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“I cannot stomach the medicine I gave your Trial brother,” Lio said. “All the arguments I made to Ioustin sound different when it is my life at stake. When I know my sacrifice would not be a waste. I could change everything.”
Lio could secure the peace he had worked for his whole career, which his people had tried to build for their entire history. There would be a good monarch on the throne of Tenebra who would usher in a golden age as there had never been since the Mage King and the Changing Queen. No orphans would need the Solace when a kind queen provided for them. No soldiers would wait for the Mercy on battlefields when a strong queen stopped the wars. No mages would persecute heretics when a woman who had loved a Hesperine wore the crown.
Lio’s role in this golden age was easy. All he had to do was give up his Grace. All he had to do was lay down and die.
“This can’t be right,” he railed. “What of your Grace? What if she is alive now, doing without you? What of all those you might have saved, had you lived?”
Lio pushed away from the stone hero, only to stumble over the children that surrounded him.
“Why couldn’t you have lived to rescue us with Nike, Rudhira, and Father? What if a different quest had brought you all to us, a happier one than avenging you? Why must this be truth? Why couldn’t there have been a different truth for you?” Lio backed away. “I cannot live with this one.”
The question was, was Lio prepared to die for it?
“You shouldn’t have died. You deserved better.”
Lio looked at the smiling legend who was glorious in death.
“What did you want for yourself?” Lio asked Methu for the first time. “I have never heard your truth from your own lips. All I know is the truth Orthros has made of your memory.”
Only the wind answered.
“What have we done to you? How have we reduced you to this? Are you and I not worth more than memorials? Do we not deserve more than stone?”
The sound of footsteps told Lio he was no longer alone. Large, graceful feet barely brushed the snow as they approached. Mak. Lio tossed aside the veil that had kept his rant from echoing along the cliffs, while he fortified the spells that hid his anger from the Union.
Mak came out of the trees and joined Lio before the statue, but it was Lio whom Mak studied. “Ouch. Is this your first quarrel with Cassia?”
“Well.” Lio flushed. “So much for my powers of concealment.”
“Claiming Cassia can’t get away from the embassy may work on Zoe, but not the rest of us.”
Lio shoved his hair out of his face. “This isn’t just a quarrel. This isn’t like the other times she was angry with me.”
“Heh. You always did have a taste for hot tempers.”
“She’s not angry with me. I—”
Mak whistled. “You’re angry with her! Now there’s a first. That’s all right. It’s good for you to get angry now and then. You don’t do it often enough.”
Lio could hear the conversation in his head now.She’s going back to Tenebra, Mak. She’s going to make herself the queen.
She can’t do that!
Oh, but she can. Her expertise knows no limits. There is only one thing she cannot do. Stay in Orthros.
But he would not tell Mak. He would not ask his cousin to become Ioustin and leave Methu to die for the sake of the prisoners. That was too much to ask of any of his friends and family. How well he knew, after Ioustin had asked such a thing of him.
Lio was right back where he had begun at the Autumn Equinox. He could tell no one of Cassia’s plans. The moment he did, they would intervene to save his life.
If he was going to make this sacrifice, it must be his decision, and his alone.
“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” Mak asked.
“I cannot.”
“I won’t cross the veil. Just let me ask you this. Have you told her yet?”
Lio let out a humorless laugh. “I had romantic notions of waiting until Grace Dance.”
