Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,41

through Marcellus’s TéléCom two weeks ago. The message that had launched this slow decline of her certainty and sanity.

When the Lark flies home, the Regime will fall.

Alouette still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. What was Sister Denise trying to tell her? To go home to the Refuge and join the sisters? Help them bring down this faulty Regime with all its cracks and injustices? That was definitely the most convincing answer.

But Alouette wasn’t convinced.

Because the Refuge would never be her home again. Not in the way she remembered it, anyway. Never again would she eat her meals in Grateful Silence, lulled by the gentle clink of soup spoons. Never again would she dust the precious volumes of the Chronicles in the library. Or sit on the bed in the room that Sister Jacqui and Sister Denise shared, chattering on about what she’d read that day while Jacqui paced and asked insightful questions, and Denise prodded at some disassembled Ministère device that lay open on her desk.

That Refuge had been a lie. A delusion that had crumbled before her very eyes the moment Principale Francine had revealed the truth.

Alouette felt her fists clench in frustration. The sisters might have wanted her to fly home. To be their “Little Lark.” A member of the Vangarde. But Alouette’s feathers were wilted now. Her wings ached from flying so far.

She was a lost lark with no home.

“Here we are,” Dahlia said.

Alouette blinked and glanced up at the building that loomed above them.

“This is it?” Alouette asked, suddenly wondering if Dahlia had led her to the wrong place. She wasn’t expecting the Grand Palais, but she certainly wasn’t expecting this. The crooked structure sat slumped in the Montfer mud, its low, rusted roof dangling at an awkward angle and its small, grated windows like a row of lopsided mouths. An old wooden door, whose slats had been gnawed and pummeled by the damp air, was the only perpendicular part of the building. “Is this the only bordel in the city?”

“Yes, but don’t be nervous,” Dahlia said, her gruff voice softening ever so slightly. “Madame Blanchard has been here for years. She’ll take good care of you.”

That’s what I’m counting on, Alouette thought with a shudder. She glanced back up at the ominous building, trying to work up the courage to go inside. She was thousands of kilomètres from where she’d started, and yet, still so far from where she wanted to be. But that door was a step in the right direction, right? Or, at least, a step in a direction. She had to take it.

“Merci,” she murmured, without pulling her gaze away from the door. She wanted to say more to the woman who had guided her here. She felt like she should say more. But everything on the tip of her tongue felt trite and pointless. I’m sorry you have to live like this. I’m sorry I can’t help. I’m sorry the planet is so broken. But it didn’t seem to matter. Because when Alouette turned back around and gazed into the mist, Dahlia was gone.

And the answers to the questions Alouette had been asking her whole life were waiting behind that weather-beaten door.

- CHAPTER 12 - MARCELLUS

“WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG?” THE Patriarche grumbled. “Why can’t we see her yet?”

Marcellus stood tucked in the corner of Warden Gallant’s office, watching the Patriarche pace the room in his fluttering silk dressing gown. Meanwhile, Chaumont, the Patriarche’s favorite advisor, stood like a statue, with his hands clasped behind his back. Shimmering on the front pocket of his dark green robe were the two lions of the Paresse family crest.

The moment the words had left General Bonnefaçon’s lips—“Citizen Rousseau is dead”—the Patriarche had demanded he see the body for himself. But after more than thirty seconds of the general trying to connect his TéléCom to the morgue security cams, the Patriarche stormed out of the imperial appartements and marched straight to the Ministère headquarters, with the general and Marcellus in tow.

“We’re pulling up the feed now, Monsieur Patriarche.” Warden Gallant ran a hand through his usually immaculate silver hair. “This is not a sector of the prison that we access regularly.” He turned to a technicien currently standing in front of a vast control panel, deftly maneuvering her hands across the screens. “Rolland, what is the status?”

“I’m connecting to the microcam network for the Med Center now,” she replied in that affectless tone that all cyborgs seemed to have. “Just a few more moments.”

The Patriarche