare took hold of the top half of the body bag. “We need to make this disappear before mother gets out here. I don’t want to have to explain to my father why an assassin showed up at Honore’s birthday party.”

Kuen took hold of the bottom half of the body bag while Gaspare took the top half. They barely got it out of sight, and the blood eradicated, before the crowd of guests came out. Kuen felt Gaspare’s tug on his jacket. He faded back into the shadows with his friend and the two skulked their way back to the house. Kuen saw a glimmer of light beneath the bushes where they’d left Eshana’s body, and a pair of hands tugged the body bag down through a hidden hatch.

Kuen shook his head. Of course they’d have groundskeepers to deal with inconvenient bodies. He followed Gaspare back into the house, into the training center, and narrowly dodged the blow aimed at his head. Gaspare didn’t bother waiting for him to strip down. He seemed determined to take him down.

Kuen attempted to fight back but Gaspare used the fact that he was still in fighting shape and Kuen wasn’t to his advantage. His brutal onslaught knocked the taller man flat on his back. Kuen tried to get up. Gaspare refused to let that happen.

It took far too long for Kuen to finally toss off his assailant. He could feel the blood streaming from his broken nose and the numerous lacerations caused by Gaspare’s blows. “What’s your malfunction, Gaspare?” Kuen asked bluntly as he rolled to his feet.

“You. I don’t like what I see, Kuen. And Nafi? Nafi would be utterly disgusted. She would have dropped you from our circle within the first two years of you being a civ.” Gaspare was panting. He wiped the blood off his hands and tended to his own injuries. “You are the epitome of everything we all despised about the caste you and I find ourselves members of, that we swore we would never see ourselves become, and yet here you are – reflecting those same values you always decried back at the Academy.”

“Gaspare, if I so much as breathe wrong, I’m punished far worse than with what the Academy ever did to me.” Kuen shuddered, memories of the screams of innocent servants being tortured in his place – some even dying because his mother wanted to prove a point – flashing across his mind in hyper speed. “I’ve told you what she does. I can’t do anything against her. If I try to escape, she’ll kill everyone in her household just to prove to me how worthless I am, that I caused the deaths of all those innocents for being selfish.”

“Kuen, you could move into my townhouse and stay with me. How is wanting to live with your best friend selfish? You’re not going to become distant from her. You’re just putting some distance between the two of you to develop as a person,” Gaspare said. “You’ll still help her with her work, but you’ll also be able to fulfill more social obligations to maintain your reputation as a member of the elite caste.”

“She’ll cut me off from the family fortune if I leave. I don’t exactly have verifiably marketable skills, Gaspare. I’d end up indentured within a very short time.” Kuen slapped a regenerator on his face. The searing, crawling pain from the nanites was only noticeable for a moment before the numbing solution kicked in and he relaxed a little.

Gaspare pursed his lips. “I’m not sure I should tell you what my father proposes, since I can’t be certain you’ll keep quiet about it.”

“You think I’ll tell my mother about your father’s offer?” Kuen grimaced. “I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of getting any evidence against him. I respect your father, even if I think he and the High Command should never have ordered me to execute Nafi.”

“That’s good to hear.” Gaspare sighed and ran his fingers through his disheveled curls. “Kuen, my father is convinced – even if no one else listens to him – that your mother is doing her best to start a war between the Aureliya and the Duyelia sectors. This cannot be allowed to happen, no matter your personal feelings. It’s not going to be good for either side. He wants me to recruit you into spying on Michi Nakano. He’ll pay all your bills and keep you quite comfortably, much as he would a high-ranking military officer. If you stay with me, he can just increase the stipend he allocates for my living expenses.”

“I’ll see what she says.” The regenerator beeped and Kuen pulled it off his face. He glanced at his reflection. The perfection his mother so insisted on was now spoiled, the large red mark showing where he’d been struck by the Blue Butterfly and then all the bruising from Gaspare’s blows only accented the now crooked nose.

His mind was drawn back to his first few days on the ship with Lakshmi. He placed his hand on the scar on his stomach. Closing his eyes, he drew up the memory of the man he’d been. A soldier, an officer, a powerful man who knew his place in the world and refused to let two women who felt themselves above the law dictate his reality. Who was he now? He opened his eyes and looked at his reflection again.

He was thinner than before, muscles not so clearly defined as they’d been five years earlier. His eyes were dull and empty – the eyes of a broken man. His shoulders were stooped like someone a century his senior and there was no sign of the strong officer who’d terrorized the cadets. This was a man who was enslaved by those in power in his life.

His comm chirped, startling him. “Speak of the space witch,” Gaspare muttered.

