by Pierce Brown
“Darling, I do believe you took me far too literally,” she says with a sexual sigh as she looks at the left half of my face. “I said earn a scar, not become one.”
“I left room for one more.”
“From boy to man, and all it took was a little friction,” she replies. “If I knew it was that easy, I could have made a man of you myself.” She winks and draws her razor. “Shall we make it formal?”
I can practically hear the tension coiling in the parade behind me. I expected my stomach to ravel into knots, but I feel impossibly calm. “All men are not created equal.” She draws the razor along the right side of my cheekbone, cutting deeper than necessary to give me my Peerless scar. “So you have proven.” She does not return her razor to her hip, but watches my blood run along its edge. Ajax stares a hole through my head from amongst her officers.
“Look how they fawn over you,” she whispers of the crowd. “Ten years you abandon them, and now they drool like inebriated sheep. Disgusting.” She tilts her head at me. “It’s funny, isn’t it? How some questions continue to be asked even though they’ve been answered in every age. My favorite is one you’re probably dwelling on right now. Is it better to be feared or loved?”
“We both know the answer to that.”
Her teeth flash as she glances at Atlas several steps beneath me. “Don’t we just?”
“I imagine it will be a sniper?” I ask.
“Oh, you did not fence half so well as a child. It’s a dreadful Red pulled from the depths of their unholy horde. I thought about doing it myself,” she replies. “But we’ve seen the value of martyrs, haven’t we? And to think, the heir had returned, only for his head to disappear with the flash of a distant muzzle.” She leans forward. “Good thing he has others to carry the flame in his name.”
“And it will come when I put on the laurel,” I say.
She coos. “Aren’t you just the most precocious of creatures. Yet you came anyway.”
“Could I have refused?”
“No, not really.”
“There is an alternative to nepoticide,” I say.
“No, I don’t think there is, and you’re not technically my nephew anyway.”
I glance at Ajax. “From what I hear, the position is taken.”
She laughs at my boldness. “I wished you no ill. But Ajax did what he did for me. Because he guards my heart’s delight. You see, I will sit on the Morning Chair. I will become Sovereign. I will establish an empire. First there was Lune. Then there was Grimmus. Much as I love you, darling, my destiny will not be denied, not by those sneaky Moonies, not by Darrow or his piglet wife, not by you. But by all means, beg.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Then shall we proceed with your assassination?”
She motions for the White. I hold up a hand for her to stop. The crowd whispers behind us. The legions shift anxiously. Ajax can barely wait another moment for my blood.
With a smile made especially for Atalantia, I bend a knee. Ajax stiffens, and takes a half step forward before remembering how many watch. “All this, I did for you,” I say, playing to her vanity.
Atalantia laughs. “Oh Jove, it is begging, then.” She looks away. “How vile.”
“All this, I did for you,” I repeat. Her eyes become interested. This fits her understanding of the world. “When you looked at me on the Annihilo, you saw the boy who used to run with Ajax through the Palatine. All I’ve wanted since my return is to be a man in your eyes.” Her suspicion heightens. “I don’t want to be the Sovereign,” I say with all honesty. “I have no desire for it. No claim on it. It was never meant to be hereditary. It was meant to go to the strongest. And if I tried to take it from you, it would tear Gold apart.”
Her gold gauntlets clink together. “You apart, at any rate.”
“I did not beat Darrow. You did. I just pushed the blade home.” I glance at the Gold families behind her, ignoring Ajax. “The carrion birds circle us both. They seek division between us because it feeds their own delusions of ascendance. We must show them unity.”
Her eyes narrow. “What are you proposing?”
“That Grimmus and Lune become indivisible, once and for all.”
Her lips curl into a wary smile. She doesn’t even glance back at Ajax. “Formally?”
“You are feared, I am loved, what better marriage could one hope for?” I ask. To save Heliopolis, I had to undermine her. To undermine her, I made an enemy of her and validated her suspicions and the poison Ajax and the Carthii have likely been putting in her ear. I do not love her as my parents loved each other, but duty outweighs my heart.
This is why I could not look Kalindora in the eye. I knew I would remember how she brought me the Praetorians in the desert. How she helped me when my face was a tattered ruin. But as she left me to the storm to save herself, so I must leave her behind.
“Two can be a very awkward number,” Atalantia says carefully.
“Not so long as all know who kneels.”
“What a matchmaker you’ve become. Rim and Core. Lune and Grimmus.” She ponders the idea. “When the old milkbat sets the crown on your head, don’t take my hand.”
That’s my answer, and her signal to whatever sniper lurks in the buildings. Whether it is death or life, I will not know until it has happened.
There are cheers of relief as we turn together toward the crowd, but the cheers are far too premature. Neither Ajax nor Atlas know what has happened, but down below, Rhone and Glirastes wait for the answer.
The White steps forward, her dark face as ancient as her tattered robes. Milky eyes watch me with inhuman distance. Her hands hold a green laurel crown. My heart thuds in my chest, forcing my vision into a tunnel.
