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Eo calls us slaves. I just think we never try hard enough. Never take the big risks because of the old men.
They get more food, more burners, more everything because of the Laurel. We get to despise them. But then, we’re supposed to, I think. Wonder if they’ll despise us now.
She gives me that half smile, as if she knows something I do not.
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.
Even if she were not my wife, I see a martyr, a young girl’s pretty song silenced by the rope of cruel men.
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.
I drink from his flask and hand it back. The swill tastes strange and thicker than usual. Strange. He makes me finish the flask.
Beauty incarnate can touch life even from the grave; that’s how they think of your wife.”
Beyond the glass sprawls a city.
Beyond the city, which stretches nearly as far as I can see, Mars’s red and barren surface is scarred with the green of grass and struggling woods. The sky above is blue, stained with stars. The terraforming is complete. This is the future. It should not be this way for generations.
If violence is the Gold sport, manipulation is their art form.”
Mickey sits beside me on my worst nights telling me stories. It’s only then that I like him, only then that I think he is not some monster cooked up by this perverted Society.
All it is is a confirmation of the superiority of the Golds. It takes all this to make me their physical equal. No wonder we serve them.
“Ares once told me that it is the hottest fire that forms the sternest steel. Keep pushing the boy.”
Another stint in Mickey’s carving room might have been preferable to Matteo’s tutelage. At least Mickey was afraid of me.
“I am not Ares,” Dancer repeats. I don’t believe him. I’ve seen the way his men look at him,
“See. That’s what I don’t get. If I am a good man, then why do I want to do bad things?”
But I breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo’s dream. Still, doing nothing while her murderer gloats feels like a betrayal.
I am chosen tenth. Tenth out of one thousand.
Feel the ache. They stole her. But she let them. She left me. She left me tears and pain and longing.
This is not who I am, who I want to be. I want to be a father, a husband, a dancer.
Freedom costs too much. But Eo disagreed. Damn her.
He disagrees with the rules, but he follows them. It is possible. I can do the same until I have power enough to change them.
Kravat. The Silent Dance. Eerily similar to the boast dancing of young Reds.
More like Caesar or … what did they call them, Presidents?—a tyrant in necessity’s clothing.”
The plan starts with a concession only someone once a husband could make.
The eighteen raiders think House Mars is stupid, horseless, and unprepared.
“My Proctor calls him the Jackal. He is smarter and crueler and stronger than you, and he will win this game and make us his slaves if the rest of us go about acting like animals.” Her eyes implore me. “So please, hurry up and evolve.”
But he’s not listening. Suddenly he’s telling me about how they took “her” and raped “her” in front of him. Then the slaggers came back a week later to do it some more. So he killed them; bashed their heads in. “I killed the bloodydamn monsters. Now their daughters bloodywell get what she got.” It’s like I’ve been punched in the face. Oh hell. A chill spreads through me. Bloodydamn.
Reds are better than him, aren’t we?
“The Jackal,” I say. “You mentioned him. The Minervan girl mentioned him. Who is he?” “He’s the ArchGovernor’s son, Darrow. And he makes Titus look like a blubbering child.”
Kravat seems intent on teaching me inner peace. That is a lost cause.
My army has to know why I lead.
I’d forgotten that we are people, kids who have crushes.
When I was bitten, Uncle Narol left some in on purpose.
This idea of hers isn’t part of the Proctors’ lesson.
Whoever gave it to him is a friend, because inside the box is my Pegasus, and inside that is Eo’s haemanthus blossom. I put the Pegasus necklace about my neck.
Sevro, if he is still with Mars, will find me. And I could use the little bastard’s help.
But it’s only because Mustang trusts me that they obey.
“I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I wish. No?” He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap.
Every time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.”
“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.”
“Humans are always negotiating. That’s what conversation is.
but this is different. It is as though he is reasonable to the point of being inhuman.
“Cheat or be cheated, no?” Familiar.
Now I know how Mickey felt when he met me. This is a monster in the flesh of a man.
She knew and she wanted to talk to me in private. Whatever their connection, her loyalty was mine. But how does she know him?
Brilliant Mustang, who would follow me out of choice. And this is where I led her.
I had not intended to kill him. But he should not have taken her. And he should not have called me a puppet.
