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“Us.”
“Till one heart beats no more. Isn’t that what you said?”
“You remembered.” He grunts. “And everyone?”
“Until there are no Colors.”
He laughs. “Well, good. You’ve aimed low.”
I watch him tilt the liquor around in his glass. “If Augustus did not put me with Julian, what do you think would have happened?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Say it does.”
“I don’t know,” he says sharply. He downs his whisky and pours himself another, surprisingly agile in in his cuffs. He considers the glass in irritation. “You and I aren’t like Roque or Virginia. We’re not nuanced creatures. All you have is thunder. All I have, lightning. Remember that dumb shit we used to say when we would paint our faces and ride about like idiots? It’s the deepspine truth. We can only obey what we are. Without a storm, you and I? We’re just men. But give us this. Give us conflict…how we rattle and roar.” He mocks his own grandiloquence, a dark irony staining his smile.
“You really think that’s true?” I ask. “That we’re stuck being one thing or another.”
“You don’t?”
“Victra says that about herself.” I shrug. “I’m betting a hell of a lot that she’s not. That we’re not.” Cassius leans forward and pours me a drink this time. “You know, Lorn always talked about being trapped by himself, by the choice he made, till it felt like he wasn’t living his own life. Like something was behind him beating him on, something to the sides winnowing his path. In the end, all his love, all his kindness, family, it didn’t matter. He died as he lived.”
Cassius sees more than just the doubt in my own theory. He knows
I could talk about Mustang, or Sevro, or Victra changing. Being different, but he sees the undercurrent because in many ways his thread in life is the most like my own. “You think you’re going to die,” he says.
“As Lorn used to say, the bill comes at the end. And the end is on its way.”
He watches me gently, his whisky forgotten, the intimacy deeper than I intended. I’ve touched a part of his own mind. Maybe he too has felt like he’s marching toward his own burial. “I never thought about the weight on you,” he says carefully. “All that time among us. Years. You couldn’t talk to anyone, could you?”
“No. Too risky. Kind of a conversation killer. Hello, I’m a Red spy.”
He doesn’t laugh. “You still can’t. And that’s what kills you. You’re among your own people and you feel a stranger.”
“There it is,” I say, raising a glass. I hesitate, wondering how much to confide in him. Then whisky talks for me. “It’s hard to talk to anyone. Everyone is so fragile. Sevro with his father, with the weight of a people he hardly knows. Victra thinks she’s wicked and keeps pretending like she just wants revenge. Like she’s full of poison. They think I know the path here. That I’ve had a vision of the future because of my wife. But I don’t feel her like I used to. And Mustang—” I stop awkwardly.
“Go on. What about her? Come on, man. You killed my brothers. I killed Fitchner. It’s already awkward.”
I grimace at the weirdness of this little moment.
“She’s always watching me,” I say. “Judging. Like she’s keeping a tally of my worth. Whether I’m fit.”
“For what?”
“For her? For this? I don’t know. I felt like I proved myself on the ice, but it hasn’t gone away.” I shrug. “It’s the same for you, isn’t it? Serving at the Sovereign’s pleasure when Aja killed Quinn. Your mother’s…expectations. Sitting here with the man who took two brothers from you.”
“You can have Karnus.”
“He must have been a treat at home.”
“He was actually fond of me as a child,” Cassius says. “I know. Hard to believe, but he was my champion. Included me in sports. Took me on trips. Taught me about girls, in his way. He was not so kind to Julian, though.”
“I have an older brother. His name’s Kieran.”
“Is he alive?”
“He’s a mechanic with the Sons. Got four kids.”
