The Red Rising: Golden Son Part 9

10.

BROKEN.

I break.

Sitting in a void. Staring at my hands. The hands that could not save my wife, my child. She was right. I wasn't strong enough to bear the truth of her second sacrifice. Eo could have lived. Eo could have given us the child we always wanted. But she thought that future wasn't worth her silence. I wasn't worth it....

I feel something deep in my chest, a hollow cold ache. Like blackness has opened in the pit of my soul even as my body tightens and coils around grief. I weigh a million pounds. Shoulders slump. Chest compresses. My fingers clutch together. Funny to think these hands have been with me this whole time. They touched her lips. They helped pull her ankles. They buried her in the soil. But they didn't just bury her, did they?

No. They buried another life. One unborn. Our child, dead before it lived. And I never even knew. I mourned without knowing the greatest injustice. I failed them both. The amplified video replays again.

"I am with child," she tells Dio on the scaffold. "I am with child."

I replay it a dozen times, feeling myself shrink into a corridor of grief.

The Golds didn't just kill her. They killed what I've always wanted to be-a husband and a father. If only I had stopped her. If only I had not pouted like a child when we lost the Laurel, she wouldn't have thought to take me to the garden. If only I had the strength to pretend losing the Laurel didn't bother me.

All the family I could have had. A wife. Sons. Daughters. Grandchildren. They've been slaughtered before they ever were. Eo will never hold our daughter. She will never kiss our son to sleep and smile over at me as his little hands clutch my finger. I'm all that's left of that family that could have been. A dark shadow of the man I was meant to be.

The rage rises. We had a chance, and it is gone. Everything I wanted is gone, because of me and because of them. Their laws. Their injustice. Their cruelty. They made a woman choose death for her and her unborn child over a life of slavery. All that for power. All that so they can keep their perfect little world.

"You were not strong enough then," Harmony says. "Are you strong enough now, h.e.l.ldiver?" I look at her, tears blurring my sight. Her hard eyes soften for me. "I had children, once. Radiation ate their insides, and they didn't even give them pain meds. Didn't even fix the leak. Said there weren't enough resources. My husband just sat there and watched them die. In the end, the same thing took him. He was a good man. But good men die. To free them, to protect them, we must be savages. So give me evil. Give me darkness. Make me the b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n devil if we can bring even the faintest ray of light."

I stand and wrap my arms around her as I'm reminded of the true horrors our kind face. Had I really forgotten? I am a child of h.e.l.l, and I've spent too long in their heaven.

"Whatever Ares wants, I'll do it."

"Pliny sent the b.i.t.c.h," the Jackal hisses as the Yellow physicians slowly remove the burned skin from his arm and reapply new growth cultures. "It wasn't Sons of Ares. They wouldn't kill that many lowColors. It's against profile. Pliny probably. Or the Sovereign's Praetorians using cover."

The lights of pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps glow through the gla.s.s. He curses and shouts at his servants to black out the windows. Grays brought me here to his private skysc.r.a.per instead of the Citadel, as I requested. The place crawls with mercenaries. He prefers Grays to Obsidians, except apparently that Stained. I'm the only other Gold, which shows the extent of the Jackal's trust. His name would certainly bring enough hangers-on to fill a city, but he's comfortable in his isolation. Like me.

"Could it have been Victra?" I ask. "She didn't stay...."

"She's already proven her loyalty. She wouldn't use a bomb. And she's in love with you. It wasn't her."

"In love with me?" I ask, startled.

"You're blind as a Blue." He snorts but says no more about it. "Our alliance must remain a secret until we're off this d.a.m.n moon, which means you were not in that tavern. If Pliny knew the extent of our plans, he would have been more thorough. I believe he was only targeting me. So you will return to the Citadel. Pretend as if nothing has happened. I will continue my plan with the syndicate lords, then purchase your contract at the end of the Summit."

At which point, their world will change.

I turn to leave him, but his voice arrests me at the door. "You saved my life. Only one other person has ever done that. Thank you, Darrow."

"Tell your new skin to grow faster. You won't want to miss the closing gala."

The next three days pa.s.s in a haze, my mind on Eo and what we lost. I cannot find escape from the grief. It plagues me even as I work myself to death in the estate's gymnasium. I do not indulge in small talk. I pull back from my friends. None of this matters. Not to me. Life fades in the presence of pain. Theodora notices, and tries her best to relieve my dourness, even suggesting I distract myself with Roses from the Citadel's Garden.