Kuen smirked, a hint of his old spirit emerging. He pulled the tiny device out of his pocket and tucked it into his ear. He pressed one finger to his lips. Gaspare nodded. Kuen activated full speaker mode. “This is Kuen.”

“Kuen, I sent one of my sisters to keep an eye on you. Her heart rate monitor flatlined some time ago. What happened to her?” Lakshmi asked.

“I have no idea,” Kuen said. “I did not even know she was watching me.” He let some of the anger he felt show. “You do not need to send a keeper with me every time I leave the house, Lakshmi. I am quite capable of taking care of myself. I might not be permitted to maintain my previous fighting peak, but I can still defend myself.”

“It’s not your defense she was there for. It was to make certain you didn’t disobey your mother,” Lakshmi said.

“I have not done anything against my mother since my first year home. The two of you are still going on as if I were going to betray her at the first chance I get. That is getting very old very fast. Is my mother available to speak with?”

“She is,” Lakshmi said, confusion filling her smooth, lightly accented tone. “But what does that have to do with my sister?”

“To be honest, if she wasn’t here openly? She most likely got caught by the Benoit family’s security forces. Given that they’re all full military and their idea is shoot first and ask questions later, it’s highly likely your sister was taken out by one of them,” Kuen said. “Now I want to speak to my mother.”

“Kuen, Lakshmi says Eshana is missing,” Michi said.

“She is probably dead, since you could not send her openly as my bodyguard but left her to skulk around in the shadows like some criminal,” Kuen said. “The soldiers who guard the Benoit family do not take kindly to those who appear to be assassins. Especially not when the entire family – save the High Admiral himself – is gathered in one place.”

“She is one of the Devas, Kuen. No ordinary soldier would have been able to take her down.” Michi sounded almost insulted that Kuen would even suggest that a Deva could be taken out so easily.

Gaspare stifled his laugh. “Mother, do you really think there are ordinary soldiers guarding a High Admiral’s family?” Kuen was more than a little annoyed at this and it was starting to show. He took a deep breath. “Chalk her disappearance up to her running into someone she could not beat and leave it at that. Because that is most likely what happened.”

“Very well. Now, is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” Michi asked.

“No. Gaspare has offered me the chance to live with him at his townhouse on Bouarus. I am seriously considering taking him up on that.” Kuen waited for her response.

“You do realize we have some new, lovely children working for us,” Michi said. “It would be a pity if something happened to them because you chose to exert your rebellious streak after so long.”

“Mother, are you so short sighted that you cannot see the benefit to you in allowing me to move out of the mansion?” Kuen shot Gaspare an ‘I told you so’ look. The other young man looked sick.

“Explain the benefit to me, since right now all I see is my son being selfish,” Michi said with a very sad tone to her voice. “I do not like it when my son is selfish.”

“Mother, if I live with Gaspare, I will have the freedom to move at a moment’s notice. I can be anywhere important within a very short period of time. I can also have far more privacy there than I do in the mansion. You cannot tell me that some of our servants are not in the employ of your enemies. This also allows me to develop my own ways of doing things, though of course I will still do those things that you ask.”

Michi was silent for several minutes. The only sound from her end was her steady breathing. “You do bring up several good points, Kuen,” she said finally. “If I gave you a living stipend of, say, a thousand credits a week as well as access to the family accounts strictly for those times when you have lunch meetings so you can then take a councilor to lunch or dinner…” Her voice trailed off again.

“I would be most honored to accept such a generous offer,” Kuen said, relief flooding through him.

“How would you maintain your wardrobe with such a small living stipend?” Michi asked. “You would, of course, be allowed to take everything you have right now, but you will need to keep up on fashion.”

“Trust me, Mother. I have my ways. I can always play up my new situation, how busy you are, and how I do not wish to burden you with my stupidity,” Kuen said. “I am certain I can convince some lovely young lady or gentleman to cover some of my expenses.”

Michi laughed at that one. “You could definitely sweet talk someone into that, Kuen. All right. Business has been going well and despite what happened with Lakshmi’s sister I think I will agree to this. Do you have an address for Gaspare’s townhouse?”

Gaspare passed over a pad with the address on it. Kuen transmitted it to his mother’s v-mail. “I sent you the information, Mother.”

“I will have your belongings shipped over to the house immediately. When you return to Bouarus from Cova, you will join Gaspare at his townhouse instead of returning home. Call me when you arrive just so I know you are ready to take on some new assignments.” Michi ended the call.

“I don’t like how she says business is going well,” Gaspare said.

“Neither do I. If business is going well, it generally means someone is dying,” Kuen said.

Gaspare ran his fingers through his hair again. “I’ll send word for my security team to scour your belongings for tracers and bugs, once they arrive.”

