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Pulvis et umbra sumus. “We are but dust and shadow.”
—HOUSE RAA
CASSIUS IS LOST IN THOUGHT, staring up at a dragon carved into the stone of the antechamber. Its snout is long. Its greedy maw open and lined with uneven teeth. The bold knight that faced down the Raa family has departed, leaving behind the tormented, reflective soul I know. The wounds where the gruesli pierced his face are swollen and red, but he’s shaved his beard and looks younger than he has in years. Only his eyes are old.
“What are you thinking?” I ask. He does not seem to hear me. The distant voices from a hundred throats whisper from behind two black doors down a set of stone stairs just beneath the dragon’s gaze. Our Gray guards give us space, allowing us to speak. “Cassius?”
“It was a flower,” he says quietly.
“A flower?”
I realize he is far from here. “A white edelweiss. That was the last thing Father gave me before he died.” He pauses, eyes still fixed on the dragon. He rarely speaks of his family. “It was a proud day,” he says slowly. He spares a look at the guards. “You were too young then. Mother kept you at Eagle Rest. But the rest of us were in Agea on the Citadel steps, where Augustus used to give the Perennial Address. The Sovereign summoned us there for a council of war. Augustus’s ships were two days from Deimos. The sun was high in the sky; you could feel the energy of a storm in the air. Wind had already come. Rain was following. I remember smelling the flowering judas trees from the steps. And…for once, our silver eagle flew from the flagpoles of the Citadel, where all my life I’d only ever seen lions. It was to be the end of a corrupt Mars and the beginning of our era.
“We had the numbers. We had the right. And once we defeated Augustus, we would have Mars—something Father never coveted, so I knew he would treat her well. But I was ashamed. After I lost the duel to Darrow, my father told me he was disappointed. Not that I had lost. He was ashamed at my selfishness.” He grimaces. “My petty pride. The carvers mended me and I put myself to one purpose: redemption in his eyes. I begged the Sovereign to let me lead the legions sent to trap Augustus at the Dockyards of Ganymede after Pliny gave us the intel. She sent Barca along to ensure I did not fail. I didn’t. I returned to Agea dragging Augustus behind us in chains. I found redemption in her eyes. But I didn’t have Father’s till we stood on those steps and he saw how I’d changed.
“He was to meet the Augustans in orbit with our cousins and sisters. I was given the rest of our family forces to defend Agea. You’ve never known pride like it, Castor. The shining faces. The laughter. The hair and pennants kicking in the wind as two full generations of Bellona strolled out from the summit in armor under the sun.
“He turned to me at the foot of the stairs and told me he loved me. He’d done it a thousand times before. But it was different. ‘The boy has fled,’ he said. ‘In his place, I see a man.’ It was the first time I felt I deserved his love, to be his son. I realized how lucky I was, how blessed I was to have a father like him. In a world of terrible men, he was patient, kind. Noble in the way the stories told us to be as boys.”
I glance to see if the guards are listening. Their faces from the bridge of the nose down are covered with duroplastic breathing units. The flinty eyes that peer out from beneath the gray hoods give nothing away.
“He took an edelweiss from a pouch in his armor and pressed it into my hands and told me to remember home. To remember the Olympus Mons. To remember why we fight. Not for family or for pride, but for life.
“The flower had grown near his favorite bench on a ridgeline there, just beyond the outbuildings of the Rest. He’d climb to that ridgeline every day before the sun set, to find peace, from us children, from work.” He smiles. “From Mother. Sometimes, if I was very lucky and quiet, he would let me walk with him, and we’d talk or just sit and watch the eagles visit their nests in t
he crags. It was the only time I remember being truly happy. Not craving something more.
“Julian was mother’s favorite, but Father didn’t play that game.” He smiles. “I know he was not happy with the venal creature I became in the years before the Institute, or the bitter one thereafter, but there on the steps…when he pressed the flower into my hands, I knew I’d finally become the man he always hoped I would be.”
There are tears in his eyes.
“What happened to the flower?” I ask gently, not wanting to break the spell.
“I lost it in the mud.” He looks back to me in shame. “I didn’t think it would be the last time I would ever see him.” He’s quiet, wrestling with something larger than the fear of the coming duel. “All of them are dead. All those shining faces, dimmed. Their laughter…just silence. I want to see them again….” He almost says my name before catching himself. He looks to the door. “Hear them. Feel Father’s hands on my head. But I won’t. Not even when I die. The Void is all that will greet me.”
“You won’t die today, Cassius. You can beat him,” I say, knowing that even if he wins, our lives are likely forfeit. “You are the Morning Knight. You are still that good man as…our father saw. And you are not meant to be the last Bellona.”
“My brother…” He smiles and rests a hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. I’m not afraid that I won’t beat him.” He looks up at the dragon, past her teeth and into the hungry darkness of her throat. “I’m afraid because this world is all that is. Karnus was right.” He smiles at a private joke. “But who knows, perhaps the darkness will be kinder than the light.” He looks down at the black doors and listens to the voices beyond them. “No matter what fate waits beyond those doors, do not acquiesce. If they have their evidence, they have their war. It is our duty, even if it is our last, to prevent that war. To protect the people.”
“It’s not our Republic to protect,” I say.
“That’s Octavia speaking, not you. Of course it is ours to protect.”
“Why? It’s a broken place that betrayed us. The people you want to save are being ground into the dirt. Dido is right: the Reaper has failed.” I pause. “Choices were made,” I say slowly, choosing my words with care so he does not feel assaulted. “Though I may not agree, I understand why you made them. The Sovereign let the Jackal massacre…our family. She was a tyrant. I know that. The Society was corrupt. But look what’s replaced it. The people on that ship—I see them every night and I think what I could have done better. But they didn’t die because I chose to help a Gold first. They died because of Darrow.” I hesitate. “You opened Pandora’s box. Now you’ve spent these years trying to justify the choices you made.” I lower my voice. “Guarding the orphan you created. Patrolling the trade lanes you endangered. Maybe this is your chance, our chance, to put things back together. Not by hunting pirates out in the middle of nowhere, but by restoring order.”
“You want to give them their evidence. Their war.”
“I do.”
He steps very close to me so only I can hear. “You open that safe, you’re dead too. You won’t have a chance to fix anything soon as they find out who you really are.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
“Stop thinking with your cock. Seraphina doesn’t give half a shit about you. She’s bait that Dido is dangling like a piece of meat.”
I snort. “It’s not about her, Cassius.”
“No, it’s about revenge, isn’t it? Your revenge.”
