Morning Star (Red Rising, #3)

by Pierce Brown

“Reaper…” Ragnar manages again. “Save your strength, my friend. It’s going to take all of it to get you out of here.” “She was fast. So fast.” “She’s gone now,” I say, though I can’t know for sure. “I always dreamed of a good death.” He shudders as he realizes again that he’s dying. “This does not seem good.”

“It is no great thing to die,” he says to me, though I know he doesn’t mean it as deeply as he wants to. “Not when one has lived.” He smiles, trying to comfort me even now. But he wears the unjustness of his life and death upon his face. “I owe that to you. But…there is much undone. Sefi.”

“I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.” I nod like I still believe in the Vale. Like I still think it waits for me and for him. “Your people will be free,” I say. “On my life, I promise this. And I will see you soon.” He smiles as he stares up at the sky. Sefi frantically puts her axe in Ragnar’s palm so that he can die as a warrior, a weapon in hand, and secure his place in the halls of Valhalla. “No, Sefi,” he says, dropping the axe and taking snow in his left hand, her hand with his right. “Live for more.” He nods to me.

I’m numb with grief. Unable to think of anything but how Sevro will react when he hears Ragnar has died. How my nieces and nephews will never braid another bow into the Friendly Giant’s hair. Part of my soul has departed and will never return. He was my protector. He gave so many strength. Now, without him, I cling to the back of a Valkyrie as her griffin rises away from the bloody snow. Even as we soar through the clouds on great beating wings, even as I see the Valkyrie Spires for the first time, I feel no awe. Just numbness.

When I looked up at my father as a boy, I thought being a man was having control. Being the master and commander of your own destiny. How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends. I’m tired of people doubting. Of people choosing to believe they know what is possible because of what has happened before.

heresy told by wicked prophets with wicked aims. For a summer and a winter it has slithered through us. Poisoning my people and the people of the Dragon Spine and the Blooded Tents and the Rattling Caves. Poisoning them with lies that spit in the eye of our people.” She leans down from her throne, blackheads huge on her nose. Wrinkles deep ravines around pitch eyes. “Lies that say a Stained son will return and he will bring a man to guide us from this land. A morning star in the darkness. I have sought these heretics out to learn of their whispers, to see if the gods spoke through them. They did not. Evil spoke through them. And so I have hunted the heretics. Broken their bones with my own hands. Peeled their flesh and set them upon the rock of the spires to be eaten as carrion by the fowl of the ice.”

“I know my son,” she interrupts. “I swam with him in the ice floes when he was a boy. Taught him the names of the snow, of the storms, and took him upon my griffin to show him the spine of the world. His hands clutched my hair and sang for joy as we rose through the clouds above. My son was without fear.” She remembers that day very differently than Ragnar did. “I know my son. And I do not need a stranger to tell me of his spirit.”

She cradles the weapon reverently and looks up at me, furious eyes asking which shape she should conjure. I nod to mine, trying to build kinship with her. And I do. If only in this martial way. Slowly her razor takes the shape of the slingBlade. The skin on my arm prickles as the Valkyrie laugh to one another. Vibrating with excitement, they pull their own axes and long knives and look at me and Mustang.

“Children of the Spires, the Reaper has called us to join him in his war against false gods. Do the Valkyrie answer?” In reply, her Valkyrie raise their blue-feathered axes high above their heads to drone out the Obsidian chant of death. Even the warchiefs of fallen Alia join. It seems the ocean itself crashes through the stone hallways of the Spires, and I feel the drums of war beating inside, chilling my blood. “Then ride, Hjelda, Tharul, Veni, and Hroga. Ride Faldir and Wrona and Bolga to the tribes of the Blood Coast, to the Bleaking Moor, the Shattered Spine and the Witch Pass. Ride to kin and enemy alike and tell them Sefi speaks. Tell them Ragnar’s prophets told true. Asgard has fallen. The gods are dead. The old oaths have been broken. And tell all who will hear: the Valkyrie ride to war.”