“Son of Luna.” I barely hear her voice for the blood in my ears. “Today you wear purple, as did the Etruscan kings of old. You join them in history. You join the men who broke the Empire of the Rising Sun. The women who dashed the Atlantic Alliance into the sea. You are a Conqueror. Accept this laurel as our proclamation of your glory.”
She sets the laurel on my head. Atalantia smiles beside me. I lift my right hand, open as is the way, to grip invisible destiny. Atalantia does not seize it.
“Per Aspera…” I say.
“…ad Astra!” roars the human sea of Heliopolis.
No bullet finds me. “Celebrate, my love,” Atalantia whispers. “For you have lived before death. In the immortal words of Plautus: ‘Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.’ ”
The Triumph festivities extend well into the evening. The sound of rooftop parties and the debauched celebrations of the Core Golds within the Mound itself lap at me as I stand with a cup of wine atop the stairs and watch the Brown and Red crews sweep the flowers from the Via Triumphia.
I smell roses as Atalantia joins me from behind. Her gold gauntlet squeezes my shoulder. “Bored of the sycophants already, my love?” she asks. On her neck, Hypatia stirs to eye me before returning to her slumber. My Gray Praetorians in the shadows watch her Obsidian Ash Guard with their hands on their rifles.
We have not yet shared news of our pending union. Considering how much wine Ajax has downed, it would be violent timing. “As a boy, I always wondered how you put up with them,” I say.
“And as a man?”
“I wonder how you put up with them.”
“You would do wise to make friends. Many have spent their years climbing the ladders to heights upon which they might share wine with a man like the Heir of Silenius. If you spurn them, they will hate you.”
“Let them hate me, provided they respect my conduct.”
“I want to show you something.” She extends a hand. I glance at my Praetorians. “I’ve held your life in my palm before. I haven’t squeezed yet.” She smiles innocently. “Don’t you trust me, my love?”
I nod to my guards. “Tell Rhone to enjoy himself. I am with the Dictator.”
Atalantia’s shuttle flies us over the desert. As we ascend, I catch sight of two lines of impaled bodies that lead out of the city and into the desert.
“Reds and Golds,” Atalantia says. “It stretches to the sea they stirred. The others can work, or join the line.”
To react would be to lose respect in her eyes. To contradict would be to make her doubt my acceptance of her supremacy. So I remain silent.
Her shuttle takes us to the Annihilo. The Triumph has spread to its halls. Soldiers toast one another in mess halls, and give proclamations that soon the legion eagles will fly over Luna again. Atalantia leads me along by my hand.
Her meditation chamber has changed since my arrival. Gone is the garden, replaced by sleek black walls and a white floor. The mural of our family still hangs on the wall. The viewport looks down on drowned Tyche. The waters have receded, but the city is in ruins. Only the Water Colossus stands equal to its former glory.
Atalantia brings me before the viewport. “This is our victory,” she says. “Three days from now, I would like for you to break ground and lead the restoration of Tyche personally. Glirastes will be your Master Maker. You will not want for funds. I intend to deliver most of your inheritance from my own coffers.” Her largesse surprises me. “All the worlds will see that what the Slave King destroys, the Heir of Silenius will rebuild greater than before.”
I examine her face for some sign of deception and find none. Just a deep, feline satisfaction. “Why?” I ask.
“Because my husband must be loved.” She turns her body to me.
Her gold gauntlet strokes my burn and slides to cup my head. Her eyes flutter. Her tongue wets her lips as she pulls my mouth to hers. Her teeth glide along my bottom lip, nipping tenderly. She pulls back, sees something in my eyes to her satisfaction and then crushes my mouth against hers in hunger. Her tongue probes mine, and the heat of her body presses against me as a gauntlet strokes my groin. My blood quickens in guilt. I feel light and heavy as my hands explore the taut muscles of her back, sliding down and down, and down.
I pull away. “Ajax will—”
“Ajax is a puppy.” She puts a finger to my lips as I try to protest. “On your back, love.” I find myself obeying, watching in lust as she removes her jacket and clothes till she wears nothing but the snake and the gold gauntlets. She cuts off my pants with a small blade that emerges from a finger of the gauntlets. She takes me in her mouth, and I shudder in pleasure as she crawls up my body to put me inside her. She gives a little gasp, her mouth hovering just above mine, and then a devilish smile grows on her lips as she begins to grind back and forth between the drowned city and the mural of our dead family.
GLIRASTES HAS GIVEN KALINDORA a villa by the sea in which to die. If any doubted the honor of the Love Knight, one need only look at the quantity and worth of those friends who gathered to see her once more before she passes from this world. Despite the Triumph, the air is somber. I have felt dirty since I awoke with Atalantia. But not too dirty to reject her morning advances.
Kalindora’s room is littered with tokens of affection, including two golden gauntlets from Atalantia. The same gauntlets she wore when we had sex in her meditation room just hours before. A patio ambles down to the waterline, where blue crabs skitter in the surf. It smells not at all like death.
Kalindora lies on a humble bed. There are no servants in the room, nor any sign of the immense wealth she inherited as the last eligible member of House San. She looks up at me with a wan smile as she sees the flowers I’ve brought. “Where did you find haemanthus?” she whispers.
