Alexia saw the look between Roderich and Kristoph as the Imperial shuttle landed on the Executor. The barest twitch of Roderich’s eyebrows pulling together. Is this a good idea? A shrug from Kristoph, so subtle it didn’t even rustle his clothes. What can we do but serve?

They were trying to manage her. It was annoying. Even as she recognized their efforts were likely as much their own attempt to deal with this tragedy as her readiness to snap at them for it was hers.

She wanted to see what had happened for herself. She didn’t want the cleaned up, sanitized version. “I want to know the cost,” she had said, and neither Roderich nor Kristoph had been able to justify a no.

Kristoph was first off the shuttle. A Wolf bearing the Hayashi crest waited at the base of the shuttle’s ramp. He bowed to Kristoph, then fell to his knees as Alexia emerged.

The Wolf, like Roderich and Kristoph, carried a sword and was armored in his flight suit. Alexia wore no armor. She carried no sword. She was the Emperor. She required neither.

As she walked down the ramp, the nima—what few remained—swirled around her, terrified. Alexia gathered them to her, holding them close. Wordlessly, she asked what they had seen, but they were too overwrought to answer, and she wasn’t prepared to take the time to calm them.

She stopped next to the scout who had discovered all this, rested her hand on his bowed head. “Hayashi Roman.” She allowed nothing but kindness in her voice, betraying none of the fury that had been pulsing inside her since she’d received news of Executor’s fate. “Take me to them.”

“I serve the Emperor’s will.” He paused, visibly uncomfortable. “But the ship is not yet safe.”

“You have your orders.” Roderich’s words were unnecessarily sharp. They had been his friends too.

Roman bowed his head deeper, then stood. “Forgive me. It’s this way.”

Alexia walked at Roman’s side. Roderich and Kristoph kept two steps behind. The ship was too quiet. It smelled of blood and rot.

When the news had come that the ship was missing, Alexia had been worried. Everyone had. But this—she had never imagined this. The Griffon flagship was a warship. It had been filled with soldiers, with akashics—a fighting force that should have been able to hold out as long as they needed for rescue to arrive.

It was clear they had fought, by the blood and scorch-marks, severed cables and scarred steel.

Roman saw the direction of her attention. “It’s like this all through the ship,” he said.

“How does this happen?” Kristoph’s tone was soft, almost meditative. The tranquility of an icy pool.

“There’s a hull breach in the lower levels,” Roman answered. “That’s how they got in. As far as how they overwhelmed everything so quickly…” he spread his hands. “I don’t know enough yet to speculate.”

This interval had taken such a toll on everyone. Mostly the Wolf, but every clan had suffered losses. They’d been so close to the end of it, so close to the eclipse, when flight through darkspace would all but cease. “Could the demons have been waiting for the ship? Known its path?”

Roman shook his head. “With respect, my Emperor, darkspace doesn’t work like that. When the demons lay an ambush, they need a collaborator to fly into them.”

“Be careful what accusations you make,” Roderich snapped.

Roman flushed, but his voice was steady. “No accusation, Lord Dahle. I’m not saying this was any kind of plan. Most of the time, it isn’t. Demons—they’re not much for planning, sir.”

They were passing bodies now. Dead and more than dead. When demons killed, they stripped the nima away so that the corpses seemed empty even beyond their lifelessness. It was a blasphemy against nature, against life. Alexia forced herself to look, to remember. Someone had to be the witness for all this horror.

Ahead in a hallway junction was the first dead demon. It took only a flick of thought to release some small fragment of the anger smoldering inside her and the body burst into white-hot flame, burning away instantly to nothing. Alexia didn’t even slow down.

Roderich cleared his throat. “If I might humbly suggest to my Emperor, it will be difficult to investigate if all the evidence is destroyed.”

Investigation was the furthest thing from her mind. Of course, Roderich would be thinking that. He would want answers. He would want there to be answers. When the truth was, this was what had been happening in much smaller ways all through the interval. And the Griffon had fought so hard against letting the Wolf help them.

Alexia didn’t believe there was evidence to be found here, but she refrained from any more pyres.

Until they reached the infestation.

The black growth covered the walls and floor and ceiling in a thick, oozing carpet. It smelled musty, heavy, damp. Five Griffon soldiers lay dead, their skin turned gray with fingers of the awful black tracing up from the patches in which they lay.

Roman and Kristoph both drew their swords, but Alexia waved them back. “This is mine.”