"Better you, dominus, than some rough man from the Gas Giants," she says.

News of the bombings sweeps through the Citadel, dominating the news. The Society plays it well-broadcasting their aid relief. Sending out instructions on how to handle a potential crisis. Yellow psychologists a.n.a.lyze Ares on-screen, conclude that a latent s.e.xual trauma in his youth makes him lash out to seize control of his world again. Violet actors and entertainers raise money for those families who have lost loved ones. Quicksilver himself volunteers three percent of his personal fortune to relief efforts. Obsidian and Gray commandos attack asteroid bases where Sons of Ares "train." Gray ant.i.terrorist agents hold press conferences saying they have apprehended those responsible, likely some Reds they pulled out of a mine or Luna's slums.

It's a farce and the Golds play it so well. They hide from the cameras and make this seem a fight of all the Colors against Red terrorists. This is not Gold's fight. It belongs to all of Society. Moreover, Society is winning because our sacrifice and obedience allow the righteous to prosper. b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n horses.h.i.+t.

Yet still, blame must be placed. So the ArchGovernor is pulled away to face inquiries regarding his handling of the situation. How have the Sons spread from Mars to Luna? they will ask. The Gold hornets' nest has been stirred, as I said it would be, but still the gala continues. I watch the Golds play their games of intrigue, diplomacy, spiriting off to galas and conferences and summits, untouched by the dirty games with terrorists. They are protected, s.h.i.+elded from horror.

It would bother me, but they are shadows to me now. As though they've already fallen into some distant memory.

I touch the bomb on my chest in regret. It is of Mickey's make. A copy of the pegasus I wore at the Inst.i.tute, which contained Eo's hair and now lies secreted away with my other personal effects. All I need do is twist its head and it becomes the bomb. The ring they gave me will activate it.

I draw away from friends, from Victra. She's asked Roque what is wrong with me. I know he will answer that I'm like the wind, a creature of vagary and moods. Or something like that. He draws closer to me, visiting my rooms when I've gone to bed, attempting to spar with me in the gymnasium. But I cannot smile with him or listen to his soft voice read poems or discuss philosophy or even share jokes. I can't let myself feel for him, because I know he will soon be dead. I try to kill him in my heart before I kill him in the flesh.

Can I add him to the list of those I've already sent to the grave?

I finally find my answer the night of the gala, when Theodora brings me my pressed clothing from the laundry. She doesn't say anything that reminds me of Roque. Doesn't offer pithy wisdom. Instead, she does something I've never seen from her. She makes a mistake. While setting my uniform down on a chair, she knocks over a gla.s.s of wine on a nearby table. The wine splashes over the sleeve of my white uniform. What flashes through her eyes chills me-terror. The sort a deer might have when staring at an oncoming aircar. She streams out apologies as though I would hit her if she did not. It takes her a moment to compose herself, for the flash of panic to dissipate. When it does, she sits there on the floor, dabbing at the uniform in silence.

I don't know what to do. I stand there awkwardly for a moment before putting a hand on her shoulder to tell her all's well. That's when she begins to cry in great heaving sobs that rack her small shoulders. She flinches from my touch and composes herself, telling me I'll have to wear black instead of white. She may not know what is about to happen, but she can feel it in me, in the air.

While the other lancers play with one another, take microabrasion baths, and consult with stylists to prepare themselves for the gala, I lace up my thick military boots with trembling fingers. I've never been good at saving my friends. It seems I always drag them into harm's way. Sevro, I believe, is still alive only because of the distance between us. Fitchner was always afraid I'd kill his son. Said my life's strand was so strong that it frayed all those around it. Now, seeing Theodora like that ... it reminds me how fragile and complicated we really are. I don't know why she cried. Some past trauma? Some sense of what's to come? Not knowing reminds me of the depth to the people around me. I am speechless, cold, but Roque is warm ... he would have known what to say.

I knock on his door several minutes before Augustus's entourage is set to depart the villa for the gala. There is no answer. I open the door and find my friend sitting on his bed, holding an ancient book gently by its spine. His smooth features ripple into a smile when he sees it is me.

