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I was forged in the bowels of this hard world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love. He is wrong. None of them will survive.
And fruit. I hear the Laurel gets you fruit. She’ll probably give it all away to hungry children just to prove to the Society she doesn’t need their prizes. Me? I’d eat the fruit and play politics on a full stomach. But she’s got the passion for ideas, while I’ve got no extra passion for anything but her.
We grew together, and now are grown. In her eyes, I see my heart. In her breath, I hear my soul. She is my land. She is my kin. My love.
Then the HC flashes black for several moments. It has never gone to black before. And Octavia au Lune comes back on with the same old message. It almost seems as though someone has hacked into the broadcast, because my wife flickers onto the giant screen again. “Break the chains!” she cries. Then she’s gone and the screen is black. It crackles. The image comes back. She cries it again. Black once more.
“Tell them hello for me in the vale,” he says into my ear, his beard coarse against my neck. “Give my brothers a toast and my wife a kiss, specially Dancer.” “Dancer?” “You’ll know him. And if you see your gramp and gran, tell them we still dance for them. They won’t be long alone.”
This is the ultimate act of love. Eo’s silent requiem. Women begin to cry, and as I pass they reach to touch Eo’s face, to touch mine and help me open the ventilation duct. I drag my wife through the tight metal space, taking her to where we made love beneath the stars, where she told me her plans and I did not listen. I hold her lifeless body and hope her soul sees me in a place where we were happy.
Massacred cities, continents. Not many years ago, they reduced an entire world to ash—Rhea. The Ash Lord nuked it to oblivion. It was with Ares’s wrath that they acted. And now we are the sons of that wrath.”
Personally, I do not want to make you a man. Men are so very frail. Men break. Men die. No, I’ve always wished to make a god.” He smiles mischievously as he does some sketches on a digital pad. He spins it around and shows me the killer I will become. “So why not carve you to be the god of war?”
In the end, I suppose they’ll wish I hadn’t dreamed at all.” “Was it a good dream?” I ask. “What?” “The one with me.” “No. No, it was a nightmare. One of a man from hell, lover of fire.” He’s silent for a spell.
Only Harmony doesn’t anger me. Her voice, her eyes, seethe with an anger I feel in my own soul. She may have Dancer now, but she lost someone. The unscarred part of her face tells me that. She is no schemer like Dancer or his master, Ares. She is like me—brimming with a rage that makes all else so inconsequential.
“Be kind to Evey, Mickey. Don’t make her dance. Give her a plush life or I’ll come back to pull your hands off your body.”
Someone laughs in the distance, a girl with long hair. She rides the stallion I pointed to earlier. “Maybe you ought to stick to the city, Pixie,” she shouts at me, then kicks her horse away. I rise from my knee and watch her ride into the distance. Her hair spills out behind her, more golden than the setting sun.
But I breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo’s dream.
“Oh, Vixus,” I say with a sigh, keeping the tremble of anger and fear out of my voice. “Vixus, Vixus, Vixus. There are no boys like me.”
I see a black wolf standing over one body as another falls. Darkness again. Silence, then the mournful whine of medBots descending from Olympus. I hear a familiar voice. “Clear now. Come out of the water, fishies.” We paddle to shore and pant in the mud. Mild hypothermia has set in. It won’t kill us but my fingers are still slow as mud squishes between them. My body shakes like a drillBoy at work. “Goblin, you psychopath. Is that you?” I call.
“Are you June?” I growl. “N-no … why?” “Can you cook?”
“What the hell?” “She’s a cook!” I explain. He laughs so hard he can barely breathe.
even though Sevro stole it, he doesn’t want to carry it. He likes his curved knives too much. I think he whispers to them.
Down the hill, Sevro stands beside the captives with our standard in hand; he’s tickling a disgruntled Pax with a horse hair.
I pull my way into the hall. I move in a haze. It all makes sense. The hate. The disgust. The vengeance. Cannibals eat their own. He called them cannibals. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus—who are their own? Their own. Golden. Bloodydamn. Not gory. Titus said bloodydamn. No Gold says that. Ever. And he called it a slingBlade, not a reaper’s scythe. Oh hell. Titus is a Red.
“The Jackal …,” I say. “Is that what happened the other night when the medBots blitzed south?” “Did I say his name? Oops.” He grins. “I mean to say that the medBots are very effective. They heal nearly all wounds. But will they be so effective when Cassius finds out who really killed his brother?”
