Page 83 of Under the Iron Sky

“What better way is there to remember what’s at stake than to be surrounded by what’s been lost?” Ikarus studied her face, the crease forming between her brows. “What else did you see when you touched me?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

She glanced away again, biting on the inside of her cheek. “Some of those bodies on the pyres … They were so small.”

Ikarus shrugged. “Soldiers. Healers. Elders. Children. The Bane does not discriminate. It takes who it wants, whenever it wants, and has done since it first appeared.”

“Which was?”

“Right after Aleena used the Arch.”

She blinked, eyes briefly dropping to her boots. She worked her jaw, seemed to steel herself before meeting his gaze. If he didn’t know any better, he might have thought what he’d said had bothered her.

He must’ve been staring at her too intently because she snapped, her face pinching into that lovely scowl she wore so well. “What?”

“I’d have thought you’d be pleased to hear there was something doing half your job for you.”

“I don’t enjoy killing—but you and the rest of your kind have made it very clear you have no intention of peacefully coexisting with us, so it has to be done.”

A bitter scoff worked its way out of his throat. It didn’t hurt half as much now. “Peacefully coexisting? Would you want to peacefully coexist with a people who trapped you in darkness for nearly two centuries? Who abandoned you, left you to choke and starve and watch every one of your friends and family eventually succumb to this illness?”

Clearly not liking her own answer, she asked, “So there’s no cure then?”

“No. There’s herbs that can be taken to help slow the degeneration, but they only work for so long before the consequences outweigh the benefits. My father was the most gifted pyromancer we’d ever had, his flames were so hot that he could melt stones—and you saw what he looked like in the end. The Bane destroyed him from the inside out, just like it has so many others.”

“And do you …”

“I don’t have it.”

She seemed relieved at that. “But you could?”

“It tends to take a little longer to kill Ethereals, but seeing as I’m only a half-breed, as you’ve no doubt guessed, I suspect it’ll sink its claws into me eventually if we don’t find a way out of here.”

“Do you know the cause?”

He held her stare. “No one’s really sure. Our healers think it might come from the rocks, something to do with high levels of radiation.”

“Then why not just—” Her eyes widened and her mouth snapped shut.

Ikarus’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. “Leave this place? Go above the cracks, where your air suffocates us within a minute if we don’t have a helmet?”

Swallowing, she looked at the stones all around them, then the ceiling, her fingers gently sliding around the base of her throat. When she looked at him again, her skin seemed to have lost some of its warmth.

Ikarus cocked his head, that smile widening into something cold and malicious. “You starting to get it now, sweetheart? We can’t go up, but we can’t stay here either. That’s why we need the Arch.”

Their fault. He could see the words banging about in her head so clearly they practically bruised her skin. It was her people that’d done this.

Aleena had trapped them all down here. She was the reason they’d been suffering all these years, forced to live among these rocks that were poisoning them slowly, generation after generation—and then, when they finally had a chance at freedom, it turned out they’d grown so accustomed to their prison that they couldn’t leave it.

Aleena and her Vordellians weren’t just their prison guards but their executioners too.

It was lucky that three of Ramapheal’s most trusted seers, the first three with the gift, had foreseen this side effect in the early years of their imprisonment. That they’d seen a future where Ramapheal had ordered his legions to swarm Vordell upon Aleena’s death without the aid of a helmet—and witnessed everyone perish. It’d driven all three of them mad, of course, seeing that the nightmare had no end.

Luckier still that Ramapheal then took that possible future, and began designing the helmets.

Some dark part of Ikarus relished the hurt on the human’s face. Smiled as she turned that inner mirror on herself and saw her people as he did for the first time. Glad that she could see, even for just a moment, that they were the monsters. That they’d brought all of this upon themselves and deserved to drown in every bit of blood they’d spilled.