“Hannah!” Mother snaps. Livia, her back rigid, glares at our sister.
“My friend Aelia was to be married in a week,” Hannah snarls. “Her fiancé is dead because of your friend. And you refuse to help find him.”
“I don’t know where he—”
“Liar!” Hannah’s voice trembles with more than a decade of rage. For fourteen years my schooling took precedence over anything she or Livvy did. Fourteen years where my father was more concerned with me than his other daughters. Her hate is as familiar as my own skin. That doesn’t make it sting less. She looks at me and sees a rival. I look at her and see the wide-eyed, tow-headed sister who used to be my best friend.
Until Blackcliff, anyway.
Ignore her, I tell myself. I can’t have her accusations ringing in my ears when I meet with the Snake.
“You should have stayed in prison,” Hannah says. “You’re not worth Father going to the Emperor and begging—begging on hands and knees.”
Bleeding skies, Father. No. He shouldn’t have lowered himself—not on my behalf. I look down at my hands, enraged when I feel my eyes burn with tears. Bleeding hells, I’m about to face off with Marcus. I don’t have time for guilt or tears.
“Hannah.” My mother’s voice is steel, so unlike her usual gentle self. “Leave.”
My sister lifts her chin in challenge before turning and ambling out, as if it’s her idea to go. You’d have made an excellent Mask, sister.
“Livvy,” Mother says after a minute. “Make sure she doesn’t take her anger out on the slaves.”
“Probably too late for that,” Livvy mutters as she walks out. As I try to rise, Mother puts a hand on my shoulder and pushes me down into the seat with surprising force.
She dabs at a wicked, deep cut in my scalp with a stinging ointment. Her cool fingers turn my face one way and then another, her eyes sad mirrors of my own.
“Oh, my girl,” she whispers. I feel shaky, suddenly, like I want to collapse into her arms and never leave their safety.
Instead I push her hands away.
“Enough.” Better she think me impatient than too soft. I cannot show her the wounded parts of me. I cannot show anyone those parts. Not when my strength is the only thing that will serve me now. And not when I’m minutes away from meeting with the Snake.
I have a mission for you, he’d said. What will he have me do? Quell the revolution? Punish the Scholars for their insurrection? Too easy. Worse possibilities come to mind. I try not to think about them.
Beside me, Mother sighs. Her eyes fill, and I stiffen. I’m about as good with tears as I am with declarations of love. But her tears don’t spill over. She hardens herself—something she has been forced to learn as the mother of a Mask—and reaches for my armor. Silently, she helps me pull it on.
“Blood Shrike.” Father appears in the doorway a few minutes later. “It’s time.”
???
Emperor Marcus has taken up residence in Villa Veturia.
In Elias’s home.
“At the Commandant’s urging, no doubt,” my father says, as guards wearing Veturia colors open the villa’s gate to us. “She’ll want to keep him close.”
I wish he’d picked anywhere else. Memory assails me as we pass through the courtyard. Elias is everywhere, his presence so strong that I know if I just turn my head, he’ll be inches away, shoulders thrown back in careless grace, a quip on his lips.
But of course he’s not here, and neither is his grandfather, Quin. In their places are dozens of Gens Veturia soldiers watching the walls and roofs. The pride and disdain that were the Veturia hallmark under Quin are gone. Instead, an undercurrent of sullen fear ripples through the courtyard. A whipping post is haphazardly erected in one corner. Fresh blood spatters the cobblestones around it.
I wonder where Quin is now. Somewhere safe, I hope. Before I helped him escape into the desert north of Serra, he gave me a warning. You watch your back, girl. You’re strong, and she’ll kill you for it. Not outright. Your family is too important for that. But she’ll find a way. I didn’t have to ask him whom he was talking about.
My father and I enter the villa. Here’s the foyer where Elias greeted me after our graduation. The marble staircase we raced down as children, the drawing room where Quin entertained, the butler’s pantry at its back, where Elias and I spied on him.
By the time Father and I are escorted to Quin’s library, I am scrambling for control over my thoughts. It’s bad enough that Marcus, as Emperor, can order me to do his bidding. I cannot also allow him to see me mourning Elias. He’ll use such weakness to his advantage—I know it.
You’re a Mask, Aquilla. Act like one.
“Blood Shrike.” Marcus looks up at my entry, my title somehow insulting on his lips. “Pater Aquillus. Welcome.”
I’m not sure what to expect when we enter. Marcus lounging among a harem of bruised and beaten women, perhaps.
Instead, he’s in full battle armor, his cape and weapons bloodied, as if he’s been in the midst of the fighting. Of course. He’s always loved the gore and adrenaline of battle.
Two Veturia soldiers stand at the window. The Commandant is at Marcus’s side, pointing to a map on the desk before them. As she leans forward, I catch a glimmer of silver beneath her uniform.
The bitch is wearing the shirt she stole from me.
“As I was saying, my lord.” The Commandant nods in greeting, before picking up the thread of the conversation. “Warden Sisellius of Kauf must be dealt with. He was cousin to the old Shrike and shared intelligence from Kauf’s prisoner interrogations with him. It was the reason the Shrike was able to keep such a tight rein on internal dissent.”
“I can’t look for your traitorous son, fight the rats’ revolution, bend the Illustrian Gens to my will, deal with border attacks, and take on one of the most powerful men in the Empire, Commandant.” Marcus has taken to his authority naturally. As if he’s been waiting for it. “Do you know how many secrets the Warden knows? He could raise an army with a few words. Until we have the rest of the Empire sorted, we leave the Warden be. You’re dismissed. Pater Aquillus.” Marcus glances at my father. “Go with the Commandant. She will handle the details of our … arrangement.”
Arrangement. The terms of my release. Father still has not told me what they were.
But I can’t ask now. Father follows the Commandant and the two Veturia soldiers out. The study door slams behind them. Marcus and I are alone.
He turns to regard me. I can’t meet his glance. Every time I stare into his yellow eyes, I see my nightmares. I expect him to revel in my weakness. To whisper in my ear about the dark things we both see, the way he’s been doing for weeks. I wait for his approach, for his attack. I know what he is. I know what he’s been threatening me with for months.
But he clenches his jaw and half lifts his hand, like he’s about to wave away a mosquito. Then he exerts control over himself, a vein popping at his temple.
“It appears, Aquilla, that you and I are stuck with each other, as Emperor and Shrike.” He spits the words at me. “Until one of us is dead, anyway.”
I am surprised at the bitterness in his voice. His cat eyes are fixed in the distance. Without Zak beside him, he doesn’t seem fully present—half a person instead of a whole. He was … younger around Zak. Still cruel, still horrible, but relaxed. Now he seems older and harder and, perhaps most terrifyingly, wiser.
“Then why didn’t you just kill me in the prison?” I say.
“Because I enjoyed watching your father beg.” Marcus grins, a flash of his old self. The smile fades. “And because the Augurs seem to have a soft spot for you. Cain paid me a visit. Insisted that killing you would lead to my own doom.” The Snake shrugs. “To be honest, I’m tempted to slit your throat just to see what happens. Perhaps I still will. But for now, I have a mission for you.”
Control, Aquilla. “I’m yours to command, my lord.”
“The Black Guard—your men now—have thus far failed to locate and secure the rebel Elias Veturius.”