Neither of us mentions Sevro. I know she’s still afraid he’ll cut her throat if she touches me. He follows me now, wearing his wolfskin.
“What should I say? I’ve never been liked.” He shrugs. “I wasn’t born pretty and tall like you and your buttboy, Cassius. I had to fight for what I want. That doesn’t make me likeable. Just makes me a nasty little Goblin.”
Sevro does not want to go without me. He does not understand why Cassius needs his help to mop up the remainders of Diana. I tell him the truth. “Cassius has a pouch in his boot, the one Lilath gave him. I need you to steal it.” His eyes do not judge. Not even now. There are times when I wonder what I did to earn such loyalty, then others when I try not to press my luck by looking the gift horse in the mouth.
“He’s on our side,” Mustang says. “The truth?” Pax asks. His giant face splits into a smile. “What news!” And he’s got me in a bear hug. “Freeeedom, brothers … and sisters! Sweet freedom!”
“PAX AU TELEMANUS! PAX AU TELEMANUS!” He shoves me aside. He’s shirtless, massive, muscled, screaming. His hair is painted white and spiked with sap to form two horns. A piece of wood as long as my body serves as his club. The House Ceres students flinch back. Some fall. Some stumble. A boy screams as Pax thunders close. “PAX AU TELEMANUS! PAX AU TELEMANUS!”
He picks a boy up by the leg and uses him as a club.
Even when I am ruining their Society at the vanguard of a billion screaming Reds, they will tell their children that Darrow of Mars once clapped them on the shoulder and paid them a compliment.
“Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I promise.”
“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.”
“Poor horses must be confused,” Pax says sorrowfully. “It was stormy last night. Perhaps they ran for safety to the woods.”
Pax interrupts. “Would you let me whip you bloody, Apollo? Darrow did. Let me whip you, and I’ll obey like a Pink. Promise on the graves of my ancestors, those of Telemanus and the—”
I’ve counted the seconds since Sevro left. The Proctors have not. I turn to Mustang. “How fast can Sevro run two kilometers?” “A minute and a half, in this gravity, I do believe. Though he’s a little liar, so likely faster.” “And how far is Apollo’s castle?” “Oh, I’d say three kilometers, maybe a little more.” Apollo jumps to his feet, looking around for Sevro. “Splendid,” I say. “Say, Mustang, do you know what I like most about jamFields?” “That no sound can get out?” “No. That no sound can get in.” Apollo disengages the jamField and we hear the howls. They come from the distance, two miles
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“You little …” Apollo’s hands clench. I flinch back. Mustang steps between us, as does Pax. “Uh-oh,” Pax booms, thumping his huge axe against his chest. The armor beneath his wolfcloak thumps rhythmically. “Uh-oh!”
Then Pax stops. And without breaking stride, I jump so his hand catches my foot; I push off and he launches me ten meters forward into the air. I’m howling the entire way, like a thing torn from bloodydamn nightmares, until I smash into the bodyguards. Three go down.
In the end, it’s Mustang who takes a horse from the Apollo stables and chases the girl down with the Howlers Thistle and Pebble. She brings her back bent over her own horse’s neck, spanking her butt with the standard as they gallop back.
The blizzard is vicious. Pax always stands close to me and Mustang, as though he means to block us from the wind. He and Sevro are always stepping on each other’s toes to be nearest me, though Pax would likely want to light my fires and tuck me in bed at night if I let him, while Sevro would tell me to pick my own ass.
“Of course,” he says with a shrug. “My bounties are … above average.” “And you don’t mind cheating?” I ask. “Cheat or be cheated, no?” Familiar.
“It’s really nothing. You trust her.” “No. Tell me. What do you mean?” “Well, fine. If you must know, if there’s simply no other way of going about it: she is the Jackal’s twin sister.”
Eo never would have guessed it could be this complicated. There is goodness in Golds, because in many ways, they are the best humanity can offer. But they’re also the worst. What does that do to her dream? Only time will tell.
“The audio in the storm was scrambled,” he said. “Couldn’t make out the last words you said to Apollo. So I deleted them.” One of my last words was bloodydamn. What does Sevro know? What does he think he knows? The fact that he deleted it means he thinks it is important enough to cover up.