They call me the Morning Star. That star by which griffin-riders and travelers navigate the wastes in the dark months of winter. The last star that disappears when daylight returns in the spring.

“The Shield of Tinos,” I say. “The Shield of Tinos,” he echoes, voice catching. “He loved the name.” “I know.” “I think he’d always thought himself a blade before he met us. We let him be what he wanted. A protector.”

“Why are you keeping him alive, Darrow? If you think he’s going to thank you for your generosity, you’ve got another thing coming.” “I couldn’t just let him die.” “He killed my father.” “I know.” “Give me a reason.” “Maybe I think the world would be a better place with him in it,” I say tentatively. “So many people have used him, lied to him, betrayed him. All that’s defined him. It’s not fair. I want him to have a chance to decide for himself what kind of person he wants to be.” “None of us get to be what we want to be,” Sevro mutters. “Least not for long.” “Isn’t that why we fight? Isn’t that what you just said about Ragnar? He was made a blade but we gave him a chance to be a shield. Cassius deserves that same chance.”

It’s moments like this that I know I’m not alone. Damn the world, so long as I have my mangy little guardian angel. If only I was so good at guarding him as he is at guarding me. Once again he’s done all I could ask and more.

“What are you thinking?” I ask Sevro. His eyes are lost in the ceiling. “I’m wondering how long till it’s us on the slab. And wondering why it’s gotta be us on the line. You see vids and hear stories and you think of the regular people. The ones who got a chance at life on Ganymede or Earth or Luna. Can’t help but be jealous.” “You don’t think you’ve gotten a chance to live?” I ask. “Not proper,” he says. “What’s proper?” I ask. He crosses his arms like he’s a kid in a fort looking down at the real world and wondering why it can’t be as magical as he is. “I dunno. Something far away from being a Peerless Scarred. Maybe a Pixie or even a happy midColor. I just want something to look at and say, that’s safe, that’s mine, and no one is going to try and take it. A house. Kids.”

“All this time I thought this was for Eo. I drove straight on like an arrow because I had that one perfect idea in my head. She wanted this. I loved her. So I’ll make her dream real. But that’s bullshit. I was living half a bloodydamn life. Making an idol out of a woman, making her a martyr, something instead of someone. Pretending she was perfect.” I run my hand through my greasy hair. “She wouldn’t have wanted that. And when I looked out at the Hollows, I just knew, I mean I guess I realized as I was talking that justice isn’t about fixing the past, it’s about fixing the future. We’re not fighting for the dead. We’re fighting for the living. And for those who aren’t yet born. For a chance to have children. That’s what has to come after this, otherwise what’s the point?” Sevro sits silently thinking over what I’ve said. “You and I keep looking for light in the darkness, expecting it to appear. But it already has.” I touch his shoulder. “We’re it, boyo. Broken and cracked and stupid as we are, we’re the light, and we’re spreading.”

“Are you drunk?” I ask with a laugh. “A little. Catch up.” She swivels her legs down and puts her feet on the ground to clear a space on the bench beside her. “I was just getting to the part where you wrestled Pax in the mud.” My mother watches me quietly, a little smile on her lips as she knows the panic that must be going through me right now. Too shocked at seeing two halves of my life collide without my supervision, I sit down uneasily and listen to Mustang finish the story. With all that’s transpired, I’d forgotten the charm of this woman. Her easy, light nature. How she draws others in by making them feel important, by saying their names and letting them feel seen. She holds my uncle and brother in a spell, one reinforced by the Telemanus’s admiration for her. I try not to blush when my mother catches me admiring Mustang.

“Father and I do not have the same faith in the Obsidians you seem to have,” Daxo says carefully. “Your intentions will matter little if you let them loose on the populace of Mars.” “Barbarians,” Kavax says. “They are barbarians.” “Ragnar’s sister…” “Is not Ragnar,” Daxo replies. “She’s a stranger. And after hearing what she did to the Gold prisoners…we can’t in good conscience join our forces to a plan that would unleash the Obsidians on the cities of Mars. The Arcos women won’t either.”