"I thought you were Tactus come to beg me to shoot some stims before the gala. He always thinks because I'm reading, I'm not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted. Especially that beast. He will run himself into the ground one of these days."

I force a chuckle. "At least he's sincere about his vices."

"Have you met his brothers yet?" Roque asks. I shake my head. "They make Tactus look like a lamb."

"Goryh.e.l.l," I swear. I lean against the door's frame. "That bad?"

"The brothers Rath? They are terrible. Terribly rich. Terribly talented. And their chief virtue lies in their ability to sin. They're prodigies at it." Roque grins conspiratorially. "If you believe rumors-and I love rumors, remind me of Byron and Wilde-Tactus's brothers opened a brothel in Agea when they were fourteen. Cla.s.sy affair till they started arranging more ... customized experiences."

"Then what happened?"

"Ruined daughters, sons. Insults. Duels. Dead heirs. Debt. Poison." He shrugs. "It's the Rath family. What do you expect from those blackguards? It's why everyone was so surprised Tactus had taken up with an Iron Gold like you," he clarifies. "You know his brothers mock him for being in your shadow. It's why he's always so sarcastic. He wants to be like you, but he can't. So he resorts to his usual defenses." He frowns. "Sometimes I feel like you understand all of us better than we understand ourselves. Then other times, it's like you couldn't care less." Roque tilts his head at me when I say nothing. "What is it?"

"Nothing."

"You're never one for nothing." He sets his book down on his chest and pats the edge of the bed, drawing me into the room. "Sit, please."

"I came because I wanted to apologize," I say very slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I've been distant these last months, particularly these last days. I don't think I was fair to you. Not when you've been my most loyal friend. Well, you and Sevro, but he won't stop sending me strange pictures over the net."

"More unicorns?"

I laugh. "I think he has a problem."

Roque pats my hand. "Thank you. But you're like a hound apologizing for wagging its tail. You're always distant, Darrow. You don't have to apologize for how you are, not to me."

"More distant, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," he agrees, allowing it. "We all have our own tides inside. They go in. Out." He shrugs. "Not really ours to control. The things, people, that orbit us do that, at least more than we'd like to admit." After watching me a moment, he furrows his brow in thought. "Is this about Mustang? I know it was hard for you to leave her, no matter what you said at the time. You should seek her out while we're here. I know you miss her. Admit it."

"I don't."

"Liar, liar, cheeks afire."

"I've told you a hundred times, we're not talking about her."

"Fine. Fine. Then you're worried, aren't you? About the auction?" He pauses, smiling and watching me. "You shouldn't. I've settled that matter. I'm going to bid on you."

"Roque, you don't have the money."

"Do you know how badly a Pixie would pay to get a Peerless with my pedigree and connections in their debt? Millions. I could even go to Quicksilver if I need. He loans to Golds all the time. Point is, I'll have the money, even if my parents won't help me. So never you worry, brother." He pokes me with his foot. "House Mars has to mean something, eh?"

"Thank you," I say, stuttering out the words, unable to really grasp what he's done. And why? It puts his neck out. It endangers him and crosses his parents. "No one else has even mentioned the auction to me."

"They're afraid your bad luck is contagious. You know how it is." He pauses, waiting because he knows me so well. "There's something else. Isn't there?"

I shake my head. "Do you ..." My words fail me. "Do you ever feel lost?" The question hangs between us, intimate, awkward only on my end. He doesn't scoff as Tactus and Fitchner would, or scratch his b.a.l.l.s like Sevro, or chuckle like Ca.s.sius might have, or purr as Victra would. I'm not sure what Mustang might have done. But Roque, despite his Color and all the things that make him different, slowly slides a marker into the book and sets it on the nightstand beside the four-poster, taking his time and allowing an answer to evolve between us. Movements thoughtful and organic, like Dancer's were before he died. There's a stillness in him, vast and majestic, the same stillness I remember in my father.

"Quinn once told me a story." He waits for me to moan a grievance at the mention of a story, and when I don't, his tone sinks into deeper gravity. "Once, in the days of Old Earth, there were two pigeons who were greatly in love. In those days, they raised such animals to carry messages across great distances. These two were born in the same cage, raised by the same man, and sold on the same day to different men on the eve of a great war.