“You’d better be glad she was in a good mood.” Kuen tucked his comm unit back in his pocket. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been allowed to move in with you. Her statement is ominous, but it is also fortuitous.”

Gaspare rolled his eyes. “We’ll see what happens.” He reached up and slapped the back of Kuen’s head. “Now, you’d better figure out a way to apologize to Fiera for your idiocy. She’s an expensive commodity and you will want to cultivate her favor. If she so much as hints at what happened here, you’ll lose all ability to find a courtesan to have on your arm. They are the only safe females, as far as your mother is concerned, and you don’t want to do anything to jeopardize your newly won freedom.”

“What do you expect me to do?” Kuen asked.

“Give her a gift by way of apology. Let her believe it was your grief over Nafi and the constant stress of dealing with your mother that led you to act like an absolute frakking moron.” Gaspare strode out of the room.

Kuen sat down, leaning elbows on his knees. “That wouldn’t even be a lie,” he muttered. “What in the name of all the stars have I become?”

All was silent. There was no one to answer him until a pair of strong hands started massaging his shoulders. “You became what it took to survive.” Fiera’s voice was soft but there was real pain in it as she worked on loosening some of the tension in his muscles. “As have I.”

Kuen bowed his head. “I think we all become what it takes to survive our own personal hells.”

“Yes. We do. Yet what kindness we show to others even in the worst times will always be paid back to us in some way somewhere down the line.” Fiera moved up to his neck. “Don’t tense up. It makes this harder.”

“My instincts tell me you’re going to break my neck.” Kuen shuddered as her fingers moved deftly along his tight flesh.

“I could, you know. And no one would find out until Lord Gaspare came looking for you when you didn’t show up for breakfast. There’s a little voice in the back of my head screaming at me to do it, because your mother is the worst enemy of my home.” Her hands moved lower, and she worked on a particularly painful knot just below his shoulder blade. “I won’t do it though. I refuse to let myself become a monster.”

“Do you see those of us from the CWA as monsters then?” Kuen asked. Her hands stilled. “I’m not trying to be rude. Not this time, at least. I truly want to know how you see us, how the Colon – how the Colonies see us.”

“You are interlopers, plain and simple. We don’t want you anywhere near our homes. We’re happy to trade with you, as evidenced by the fact we were already doing that before you annexed us.” She pressed hard on a spot near his ribs, and he grunted in pain.

“I thought the Colonies had stopped trading with us and that was why the Assembly decided to move forward with the more direct methods of getting goods,” Kuen said.

“Why would we stop trading? We do need an income and proper trade with the Aureliya sector was one of the mainstays of our lives. But it wasn’t enough. To us, you got greedy and wanted everything.” Fiera found another bad knot and pressed hard on it to loosen it up. “Do you realize we can’t afford the things made on our own homeworlds anymore? We have to buy the cheap imports from the Aureliya sector because our goods are seen as luxuries, therefore we aren’t entitled to them.”

Kuen twisted, feeling his spine pop in response to the movement. He had to look at her. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.” She smiled sadly. Kuen shifted around so he was straddling the bench. Fiera sat down and turned so she could look at him. “Lord Nakano, before the famine hit Sorus eight years ago my family had a thriving farm that grew staples in every diet – corn and wheat – and three other items. The final year the farm was in production my father was growing sweet peppers, sweet peas, and tomatoes.” She smiled wistfully. “You’ve never tasted anything so fine as a vine ripened tomato fresh from the field.” The smile turned bitter. “Of course, I was promptly beaten within an inch of my life and then tossed into the detention center for thirty days for stealing from my own family’s fields because those crops were meant to be sold to the Core.”

“Your own parents turned you over to the sec ops?” Kuen was horrified at the thought.

Fiera shook her head. “Another farmhand. He wanted the fifty credit bounty for produce theft. It was enough to pay for his daughter to go to school on planet for another year. My da couldn’t pay to get me out because he needed to pay to keep my younger sibs in school. I told him not to worry about it. I called it my enforced nap time since that’s about all I did while I was in the DC – sleep.”

“Public school is supposed to be free,” Kuen said.

“It’s supposed to be, but out in the Colonies? It costs twenty-five credits to send your child to primary school, fifty for secondary, and let’s not discuss the hideous discrepancies in our tertiary educational systems again,” Fiera said.

“You were saying that you couldn’t get into CWA controlled universities, and they didn’t acknowledge the certificates you receive from your own universities.” Kuen shifted and the phoenix brooch slammed into his chest as his jacket moved with him.