“You said you had information?” I ask, to business because I don’t know what else to say. I feel an ironclad kinship with this man. Sevro asked why I saved him, and I could aspire to notions of valor and honor. But the deepspine reason is I desperately want him to be a friend again. I crave his approval. Does that make me a fool? Disloyal? Is it the guilt speaking? Is it his magnetism? Or is it that vain part of me that just wants to be loved by the people I respect. And I do respect him. He has honor, a corrupted sort, but true honor nonetheless.

“He wants me to have a holoconference with the Sovereign,” I say. “Why?” “To discuss an alliance against the Jackal. They give us intel, we kill him before he can detonate any bombs,” I say. “That’s his plan.” Sevro giggles. “Sorry. But that would be bloodydamn fun to watch.” He pulls up his left hand and makes a talking motion with it. “ ‘Hello, you old rusty bitch, you recall when I kidnaped your grandchild?’ ” He pulls up his right hand. “ ‘Why yes, my goodman. Just after I enslaved your entire race.’

“It’s my greatest regret, I think. That he couldn’t live to see his son wear his helm. And you become what he always knew you to be.” “And what’s that?” I ask, watching a Red Howler jump twice with his gravBoots and rocket off the edge of the hangar to enter the open cargo hatch of a passing troop carrier. “Someone who believes in the people,” he says delicately. I turn to face Dancer, glad that he’s sought me out in my last moments here among my kin. I don’t know if I’ll ever return. And if I do, I fear he will see me as a different man. One who betrayed him, our people, Eo’s dream. I’ve been here before. Saying goodbye on a landing pad. Harmony stood with him then, Matteo too as they said goodbye on that spire in Yorkton. How can I feel so melancholy for so terrible a past? Maybe that’s just the nature of us, ever wishing for things that were and could be rather than things that are and will be. It takes more to hope than to remember.

“Lorn once told me if he had been my father he would have raised me to be a good man. ‘There’s no peace for great men,’ he said.” I smile at the memory. “I should have asked him who he thinks makes the peace for all those good men.”

“Helldiver…” Dancer shouts before we reach the top. I turn back to find the gnarled man with his fist thrust in the air. And behind him the whole of the stalactite hangar watches me, hundreds of deckhands on mechanized loading trams, pilots, Blue and Red and Green, who stand at the ramps of their ships or on the ladders leading into their cockpits, helmets in hands, platoons of Grays and Reds and Obsidians standing side by side carrying combat gear and supplies—the scythe sewn onto shoulders, painted onto faces—as they board shuttles bound for my fleet. Men and women of Mars, all. Fighting for something larger than themselves. For our planet, for their people. I feel the weight of their love. I feel the hopes of all those people in bondage who watched as the Sons of Ares rose to take Phobos. We promised them something, and now we must deliver. One by one, my army raises their hands till a sea of fists clench as Eo’s did when she held the haemanthus and fell before Augustus. Chills run through me as Sevro and Victra and Mustang and even my mother raise their hands in union. “Break the chains,” Dancer bellows. I raise my own scarred fist and step silently into the shuttle to join the Red Armada as it sails to war.

“I would be wary of men who choose such a home. The spirits here are cruel.” Sand kicks up from the wind in the low gravity, floating down in wavering columns. It’s Sefi who Mustang thinks I should be wary of. On our voyage to Jupiter, she has watched hundreds of hours of holofootage. Learning our history as a people. I keep track of her datapad’s activity. But what concerns Mustang isn’t that Sefi is fond of rain forest videos and experientials, but that she has spent countless hours watching holos of our wars, particularly the nuclear annihilation of Rhea. I wonder what she makes of it.

still am a Red,” I say. “It’s not something I stopped being.” “Oh. You don’t look like one.” She must not watch holos if she doesn’t know who I am. “Maybe it’s not about what I look like,” I suggest. “Maybe it’s about what I do.”

