Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,19

corner, all the while never taking his steady gaze off Limier. For a brief moment, Marcellus caught a glimpse of something on his grandfather’s face that he had only ever seen once before in his life. It was when the general had lost his previous commandeur, Michele Vernay. Vernay had been captured and killed while trying to assassinate Queen Matilda, the “Mad Queen” of Albion, during the Usonian War of Independence. Marcellus had been there when the general had received the alert. He’d seen the pain flash in his grandfather’s eyes. And then he’d seen that pain turn to anger.

All of that had transpired in less than a minute. A fleeting moment of vulnerability. Once it was over, his grandfather had returned to his stoic, impervious self again.

But now Marcellus could see the same torment flash in his grandfather’s eyes as he watched Limier’s chest precariously rise and fall in an uneven rhythm. The general cared about this man. Marcellus knew that. And in that moment—and that moment only—Marcellus felt the tiniest drop of sympathy for his grandfather. He was a man who had known loss. And Limier had been his grandfather’s most loyal inspecteur for years. He entrusted the cyborg with things he didn’t share with anyone else. Even his own grandson.

The thought pulled Marcellus up short, and his gaze darted back to Limier and Directeur Chevalier, who was still trying to connect to the inspecteur’s memory chip.

If memory files could be accessed from the moments before Limier was attacked, could other files be accessed as well? Memories from further back?

Marcellus’s fingers twitched as an idea began to form in his mind. The inspecteur was the general’s most prized interrogator. No one could pull the truth out of a criminal like Limier. Which meant he had to know the location of his grandfather’s secret facility. The very facility where Marcellus was certain the Vangarde operatives Jacqui and Denise were being held. His gaze zeroed in on Directeur Chevalier’s control panel, where files were slowly appearing on the screen. If he could search those files and find out where the operatives were being held, Denise could tell him what she knows about the general’s weapon and perhaps direct him to the source she’s been—

“Papa! There you are!” A shrill voice punctured Marcellus’s thoughts, and he turned to see a tall, slender girl sweep through the door and hurry toward Directeur Chevalier. She wore a bright purple velvet dress, cinched at the waist with an oversized belt, and her shiny obsidian-black hair was fashioned atop her head in a ridiculous construction that Marcellus thought resembled a willow tree in the Palais gardens.

“I’ve sent you nearly a thousand AirLinks,” the girl went on, her chipper voice a startling contrast to the somber tension in the room. “Are you ignoring me again, silly Papa? Oh, hi, General. Hi, Marcellus. Didn’t see you there. Marcellus, you’re looking … dapper as always.”

“Hi, Cerise,” Marcellus said as politely as he could muster. It wasn’t that he disliked the daughter of Gustave Chevalier. He honestly didn’t think about her much. She was like every other Second Estate teenage girl who lived in Ledôme. Sparkle-headed and spoiled and obsessed with mundane things like clothes and hair fashions. And now, after everything that had happened in the past few weeks, he had even less patience than ever for girls like Cerise Chevalier.

“I’m very busy here,” Chevalier snapped at his daughter. “I will respond to your AirLinks as soon as I’m done.”

“I know, I know,” Cerise said with a wave of her hand. “You’re always busy. But if you had watched any of my messages, you would know that this is very important. I really really need your TéléCom to track a shipment of dresses arriving from Samsara today. There’s only one in my size in the entire shipment. And I have to have it for Petale’s birthday fête this weekend. If I don’t get to the shops the moment the dresses are put on the rack, I won’t get one.”

Marcellus fought back a roll of his eyes. Could this girl not see that they were dealing with a very morbid situation right now? Inspecteur Limier was lying unconscious on a gurney only centimètres away, and she was babbling about dresses?

The directeur looked mortified by the interruption. He muttered an apology to the general before quickly ushering his daughter back toward the door. “Cerise,” he hissed under his breath, as they disappeared into the hallway. Marcellus could only hear bits