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The opulent doors leading into White Diamond’s chambers loomed before them, blindingly, sickeningly bright. An ordinary gem might have gotten away with thinking that their luster derived from the Diamond’s formidable powers, or perhaps some kind of artificial lighting technology.
But Yellow Diamond knew better.
She peered through the glamour, the intricate swirling patterns, all silvery veins, and knew intimately that White’s doors were composed of thousands and thousands of shattered gems leached white. She could see the microscopic cracks between the cannibalized shards.
Could hear the whispers, the soft screams, of the ravished. The dead. Trophies of their matriarch’s spoil.
She tightened the grip she had on Blue Diamond’s hand.
And tried not to swallow.
But Blue was sharp, intuitive.
Sensitive to every vibration in Yellow’s body.
Cognizant of every groove she possessed.
“You’re nervous,” she observed without looking at her. Her silvery hair, long and unkempt with neglect, eclipsed her eyes from view.
Those beautiful blue eyes, like startlingly clear pools of water.
Now polluted.
Edged with tired shadows.
“Being here always sets me on edge,” she replied through gritted teeth. “Doesn’t it you?”
Blue swept her thumb along the side of Yellow’s glove—the rhythmic motion slow and smooth, controlled, restrained.
“It did,” she said quietly, “but I was a different gem then.”
They lapsed into silence—they did that often these days—until White Pearl phased through the wall (awful, perverse creature) and told them, “Her Majesty is ready to receive you now.”
When the double doors shuddered to an open, all of its dead gems began to scream.
They untwined their indulgent hands.
They could not let her see.
“Sunlight! Moonlight!” White Diamond purred as they approached her altar. Arms extended—they always were—her posture modeled an alien’s approximation of invitation and welcome. There were knives in her wide smile, knives in the sharp, glowing lines emanating crisply from her body.
Knives in her unnaturally pale eyes, pinning Blue and Yellow down.
“White Diamond,” they murmured together. Yellow gathered her upper body into a stiff bow, Blue gracefully tipped her head, and this would surely be the extent of how much they’d be allowed to speak during this centurial farce of meeting.
Not even surely.
Certainly.
“Oh, dears, it’s been so long since we’ve reconvened. How have you two been? Have your colonies been thriving? No, no—no need to answer. I know they’ve done well with you two at the helm. Yellow, I’m particularly impressed with your Kindergartens on Xerxes; they’ve produced an absolutely stunning vein of Topazes. Broad shoulders. Perfectly cut gems. Excellent work! And Blue! Blue, your Lapis Lazulis aren’t forming with those awful gold markings anymore. Nasty, little pockmarks those things were. Did you incubate them in a nitrogen rich environment as I advised you to? I’m sure you did. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have turned out so pretty! La!”
White suddenly paused, pupils dilating as some unseen stimulus enraptured her attention—as it was wont to do—before she started again, in the same clipped accent as before: “Ooh, my apologies, dears—there was an erosion in Sector 9. Fifteen Peridots were lost, but I’ll be sure to send a drone out there to harvest their pieces. Anyway, I’d love to spend a whole cycle flattering you two—I really would—but I’m afraid that we have more pressing matters to attend to in this meeting. Nothing serious! Nothing serious at all. I just wanted to take a brief nanosecond to address your, ah… shattering habits.”
Directly contradicting the idea of a nanosecond, the very word shattering was thick and luxuriant on her tongue.
Her smile, knife-sharp, landed right between Yellow’s golden eyes.
“I must say, Sunlight, I’m very disappointed in you,” she drawled, and her words did not match her pleasant tone, the sharp lines of her beaming face. “You of all gems, you relentless utilitarian you, have always known the importance of shattering to our fragile ecosystem. A gem misbehaves, unnatural truant that she is, and we eradicate that imperfection in the hopes of creating something new out of her remains. A new gem, perhaps. A machine. A power source. But in the last century, you have only shattered ninety-two truants out of the three-hundred that have passed through your court. I expect more of you, Sunlight. I require your best. Is that understood?”
Yellow nodded curtly, but White wanted more.
Wanted submission.
Subjugation.
“Why so shy? I want to hear you say it, Sunlight.”
“I… “ she hesitated, an incremental fraction of a second, but it was long enough for her face to seize across her mind’s eye, her loud laugh, her hibiscus pink eyes, “I won’t disappoint you again, my Diamond.”
“Good, good,” White laughed airily, seemingly oblivious to her reluctance but unlikely so, “I’m sure you won’t.”
And then the laughter fell from her face just as suddenly as it had risen there, and her gaze settled coldly upon Blue, who stiffened next to her almost imperceptibly.
