Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

“Mickey can fix that face if you’re tired of looking at it,” I say.

“Good luck. You’d have to pry the decadent sprite away from his laboratory,” Daxo says. The bald man considers Diana’s addition of a cruelly barbed trident to the angel he’s drawn. “Not to mention his admirers. He brought quite the menagerie to the Opera last September. It was a bit like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come alive. One of them was even an actress. Can you imagine?” he asks Mustang. “Your father would have chewed through his cheek to see lowColors sitting in the Elorian.”

“He’s not the only one,” Victra says. “Too much new money these days. Quicksilver’s friends.” She shivers.

“Well, money doesn’t buy culture, does it?” Daxo replies.

“Not at all, my goodman. Not at all.”

As the night deepens, the orange fingers of the slow sunset thread their way through the trees. I let go of the strain in my shoulders and sink deeper into my cup, listening to my friends chatter and joke while little blue bugs flicker and stab violent light into the late summer twilight. The trees rustle beyond the terrace; the shouts of children come from the grounds as they play night games. The blistering sand seas of Mercury seem so far away now. The stench of war so remote in my mind they are little more than shards of half-forgotten dreams.

This is how life should be.

This peace. This laughter.

But even now I feel it slipping through my fingers like that faraway sand. I sense the House Augustus Lionguards out in the darkness of the forest, watching the sky, the shadows, helping us stay inside the fantasy a moment longer. Mustang catches my eye and nods toward the door.

Forcing myself to part ways from my friends as the Telemanuses give a rousing, drunken rendition of their family’s song, “The Fox of Summerfall,” I follow several minutes after Mustang disappears into the main house. The manor halls here are older even than those of the Citadel of Light. History is the mortar of the place. Relics from older ages adorn walls, festoon shelves. Octavia called this place home as a child. Her essence lingers in the rafters and the attic and the gardens, as do those of her ancestors and child. It is where Lysander would have played long before his path crossed mine. I feel the imprint the Lunes have left on the home. At first I thought it strange living in the house of my greatest enemy, but in all humanity, who knew the burdens Mustang and I face as well as Octavia? In life, I loathed her. In death, I understand her.

The scent of my wife reaches me before the sight of her. Our room is warm and the door shudders shut behind me on a rusted metal latch. A bottle of wine is open on the table beside the fireplace, where eagles and crescent moons of House Lune are carved into the stone corbels. Mustang’s slippers lie discarded on the floor. The ring of her father and my House Mars ring rest on the table beside her datapad, which flashes away with new messages.

She’s spooled herself into a chair on our veranda like a bit of golden yarn, reading the dog-eared book of Shelley’s poetry Roque gave her years ago during their summer of opera and art in Agea, after the Institute. She doesn’t look up as I approach. I stand behind her, considering better of speaking, and slide a hand through her hair. I knead my thumbs into the muscles of her neck and back. Her proud shoulders relent against my fingers and she turns her book over in her lap. Sharing a life threads more than flesh and blood together. It weaves her memories in and around and through mine.

The more I know of her, the more I share of her, the more I love her in a way the boy I used to be never knew how to love. Eo was a flame, dancing against the wind. I tried to catch her. Tried to hold her. But she was never meant to be held.

My wife is not as fickle as a flame. She is an ocean. I knew from the first that I cannot own her, cannot tame her, but I am the only storm that moves her depths and stirs her tides. And that is more than enough.

I lower my lips to her neck and taste the alcohol and sandalwood of her perfume. I breathe slow and easy, feeling the lightness of love and the wordless unspooling of the sea of space that kept us apart. Impossible, it seems, that we were ever so distant. That there was ever a time where she existed and I was not with her. Everything that she is, every scent, taste, touch, makes me know I am home. She reaches up, dragging her slender fingers through my hair. “I missed you,” I say.

“What’s not to miss?” she asks, giving me a sly smile. I move to sit with her on the chaise, but she clucks her tongue. “You’re not done yet. Keep rubbing, Imperator. Your Sovereign commands it.”

“I think power’s gone to your head.” She glances up at me. “Yes, ma’am.” I continue massaging her neck.

“I’m drunk,” she mutters. “I can already feel the hangover.”

“Thraxa’s good at making it feel like a moral obligation to keep pace.”

“Ten credits says we have to scrape Sevro off the patio tomorrow.”

“Poor Goblin. All spirit, no body mass.”

She laughs. “I put him and Victra in the west wing so we can actually get some sleep. Last time, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking a coyote was caught in the air recycler. I swear, at the pace they’re going they’ll be able to single-handedly populate Pluto in a few years.”

She pats the cushion beside her. I join her on the chaise and wrap my arms around her. The lake breeze sighs through the trees. In the silence we share, I feel her heartbeat and wonder what her eyes see as they look out over the tops of the trees to the orange sky.

“Dancer was here,” I say.

She makes a small noise of acknowledgment, to let me know she resents my reminder of the world beyond our balcony. “He’s not happy with you.”

“Half the Senate looked like they wanted to poison my wine.”

“I warned you. Luna’s changed since you were gone. The Vox Populi can’t be ignored any longer.”

“I noticed.”

“Yet when they passed a resolution, you spat in their eye.”

“And now they’ll spit in mine.”