“Glirastes knew of a hothouse in Naran that carried them,” I say, wondering if, even after showering, I still smell of Atalantia.
“Of course you remembered.” I hold them close so she can smell them. “Like home,” she says with closed eyes. “Put them by the bed for me.” She nods to the door. “Are they all still swarming?”
“About a hundred or so,” I say of the well-wishers in the courtyard. “There’s some good ones in there. Rhone came.”
“I saw him. You gave him the Dux.”
“Yes.”
“No one deserves it more. He will guard you well. I only wish I did not have to leave.” She looks so weak. Her remaining arm is wrapped in bandages. After Darrow’s savagery, it is a wonder she did not lose it. His poison has leeched the color from her face. She is so pale. To remember her in the Palatine—young and so full of promise—and to see her now…it is almost too much. She was the future. Now she will be the past. It isn’t right that she dies and all the sycophants and monsters get to live. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says.
“Like what?”
Her face tightens. “I should say congratulations on your betrothal, I think.”
“It is a political affair, nothing more.”
“You think so?” She knows. I feel wicked looking down at her. I should have left the Triumph. Come here instead. Her eyelashes flutter in pain as a spasm racks the left side of her face. A bit of drool works its way down her chin. I dab it off with my cloak. “Has Ajax called you out?”
“Not yet.”
“He will.”
“He won’t risk Atalantia’s displeasure.”
“He will. Love may give one wings, but everything burns when it flies too close to the sun.” She looks down at the sheets that cover her dying body. “It’s funny. You always promise yourself you won’t become a cliché. You won’t be the person who yammers about their school years with old friends, trying to relive the glory. Then you do. You won’t be the soldier who doesn’t bother learning the names of the fresh troops because they won’t be there tomorrow. Then you are. You won’t give last-breath confessions, then you must.” Her smile disappears. “Sit down.”
I take the stool at her bedside.
“There are things you must know.” She looks at the door and takes a small jammer from under her sheets. Her fingers suffer nerve damage and fumble with the controls, so I must help her. The noise outside the room disappears, and the sound of the sea can be heard no more.
“I have known Atalantia all my life,” she says slowly. “I’ve seen her as a courtier, and a soldier. She has always had…something missing. She was here before you.” She looks at the gauntlets. “Despite what I did—bringing the Praetorians for you—she held my hand and confessed that she believes you’re her missing piece.”
For a moment, I don’t think she’ll continue. Then, with a sigh, she forges on.
“Those were the happiest days for her, you know. When Octavia would let you alone from your lessons and Atalantia would take you to Hyperion. She does love you…in her way. She thought you were the saddest little boy. We all did.” She touches my knee. “Don’t take it as a slight. You saw too much to ever truly be a child. You never had a chance to be one, not really, and neither did she. Octavia was hard on her. She was hard on us all.” She coughs and blood flecks her lips. She waits as I wipe it away. “She was like a poison.”
I’ve never heard her utter so much as a single word against my grandmother.
“Octavia was a hard woman, but she made us what we are.”
“She poisoned us.”
“She was our Sovereign.”
“Sovereign.” She spits the word. “All my life I’ve served. Octavia, then Magnus, then Atalantia. Everyone sits on that stool and tells me I did it with such honor. And every time I hear it, I want to tear their tongues out.”
She looks out at the sunlight as if it were the enemy.
“If you regret you are evil, it is still evil. I’ve killed old men in their beds. Children under the feet of their own horses, mothers who begged me to spare their unborn. All because I was a stupid girl who thought her father looked beautiful in his armor. When he retired, I begged to take his oath to my
Sovereign. He wept that day. I never knew why till after he died.
“I thought his oath gave him purpose. He was too honorable to say it imprisoned him. And the day he found freedom, he saw his daughter enslaved.” She swallows, reliving the horrors she’s done in my family’s name. “I only wanted to be useful.”
I don’t know what to say.
Her voice softens. “ ‘Get them while they’re young,’ she told Magnus once. ‘Get them while they’re young, then you’ve got them forever.’ Honor, duty: it’s all a lie. By the time you know better, you’re too dirty to get out. Octavia poisoned me. She made me fear to be alone so much that I believed only the darkness would want me.” Her hand trembles upward to touch my face. “Somehow she didn’t poison you.”
Her fingers feel right against my cheek. Not electric like Atalantia’s, not rank with guilt, but like they’ve been missing all my life. I want them to stay forever. I feel safe here. Her touch is not maternal, nor is it hungry, but at this moment, I realize she does not see me as boy any longer, but as someone who understands the world as she does.
It is already too late.
“You were always good. You still are. They all thought you were dead, but I didn’t. Say what you will of Virginia, she wouldn’t let Darrow kill a boy. Sometimes, when I was in a shuttle and all I could hear were the engines, I would think of you. I would see you off somewhere by the sea. Living a true life, falling in love maybe.” Her fingers leave my face. “When you stepped onto the Annihilo, it broke my heart.”
“Why should me coming home break your heart?” I ask. “This is my family.”
She stares at the door, forgetting me and the sea.
“I have to tell you something. Something that will make you hate me. Something I know will make you do what has to be done. But I’m afraid…”