But Yellow was sharp, intuitive.
Sensitive to every vibration in Blue’s body.
Cognizant of every groove she possessed.
Just do as she says, she thought desperately. Do as she says, and it’ll all be over soon.
“And you, Moonlight,” White murmured silkily, dangerously, “I’m simply astonished by how poorly you’ve performed these past hundred years. One hundred years, thirty-six thousands of lunar cycles, and you have yet to shatter one gem. You haven’t even held court long enough to shatter a gem! And now, pray tell, why would that be? Are you discontented by something, dear, by this system that has sustained Homeworld for millions and millions of years? Do you have something against me, my love, against us, your Diamond Authority? Please inform me. I only wish to know.”
White leaned forward expectantly—it was only natural that she receive a groveling response—but Blue remained silent.
Immobile.
Her tall head cast down.
Lank hair spilling into her face, eradicating all of her delicate features.
White’s black lips gathered into a frown.
“Moonlight,” she warned, the high lilt of her accent teetering into displeasure, into barely concealed rage, but at the same time, Yellow discreetly extended her hand, brushed the tips of Blue’s fingers that were half-hidden by her robes. She was iced over. She was cold, achingly cold. But all the same, her lips finally began to move.
“I apologize for my negligence, my Diamond,” she intoned lifelessly, perfunctorily. Her chin had not entirely ascended out of insolence; she seemed to be staring at White’s chest. “I was still observing a grieving period for… for Pink Diamond, and in doing so, neglected my responsibilities to Homeworld. Please forgive me.”
White blinked—a single pop of pale, omniscient eyes—before exhaling slowly.
A sigh, a susurrus that almost passed as understanding.
Almost.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I suppose I cannot fault you for grieving for our lost sister. Poor Pink Diamond. My poor, little Starlight. Shattered on Earth, was she not?” She seemed to take pleasure when Blue visibly flinched because she unsheathed her smile once again. “Yes, yes—I thought so. Poor creature. But all that is in the past, Moonlight. You’re a leader, a Diamond. You must put the past to sleep and not a moment too soon. Do I make myself clear?”
Just say yes. Just says yes, Yellow pleaded with her eyes.
But this time, Blue responded almost immediately, leveling her gaze directly into White’s.
Ice clashing against ice.
No—ice clashing against burnished steel.
“Crystal,” she hissed, and Yellow didn’t even have time to call her a damn fool.
White’s shoulders stiffened immediately, and she drew herself to full height, which was a good fifteen feet over Yellow and Blue both.
And her smile widened.
Oh, how it widened.
“Yellow, you’re dismissed for this session,” she said abruptly. “Feel free to return to your halls for the time being.”
Yellow couldn’t help herself, couldn’t bite the words back before they threw themselves past her clenched teeth. “What about Blue?”
The Diamond only laughed, the sound awful and piercing as it struck the tall ceiling of the chamber.
“Blue is going to hold court.”
◆
“I apologize, Yellow Diamond. You are not permitted to go through,” White Pearl repeated, a sycophantic marionette, a servile tool.
The double doors were thick but not impenetrable, and the screams of dying gems bled through the cracks.
They excavated Yellow’s frenzied mind.
“Let me in there, dammit! There’s something wrong going on in there! I order you to—”
“I apologize, Yellow Diamond.” The Pearl smiled that horrible blank smile of hers and moved a fraction to the right to block Yellow’s grasping hand. “You are not permitted to go through.”
“I’ll shatter you,” she snarled and summoned electricity in her palm to prove it.
“And then you’ll be vulnerable to the repercussions that come with desecrating one of White Diamond’s prized possessions,” Pearl chided, tilting her monochrome head. “You wouldn’t want that, now would you?”
Blue was weeping.
Sobbing.
She could hear it through the doors.
Could feel it in the hollow bones of her armor.
“Please, Blue Diamond! Spare me! I’ll do anything. I’ll—”
Yellow Diamond hurled her fist into the nearest wall, denting the flawless white quartz with the force of the blow.
“I apologize, Yellow Diamond. You are not permitted to go through.”
◆
The massacre lasted for three hours.
Three damn hours.
The screams.
Her cries.
Then silence, a heavy curtain descended upon an empty stage.
When Yellow was finally allowed to return to the chamber, Blue was on her knees, drowning in shards.
Her palms scraped against the ground, scraped against the fragments.
Lifeless.
They were.
She was.
“Blue,” she whispered but could not bring herself to move.
For the fragmented gems cried out.
They cried murder.
“Oh, Sunlight,” White Diamond smiled widely from her perch, “you just missed the most wonderful time! Isn't that right, Blue?”
They cried Shatterer.