Fiera shook her head. “What makes the tragedy of the Lusitania so much worse is that I’d used up my savings just to get a ticket. There was a free workshop on Totov dealing with botany and the genetic manipulation of crop plants. It would’ve netted me another certification if I could get through it, and I was desperate to get off Sorus. I was hoping to get my cert and then start working on Totov, maybe use that as a springboard to get me onto one of the research stations.” She shook her head ruefully. “That didn’t go as planned. I barely survived the explosion.”

She wrapped her arms around her chest and now, in the harsh light of the practice area, he saw the faint burn scars and the marks that could only come from surviving the kind of traumatic explosion she had. “You know it was saboteurs. It was proven about a year ago after a long-term investigation,” Kuen said. She nodded. “I can’t say it was Colony sabotage though because suicide bombers rarely leave enough of themselves behind to identify and there were no political statements made at the time.”

“It could just as easily have been CWA extremists. Both sides have a tendency to waste lives like that.” Fiera sighed and ran a hand through her curls.

Kuen reached out and caught her hand. He turned her wrist over so he could see her tattoo. “This symbol shows up a lot on anti-Core propaganda in the Colonies.”

“It does?” Fiera asked, confused. “I got it in honor of my father, who died eight years ago in the famine.” She looked genuinely concerned. “Could you show me?”

“Of course.” He stood and held out his hand. She took it and let him pull her to her feet. She was so tiny but, and he smiled slightly, she hit just as hard as a person twice her size.

He led her over to the console and put in his credentials. The reports that were public knowledge popped up, showing the symbol of the Silver Fox emblazoned on several different broadsheets splattered across multiple social platforms.

“The Silver Fox?” Fiera’s voice was soft. “I know that name, but from where?” She put her hand on her forehead. “I think I must have heard some of the others talking about him, or her, at some point. My father may have even been friends with them. I just know I always saw this symbol around him and when he died it was the obvious one to get to remember him by.”

“Is it a common practice to get tattoos to commemorate lost loved ones?” Kuen asked as he shut down the console. He realized Fiera was more disheveled than he’d ever seen her. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know about anywhere else in the Colonies, but it kind of developed into a tradition on Sorus for us to get tattoos to commemorate big events,” she said, showing him a few others that were in more obvious places. “And no, I’m not all right. I was trying to sleep but nightmares of the explosion woke me. I saw a lot of people wandering the gardens, most of them giggling about cute boys, and I didn’t want to deal with that. Aoi told me about this place, and told me that Lord Gaspare said she could use it if she ever wanted to practice fighting, so I came down here to see if I could get some practice time in without being disturbed – a rarity for me – but I saw you two were pounding on each other, so I didn’t want to come in.”

“You overheard what we were saying.”

“I did. You don’t have to give me anything, Lord Nakano. I have a feeling that what Lord Gaspare is saying is to blame for your poor behavior earlier is only the tip of a very big mountain of issues you’re dealing with. I’ve had some truly dreadful clients. So long as we can continue being civil to each other, I’ll manage,” Fiera said.

“Fiera, they call you the Blue Butterfly but what animal do you see yourself as?” Kuen watched her as she stared unseeing at the wall.

“One that doesn’t exist in anything but the oldest fables and legends, Lord Nakano. Which is why I never talk about it.” She blinked and focused back on his face.

“Would you tell me?” Kuen asked, not sure why he was so interested.

Fiera turned and lifted the mass of cherry red curls off the back of her neck. There, hidden under the silken strands, was a stylized phoenix done in shades of blue and red. “I got this done not long before I decided to leave Sorus. It was to remind me that if a phoenix could be reborn from its own ashes, so could I. I’ve equated myself with the phoenix ever since I was a child.”

She lowered her hair and turned around. Kuen unfastened the brooch from his jacket. He held it in his hand. Would Nafisa approve of this? Yes, she would, a voice whispered in his head. He handed her the ornate enamel and jeweled pin. “This was Nafisa’s. She left this for me, told me to carry it until I understood what the phoenix represented. I’m still not sure I understand, but you do – and I think she’d appreciate the irony of me giving it to you when I’ve always been so outspoken against the Colonies.”

The words were jumbled. Kuen was extremely tired all of a sudden. But as he looked into those brilliant teal eyes of hers, he saw Fiera understood what he was trying to say even if the words weren’t there. She slipped her small hand into his larger one and rested it there for a moment. When she pulled back the brooch was gone.

She smiled. “If it pleases you, Lord Nakano, I’ll wear this with tomorrow night’s outfit. The gown I chose for the actual party will match this perfectly.” “I would appreciate that.” He paused. “I would also appreciate you using my name, as I am tired of being recognized only by my family.” She nodded sympathetically. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go find my bed.” He headed off.