“He died, and we fired him toward the sun as we came to visit your father.” “Oh. I’m sorry…,” she says with the blind kindness it seems only children still have. “Is that why you looked so sad?” I flinch, not knowing it was so obvious. Romulus notices and spares me from answering. “Seraphina, your uncle was looking for you. The tomatoes won’t plant themselves. Will they?” Seraphina dips her head and gives me a farewell wave before departing back down the path. I watch her disappear and belatedly realize that my child would be her age now.

“Would you believe me if I said no?” “I don’t believe much from anyone these days.” “That’ll keep you breathing, but not happy,”

“The moment a child thinks it is entitled to anything, they think they deserve everything. Why do you think the Core is such a Babylon? Because it’s never been told no.

Violence is a tool. It is meant to shock. To change. Instead, they normalize and celebrate it. And create a culture of exploitation where they are so entitled to sex and power that when they are told no, they pull a sword and do as they like.”

“Darrow, it’s been an age,” he says with such mannered grace that I could almost convince myself that we were old friends reuniting after a long absence. But I will not let myself feel anything for this man. I cannot let him have forgiveness. Victra almost died because of him. Fitchner did. Lorn did. And how many more would have had I not let Sevro leave the party early to seek his father? “Imperator Fabii,” I reply evenly. But behind my distant welcome is an aching heart. There’s not a hint of sorrow on his face, however. I want there to be. And knowing that, I know I still feel for the man. He is a soldier of his people. I’m a soldier of mine. He is not the evil of his story. He’s the hero who unmasked the Reaper. Who smashed the Augustus-Telemanus fleet at the Battle of Deimos the night after my capture. He does not do these things for himself. He lives for something as noble as I. His people. His only sin is in loving them too much, as is his way.

“What is pride without honor? What is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say. It is not what you read.” Romulus thumps his chest. “Honor is what you do.”

“Roque.” He hesitates. Something in my voice causing him to turn and watch me approach. “When did I lose you?” I ask. “When Quinn died,” he says. “You planned to kill me even when you thought I was a Gold?” “Gold. Red. It doesn’t matter. Your spirit is black. Quinn was good. Lea was good. And you used them. You are ruin, Darrow. You drain your friends of life, and leave them spent and wasted in your wake, convincing yourself each death is worth it. Each death brings you closer to justice. But history is littered with men like you. This Society is not without fault, but the hierarchy…this world, it is the best man can afford.” “And it’s your right to decide that?” “Yes. It is. But beat me in space, and it will be yours.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say. “What for?” Kavax asks, confused, as per usual. “The kindness…” I don’t know how else to say it. “For watching over my friends when I’m not even one of you.” “One of us?” His ruddy face smirks. “A fool. You speak like a fool. My boy made you one of us.” He looks across the hangar where Mustang speaks with one of Lorn’s daughters-in-law near a transport. “She makes you one of us.” It’s all I can do to keep the tears from my eyes. “And if we damn all that, I say you’re one of us. So one of us you are.”

“Is it ridiculous if I ask you to be careful?” she asks. “I promise not to do anything rash,” I reply with a wink. “I’ll have the Valkyrie with me. I doubt anyone will want to tangle with us for long.” She glances over my shoulder to where Sefi waits by my own shuttle, admiring the engines of other ships as they fly away. Mustang looks like she wants to say something, but is wrestling with how. “You’re not invincible.” She touches the armor of my chest. “Some of us might want you around after all of this. After all, what’s the point of all this if you go and die on me? You hear?” “I hear.” “Do you?” She looks up at me. “I don’t want to be left alone again. So come back.” She raps her knuckles on my chest and turns to go to her ship. “Mustang.” I chase after her and grab her arm, pulling her back toward me. Before she can say anything, I kiss her there surrounded by metal and engine roar. Not some delicate kiss, but a hungry one, where I pull her head to mine and feel the woman beneath the weight of duty. Her body presses against me. And I feel the shudder of fear that this will be the last time. Our lips part and I sink into her, rocking there, smelling her hair and gasping at the tightness in my chest. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Damn hard to find parrots when you can’t dock planetside anywhere. We found a hawk, a dove, an owl. But no parrot. If you make it a red one I’ll personally shoot a hole in Antonia au Severus-Julii’s bridge.” “Red parrot it is,” I say. “Good. Good. I suppose now I should go be about the battle.” She laughs to herself and takes a tea from a valet on her bridge. “Just want to say, thank you, Darrow. For believing in me. For giving me this. After today, Blue will have no master. Goodspeed, boy.”

