Kane did not strike at once.
"Look at the city," Leon said.
An image of Skyfall City opened above the throne. Since the void conduit had shut down, several streets had gone dark. Queues stood outside the hospitals, the protective dome over the north was sagging, and people were carrying water by hand.
"It's falling apart," Kane replied.
"And it's still alive."
"For now. You call it freedom when a child waits for medicine because ten adults are arguing over who should open the storehouse."
Leon looked at the queue outside the medical wing.
"Yes. It's worse than opening the storehouse with a single order."
Kane moved closer.
"Then stop pretending. You've seen the result."
"I've seen the price as well."
While they spoke, I crawled along the back of the throne. Styx clung to my collar. Her body barely moved, but images of the white vein passed through my skin.
Kane continued:
"After your mother died, the Council spent three days deciding whether the beasts could be moved out of the southern sector. Four hundred people died in that time. I took command and ended the attack in an hour."
"And then you kept command."
"Because the next attack always comes before people learn."
There was no pretence in his voice. Kane truly remembered every body he had seen during those three days. To him, all the power he had seized since then remained an extension of that one hour when an order saved Leon.
"Were you protecting me?" his son asked.
"Yes."
"From what?"
"From a world that doesn't ask whether you're ready to pay."
"So you stopped asking too."
Kane struck with a ring.
Leon had no time to move. The small dragon leapt between them. The white arc hurled the beast against the wall but failed to subdue him: there was no void core left for the Crown to seize.
Leon rushed to him.
Kane turned his head for a second.
Styx entered the vein.
Someone else's body opened before us all at once. Heart, breath, fingers, neck muscles. A single impulse could make Kane remove the Crown or step into the shaft.
Memory came with the body.
Kane as a boy, standing at the gates. His mother in the snow. A bear marked with a white line trying to stop while an adult beast tamer delayed the order. Then the funeral, the southern sector, the first contract, a caravan saved. People thanking him for swift decisions. Each new victory making anyone else's answer less necessary.
Kane felt us inside him.
He clenched his fingers.
My hand beside the throne twitched in response. Through the parasite, movement could travel both ways: from us to Kane and from him to us. If we began fighting for the body, the boundary would disappear.
Arden appeared before my eyes. His wife at the table. The dinner he had never reached.
I touched Styx with two fingers.
"Only the vein."
She found the mounting of the golden circlet and stung the nerve beside it.
Kane screamed. His hand jerked, but Styx did not steer it aside or force it open. The red point travelled along the nerve and severed only the bond.
The Chain Basilisk crashed onto the platform.
The golden rings went dark.
Styx left Kane's neural circuit and fell onto my palm. His fear for Leon remained with her, so strong that for a second I reached towards his son in his place.
I stopped my hand.
Kane stood beside the ruined throne, without the basilisk or the dragon. The white armour was held together by the thousands of bonds absorbed by the Predator Crown.
"You entered my body," he said.
"And I didn't take it."
"Not yet."
The Crown responded to the Wang family seal.
A panel opened before me:
"Second claimant detected."
Kane smiled. He did not need to reclaim the beasts to prove himself right.
He only had to make me accept the same rules.
Open in the reader