“My brother,” he sobs. “My brother.”
“I thought you were dead,” I tell him as I clutch his delicate frame. “Roque, I thought you were dead.” I clasp him to me. His hair is so thin. I feel his bones through his clothing. He’s like a wet rag around my armor.
“Brother,” he says. “I knew you would come back. I knew it in my heart. This place was hollow without you..” He grins at me with such pride. “How you now fill it.”
The Primus of House Diana was right. House Mars is a wildfire. And it does starve. Roque has scars on his face. He shakes his head, and I know he has stories to tell—where he was, how he came back. But later. He limps away. Quinn, one-eared and tired, goes with him. She mouths a thank-you and puts her hand along the small of the thin poet’s back in a manner that lets me know she’s left Cassius.
“He told us you would return,” she says. “Should have known.”
Pollux is still humorous when I see him. His voice is gravel and he clasps my arm. Quinn and Roque kept the House together, he says. Cassius gave up a long while ago. He waits for me in the warroom.
“Don’t kill him … please. It ate his mind up, man. Ate it all up what he did to you; we all found out. So just let him get some time away from this place, man. It does things to your head. Makes you forget we don’t have a choice.” Pollux kicks a piece of mud. “The bastards put me in with a little girl, you know.”
“In the Passage?”
“Matched me with a little girl. I tried to kill her softly … but she wouldn’t die.” Pollux grunts something and claps me on the shoulder. He tries a sour chuckle. “We’ve got it raw, but at least we’re not Reds, you register?”
Righto.
He leaves and I’m alone in my old castle. Titus died on the spot where I stand. I look at the keep. It’s worse now than it was in his time. Everything is worse now, somehow.
Bloodyslag. Why did Mustang have to betray me? Everything is dark now that I know. A shadow cast over life. She could have told me so many times. But she never did. I know she wanted to speak with me when I was with the Jackal, but likely just to tell me something idle. Some tidbit. Or would she betray her blood for me? No. If she would have done that, then she would have told me before I gave her half my army. She took her standard too, and Ceres’s. Why did she need so many except to make war with me? It feels like she killed Eo. It feels like she put the noose there and I jerked the feet. She is her father’s daughter.
I feel that little snap go through my hands. I’ve betrayed Eo.
I spit on the stones. My mouth is dry. Haven’t had anything to drink all morning. My head aches. Time to drop my balls, as Uncle Narol used to say. Time to see Cassius.
He sits with his ionBlade out on House Mars’s table. He’s in the seat I carved with my sigil. The old House flag lies across his knee. The Primus hand dangles around his neck. So much time has passed since he put that sword in my belly. The weapon looks silly now. A toy, a relic. I am so far past this room, past his blade, past his reach, yet his eyes stop my heart. The guilt is like black bile in my throat. Fills my chest and drains me.
“I’m sorry for Julian,” I tell him.
His hair is golden curls but matted with grit and grease. Fleas make their home there. He is still beautiful, still more handsome than I ever will be. But the spark in his eye has cooled. Time and space away from this place are what his soul needs. Months of siege. Months of anger and defeat. Months of loss and guilt have drained him of all that makes him Cassius. What a poor soul. I feel sorry for him. I almost laugh. After he put a sword in my belly, I pity him. He has never lost a battle. He alone of all the Primuses can say that, except for the Jackal. Yet he takes the badge and flips it to me.
“You’ve won. But was it worth it?” Cassius asks.
“Yes.”
“No hesitation.…” He nods. “That’s the difference between you and I.”
He sets the standard and his sword down and walks close to me, so close I can smell the stink of his breath. I think he’s going to hug me. I want to hug him, to apologize and beg for his forgiveness. Then he pulls open a scab on his knuckles, sucks the blood from it and spits in my face, startling me.
“This is a blood feud,” he hisses in highLingo. “If ever again we meet, you are mine or I am yours. If ever again we draw breath in the same room, one breath shall cease. Hear me now, you wretched worm. We are devils to one another until one heart beats no more. Now rot.”
It is a formal, cold declaration that requires one thing of me. I nod. And he leaves. I stand trembling for a moment after he’s gone. My heart thuds in my chest. So much pain. I had thought it would be over, but not all scars heal. Not all sins are forgiven.
I take the Mars flag and pin the Primus badge to myself. I watch the map on the wall. My slingBlade banner flutters over every castle there; my men secured the rest even as Tactus makes ready Olympus for Mustang’s assault. Now those castles belong to me, not to the wolf of House Mars. My slingBlade looks like the L of Lambda. My clan. The place where my brother, my sister, my uncle, my mother, my friends, still toil. They feel a world apart, yet their symbol, a symbol of our rebellion—a working tool made into a weapon for war—flies over all the Houses of the Aureate except one. Pluto.
I leave the castle through the spire. I am a Red Helldiver of Lykos. I am Gold Primus of House Mars. And I am going to my last battle in this bloodydamn valley. After that the real war begins.