"The pigeons suffered apart from each other, each incomplete without their lover. Far and wide their masters took them, and the pigeons feared they would never again find each other, for they began to see how vast the world was, and how terrible the things in it. For months and months, they carried messages for their masters, flying over battle lines, through the air over men who killed one another for land. When the war ended, the pigeons were set free by their masters. But neither knew where to go, neither knew what to do, so each flew home. And there they found each other again, as they were always destined to return home and find, instead of the past, their future."

He folds his hands gently, a teacher arriving at his point. "So do I feel lost? Always. When Lea died at the Inst.i.tute ..." His lips slip gently downward. "... I was in a dark woods, blind and lost as Dante before Virgil. But Quinn helped me. Her voice calling me out of misery. She became my home. As she puts it, 'Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.' " He grasps the top of my hand. "Find your home, Darrow. It may not be in the past. But find it, and you'll never be lost again."

I've always thought of Lykos as my home. Of Eo as my home. Perhaps that's where I'm going now. To see her. To die and find home again in the Vale with my wife. But if that's true, why am I not full? Why does the hollowness grow inside me the closer I draw to her?

"It's time to go," I say, rising from the bed.

"As sure as I am your friend"-Roque begins to rise as well-"you will recover from this. We are not our station in life. We are us-the sum of what we've done, what we want to do, and the people who we keep close. You're my dearest friend, Darrow. Mind that. No matter what transpires, I will protect you as surely as you would protect me if ever I needed it."

I surprise him by clasping his hand and holding it for a moment.

"You're a good man, Roque. Far too good for your Color."

"Thank you." He squints at me as I release his hand and he straightens the wrinkles in his uniform. "But whatever do you mean by that?"

"I think we could have been brothers," I say. "Were this a different life."

"Why do we need another life?" Then he sees the automatic syringe in my left hand. His hands are too slow to stop me, but his eyes are quick enough to widen in trusting fear, like a loyal dog's as he's put slowly to sleep in its master's lap. He doesn't understand, but he knows there's a reason, yet still comes the fear, the betrayal that breaks my heart into a thousand pieces.

The syringe pierces Roque's neck and he sinks slowly down onto the bed, eyes drifting closed. When he wakes, everyone he has worked with and for over these past two years will be dead. He will remember what I did to him after he said I was his closest friend. He will know that I knew what was going to happen at the gala. And even if I don't die tonight, even if they do not discover I was the bomber by other merits, saving Roque's life means I will be found out. There is no going back.

11.

RED.

Tonight, I kill two thousand of humanity's great. Yet I walk with them now, untouched by decadence and condescension as never before. Pliny's arrogance raises none of my blood. Victra's immodest dress does not disconcert me, not even when she slips her arm in mine after Tactus offers her his. She whispers in my ear how silly she is for forgetting her undergarments. I laugh like it's a merry joke, trying to mask the coldness that's taken me over.

This is static.

"I suppose Darrow deserves some consolation before he leaves," Tactus says with a sigh. "Have you seen Roque, my goodman?"

"Said he was feeling ill."

"That's very Roque of him. Likely coiled around a book. I should fetch him."

"If he wanted to come, he would come," I say.

"I want him to come," Tactus replies. He shrugs at the other lancers who jockey for position close to our master.

"If you need him so badly, go fetch him," I say, tactically.

He flinches. "I need no one on my arm. But if I didn't know better, I'd think you're still bitter about the whole escape-pod affair."

"You mean when you launched it without him?" Victra asks. "Why would that ever bother him?" Even now that betrayal stings me.

"I thought he was dead! It was simple calculation." He b.u.mps my shoulder with his fist and nods to Victra. "You understand. Had to watch out for the lady here."

"She is a delicate little flower," I say, pulling her away.

"Woe for the lone G.o.d of the sea," Tactus hums melodically. "His friends, like mine, abandoned he!"

Victra adjusts the gold pauldron on her shoulder, which winds its way down her arm in a series of golden cuffs. "That darling boy is so vain he could make a thunderstorm be about him." She notices my lack of care. "The bidding won't begin till after the gala." She nods to a landing aircar. "Well, I was wondering when he'd show."

The Jackal exits the car, skin faintly pink only in patches. His Yellows did him well. He bows faintly to his father, ignoring the murmurs of the aides.