“In mine, in space, in city and sky, we have lived our lives in fear. Fear of death. Fear of pain. Today, fear only that we fail. We cannot. We stand upon the edge of darkness holding the lone torch left to man. That torch will not go out. Not while I draw breath. Not while your hearts beat in your chests. Not while our ships yet have menace in them. Let others dream. Let others sing. We chosen few are the fire of our people.” I beat my chest. “We are not Red, not Blue or Gold or Gray or Obsidian. We are humanity. We are the tide. And today we reclaim the lives that have been stolen from us. We build the future we were promised. “Guard your hearts. Guard your friends. Follow me through this evil night, and I promise you morning waits on the other side. Until then, break the chains!” I pull my razor from my arm and let it take the shape of my slingBlade. “All ships, prepare for battle.”

They race around Antonia’s Pandora behind us, but that ship is a black, hulking monster. She shreds the fastmovers till they’re dead metal. And when escape pods launch from the quiet ships, she shoots them down. Victra watches the murder quietly. Adding it to Antonia’s debt.

Sefi pulls a handful of dried mushrooms from a satchel. “God’s bread?” she asks. “You will see dragons.” “War’s scary enough, darling,” Victra says. Then as an aside: “I one time tripped on that shit with Cassius for a week on the Thermic.” She catches my look. “Well, it was before I met you. And have you ever seen him with his shirt off? Don’t tell Sevro, by the way.”

“Sharpen your axes! Remember your training! Hyrg la, Ragnar!” “Hyrg la, Ragnar!” they roar. It means “Ragnar lives.”

I knew Roque would never be driven into a trap or lured into an asteroid belt, for fear of exposing his larger force to ambushes. So I had only one recourse: hide my ambush in a flaw of character. He always preached for me to step back, to find peace. Of course he thought he knew how to beat me. But I’m not fighting as the man he knew today, as a Gold. I’m a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly psychotic women behind me and a fleet of state-of-the-art warships crewed by pissed-off pirates, engineers, techs, and former slaves. And he thinks he knows how to fight me? I laugh as the clawDrill shakes my seat. Filling me with a dormant, crazed sort of power.

“Njar la tagag…” Sefi says from behind me. “…syn tjr rjyka!” “There is no pain. Only joy,” they chant, deep in the embrace of the god’s bread. Sefi begins the war bellow. Her voice higher than Ragnar’s. Her two wing-sisters join her. Then their wing-sisters, until dozens fill the com with their song, giving me a sense of grandeur as my mind tells my body to flee. This is why the Obsidians chant. Not to sow terror. But to feel brave, to feel kinship, instead of isolation and fear.

Fear is not real. Holiday deactivates her safety. “Njar la tagag…” My razor goes rigid. PulseWeapon shudders and whines, priming. Body trembles. Mouth full of ashes. Wear the mask. Hide the man. Feel nothing. See everything. Move and kill. Move and kill. I am not a man. They are not men. The chanting swells….“Syn tjr rjyka!” Fear is not real. If you’re watching, Eo, it’s time to close your eyes. The Reaper has come. And he’s brought hell with him.

“All this…,” he whispers, feeling the end coming. “Was she so lovely?” “Yes. She was like you,” I say. “A dreamer.” He’s too young to look so old. Were it not for the lines on his face and the world between us, it would seem only yesterday that he crouched before me as I shivered on the floor of the Mars Castle after killing Julian and he told me that when you’re thrown in the deep, there’s only one choice. Keep swimming or drown. I should have loved him more. I would have done anything to keep him at my side and show him the love he deserves.

