Red Rising (Red Rising Saga 1)

“Why aren’t you?”

He laughs hard. “You’re just a boy with a slingBlade. First I thought you were hard. Thought we saw things similarly.” He licks a bloody lip. “Thought you were like me, only worse because of that coldness in your eyes. But you’re not cold. You care about these piss-pricks.”

My eyebrows pinch together. “How’s that?”

“Simple. You made friends. Roque. Cassius. Lea. Quinn.”

“So did you. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus.”

Titus’s face contorts horribly. “Friends?” he spits. “Friends with them? Those Goldbrows? They are monsters, soulless bastards. Nothing but a bunch of cannibals, all of them. They did the same as I did, but … pfah.”

“I still don’t understand why you did what you did to the slaves,” I say. “Rape, Titus. Rape.”

His face is quiet and cruel. “They did it first.”

“Who?”

But he’s not listening. Suddenly he’s telling me about how they took “her” and raped “her” in front of him. Then the slaggers came back a week later to do it some more. So he killed them; bashed their heads in. “I killed the bloodydamn monsters. Now their daughters bloodywell get what she got.”

It’s like I’ve been punched in the face.

Oh hell.

A chill spreads through me.

Bloodydamn.

I stumble back.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Titus asks. If I were a Gold, I might have not noticed, might’ve just been befuddled by the odd word. I’m no Gold. “Darrow?”

I pull my way into the hall. I move in a haze. It all makes sense. The hate. The disgust. The vengeance. Cannibals eat their own. He called them cannibals. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus—who are their own? Their own. Golden. Bloodydamn. Not gory. Titus said bloodydamn. No Gold says that. Ever. And he called it a slingBlade, not a reaper’s scythe.

Oh hell.

Titus is a Red.

29

UNITY

Titus is what Dancer did not want me to become. He is like Harmony. He is a creature of vengeance. A rebellion with Titus at the helm would fail in weeks. Worse, if Titus continues this way, continues unstably, he puts me at risk. Dancer lied, or else he did not know that there are other Reds who’ve been carved, other Reds who have donned the mask of the Golds. How many more are there? How many has Ares planted here, in the Society? In the Institute? It doesn’t matter if it is a thousand or just one. Titus’s instability puts every Red ever carved into a Gold at risk. He puts Eo’s dream at risk. And that is something I cannot abide. Eo did not die so that Titus can kill a few kids.

I sob in the armory as I resolve what must be done.

More blood will stain these hands, because Titus is a mad dog and must be put down.

In the morning, I pull him into the square in front of the House. They clear away the remnants of the night’s feast. I even have the slaves there to watch. A few Proctors flicker high above. There is no medBot floating beside them, which must stand as their silent consent.

I push Titus down on the ground in front of his former tribe. They watch quietly, mist hanging in the air above them, nervous feet scraping the cold cobblestones of the courtyard. A chill seeps into my hands through the durosteel of my slingBlade.

“For crimes of rape, mutilation, and attempted murder of fellow House members, I sentence Titus au Ladros to death.” I list the reasons. “Does anyone contest my right to do so?” First, I glance to the Proctors above. Not one makes a sound.

I stare at cruel Vixus. His bruise is not yet gone. My eyes go to Cassandra next. I even look at craggy Pollux, the one who saved Cassius and opened the gates for us. He stands by Roque. How loyalties shift here.

How my own shift. I will make a Red die because he killed Golds. He dug the earth like me. He has a soul like mine. In death, it will go to the vale, but in life he was stupid and selfish with his grief. He should have been better than this. Reds are better than him, aren’t we?

Titus’s tribe stays silent; their guilt is bound up with their leader. When he goes, it’ll go. That is what I tell myself. Everything will be well.