As she stepped forward, the bodies twitched, lurching to unsteady feet. Glassy eyes stared. The growths pulsed, and sharp black spines erupted from the dead soldiers. They stumbled towards Alexia, hands out, the spines reaching as though they had a mind of their own.

Alexia let them approach. She held her hands out as though in welcome. “It’s all right,” she murmured to the fallen soldiers. “Come to me.”

As the first one staggered up to her, Alexia reached out to brush her hand down his cheek. The demon infestation pushed back at her, resisting, like a strong wind against her hand. The sharp, stabbing growths tried to pierce her skin, but they dissolved as they touched her. As Alexia made contact with his skin, she let the power within her flow into him, and the growths all fell away. He collapsed.

It was the same for the other four. Alexia banished the darkness from them, put them back to rest. As she worked, the black growth all around fell away, dissolving into nothingness.

Roderich was a tightly wrapped bundle of fury and offense. Alexia could feel it pounding inside him, and his voice held an edge even his Swan control couldn’t hide. “The demons…all these people…”

“I know.” What else was there to say?

Roman took the lead again. His anger, she noted, was muted, buried in a deeper sorrow tinged with no small amount of fear. Alexia wished she had comfort to offer, that she could promise it would be all right, but for all her vast power, this was something she couldn’t make better, and she would not lower herself to lies.

Finally, he stopped at a door. “In here,” he said, but the words were unnecessary. Alexia could feel the life beating on the other side. She could feel the emptiness as well.

“Wait here.” Alexia looked at Roderich and Kristoph in turn, making it clear they were included in this instruction.

Kristoph took a breath, opening his mouth just a bit. He intended to argue, but Alexia stared and he relented, offering the slightest nod.

Even knowing what waited—even with Roman’s report and the evidence of her own senses—Alexia wasn’t ready for what waited on the other side. She couldn’t believe this was real. It had to be a dream. A nightmare.

Tariq and Audra and a dozen more had been arranged on the floor, shoulder to shoulder. Unlike the soldiers in the rest of the ship, the people in this room were still breathing, still very much alive. But the signs of infestation—grey skin, patchy black—were clear.

Infestation was a horror. When demon energy combined with real flesh, it created monstrosities. Dead bodies became walking corpses, driven by a hunger and a need to spread their poison. Bad enough. Living people…

Most of the time, when the living were infected, the demons tried to hide it. They embedded it deep within, set it to slumber, hoping no one would notice until it was too late. It was an opportunity for them. The dead were a danger. The living were a nightmare. They lost their own will, became servants of the demons. Even worse, they became portals, bridges the demons could use to come into the world.

There had been no attempt to hide this infestation. This wasn’t an attempt by the demons to further their agenda. This was an act of pure cruelty.

Alexia went to Audra, knelt down beside her. What horror she felt, she tried to keep buried, hidden from one of the strongest empaths in the Empire. She gathered Audra into her arms. At Alexia’s touch, Audra opened her eyes.

“No, please…not safe,” Audra gasped.

“Shh.” Alexia stroked her face. “Don’t try to talk. Le me…let me help.”

Audra shook her head, her entire body tense. “It’s too late. You know…” Audra broke off, coughing. “Too late even for you.”

Once infestation had taken root, it couldn’t be stopped. Even Alexia couldn’t banish the corruption once it had fixed itself in living flesh. “I’m so sorry.”

“Tariq,” Audra whispered, her eyes darting about wildly.

He hadn’t stirred, even at Alexia’s presence, but Alexia took his hand and placed it in Audra’s. “He’s here. You’re together.”

“The clan, Naveen.” Once more, coughing overtook her and Audra couldn’t continue.

“It’s all right,” Alexia soothed. “Everything will be all right.” She felt the tears gathering in her eyes, willed them to hold back just a little longer. “Be at peace, my dear friend.”

Alexia didn’t so much command the nima as she simply let go of the anger and fury that had built up within her. That rage reached through them, became fire. The room transformed into a furnace, white-hot cleansing flame. Alexia held her friends, their hands locked together, as their bodies turned to ash. Until that ash, too, withered away to nothing.

She stood, wiping away the traces that had clung to her clothes. She opened the door, where Roderich, Kristoph, and Roman waited for her and was reminded she still needed to be Emperor. “Land the ship.”

Roman bowed quickly and ran off to obey.

To Kristoph and Roderich, she said, “I will see the rest. I want to count the bodies. I want to know what we have lost.”

Their exchanged look of concern wasn’t so subtle that they could hide it from her, but it was subtle enough she could ignore it. “As my Emperor commands,” Roderich said. And followed her back into the darkness.