I step toward him, thinking I can take his razor from his hand without killing him, but he knows my intention and he holds up his off hand plaintively. As if to comfort me and beg me the mercy of letting him die as he lived. “Be still. Night hangs upon mine eyes.” He looks to me, eyes full with tears. “Keep swimming, my friend,” I tell him. With a gentle nod, he wraps his razor whip around his throat and stiffens his spine. “I am Roque au Fabii of the gens Fabii. My ancestors walked upon red Mars. They fell upon Old Earth. I have lost the day, but I have not lost myself. I will not be a prisoner.” His eyes close. His hand trembles. “I am the star in the night sky. I am the blade in the twilight. I am the god, the glory.” His breath shudders out. He is afraid. “I am the Gold.” And there, on the bridge of his invincible warship as his famous fleet falls to ruin behind him, the Poet of Deimos takes his own life. Somewhere the wind howls and the darkness whispers that I’m running out of friends, running out of light. The blood slithers away from his body toward my boots. A shard of my own reflection trapped in its red fingers.

“To Ganymede?” Victra asks, eying her sister’s ship. “But Antonia, the battle…” “The battle is won. Your sister made sure of that.” “Then what are we doing?” Our ship’s engines throb and we untangle ourselves from the wreckage of the Pax and Mustang’s devastated strike group. “Winning the next war. Excuse me.”

“Darrow, listen carefully. The Colossus has altered trajectory and is headed for Ganymede.” “The docks,” I whisper intensely. “He’s going for the docks. Can any ships intercept?” “No! They’re out of position. If Octavia can’t win, she’ll ruin us. Those docks are my people’s future. You must take that bridge at all cost!” “I will…but Romulus. He has nukes on board. What if it’s not just the docks he’s going for?” Romulus pales. “Stop him. Please. Your people are down there too.” “I’ll do my best.” “Thank you, Darrow. And good luck. First cohort, on me…” The connection dies. I remove my helmet. My men stare at me. They haven’t heard the conversation, but they know what I’m doing now. “You’re going to destroy Romulus’s dockyards around Ganymede,” Victra says. “Holy shit,” Holiday mutters. “Holy shit.” “I’m not destroying anything,” I reply. “I’m fighting my way through corridors.

If I ruin Ganymede’s dockyards the Rim won’t be able to threaten us for fifty years. Romulus is an ally today, but I know he will threaten the core if the Rising succeeds. If I must give Roque for this victory, if I must give the Sons on these moons, I will take something in return.

When I reach the sparkling gem that is Ganymede, I bring the Colossus parallel to the monument of industry they’ve built in orbit at her equator. The Valkyrie gather behind us at the viewport. Sefi staring in awe at the majesty and triumph of Gold will. Two hundred kilometers of docks. Hundreds of haulers and freighters. Birthplace of the greatest ships in the Sol System including the Colossus herself. Like any good monster of myth, the girl must eat her mother before being free to pursue her true destiny. That destiny is leading the assault on the Core. “Men built this?” Sefi asks with quiet reverence. Many of her Valkyrie have fallen to a knee to watch in wonder. “My people built it,” I say. “Reds.”

I’m under no delusion. I know who will die when we fire. “There’s still going to be thousands of Reds on there,” Holiday says quietly to me. “Oranges, Blues…Grays.” “He knows that,” Victra says. Holiday doesn’t leave my side. “You sure you want to do this, sir?” “Want to?” I ask hollowly. “Since when has any of this been about what we want?” I turn to the helmsman, about to give the order when Victra puts a hand on my shoulder.

It’s a crime that the marvel should die like this. No song. Nothing but silence and the unblinking gaze of the stars to herald the end of one of the great monuments of the Golden Age. And I hear in the back of my mind, that age-old truth of darkness whispering to me. Death begets death begets death…

“The ship must be renamed,” I say. “I would like you to choose.” Her face is stained with white light. “Tyr Morga,” she says without hesitation. “What’s that mean?” Holiday asks. I look back out the viewport as explosions ripple through the dock and her escape pods flare against the atmosphere of Ganymede. “It means Morning Star.”