Red Rising (Red Rising Saga 1)

“This is war,” I say, though the words sound hollow even in my own ears.

“It’s school!” he reminds me. “What if Titus did this to our girls? To Lea … to Quinn?”

I say nothing.

“We would kill him,” Cassius answers for me. “We would kill him, cut his prick off and shove it in his mouth.” And I know he’s also thinking of what Titus must have done to Julian.

Despite Cassius’s mutterings, I take his arm and pull him away from the castle. The gates are locked against the night. There is nothing we can do. I feel helpless again. Helpless as when Ugly Dan took Eo from me. But I am different now. My hands turn to fists. I am more than I was then.

On our way back to our northfort, we see a glimmer in the air. Golden gravBoots shimmer as Fitchner descends. He’s chewing gum and holds his heart when he sees our evil glances.

“Whatever did I do, young friends, to earn such glares?”

“He’s treating the girls like animals!” Cassius seethes. Veins in his neck stand out. “They are Golds and he is treating them like dogs, like Pinks.”

“If he is treating them like Pinks, then it is because they merited no better in this little world than Pinks do in our big world.”

“You’re joking.” Cassius can’t understand. “They are Golds, not Pinks. He’s a monster.”

“Then prove you’re a man and stop him,” Fitchner says. “As long as he’s not murdering them one by one, it is not our concern. All wounds heal. Even these.”

“That’s a lie,” I tell him. I’ll never be healed of Eo. That pain will last forever. “Some things do not fade. Some things can never be made right.”

“Yet we do nothing because he has more fighters,” Cassius spits.

An idea sweeps over me. “We can fix that.”

Cassius turns to me. He hears the deadness in my voice just as I see it in his eyes when he speaks of Titus. That’s a peculiar thing we share. We’re made of fire and ice—though I am not sure which of us is ice and which is fire. Nevertheless, extremes rule us more than we’d like; that is why we are of Mars.

“You have a plan,” Cassius says.

I nod coldly.

Fitchner watches us two and he grins. “About gorydamn time.”

The plan starts with a concession only someone once a husband could make. Cassius cannot stop laughing when I tell him the details. Even Quinn snorts a laugh the next morning. Then she’s off, running like a

deer to Deimos Tower to bring my formal apology to Antonia. She’s to meet me with Antonia’s response at one of our supply caches near the Furor River, north of the castle.

Cassius guards our new fort with the remainder of our tribe, in case Titus tries to attack while Roque and I go to the supply cache during the day. Quinn does not come. Dusk does. Despite the dark, we trace the path she would have taken from Deimos Tower. We go till we reach the tower itself, which sits in the low hills surrounded by thick woods. Five of Titus’s men lounge around its base. Roque grabs me and pulls me down into the woods’ brush. He points to a tree fifty meters distant where Vixus sits hidden in wait on a high branch. Did they catch Quinn? No, she’s too fast to be caught. Did someone betray us?

We return to our fort by early morning. I’m sure I’ve been more tired, but I can’t remember when. Blisters ruin my feet despite the fitted shoes, and my neck peels from long days in the sun. Something is wrong.

Lea meets me by the fort’s gate. She hugs Roque and looks up at me like I’m her father or something. She is not her usual timid self. Her birdlike body shakes not from fear, but anger.

“You have to kill that piece of filth, Darrow. You have to cut his slagging balls off.”

Titus. “What happened?” I look around. “Lea. Where is Cassius?”

She tells me.

Titus captured Quinn as she was on her way back from the tower. They beat her. Then Titus sent one of her ears here. It was meant for me. They thought Quinn was my girl, and Titus thinks he knows my temper. They got the reaction they wanted, just not from me.

Cassius was on watch and as the others slept he snuck away to the castle to challenge Titus. Somehow the brilliant young man was arrogant enough to think hundreds of years of Aureate honor and tradition would survive the sickness that has consumed Titus’s tribe in only a few weeks. The Imperator’s son was wrong. And he is also unused to having his heritage be of such little consequence. In the real world, he would have been safe. In this small one, he is not.

“But he’s alive,” I say.

“Yeah, I’m alive, you Pixie!” Cassius stumbles shirtless out of the fort.