Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

Atalantia doesn’t even watch the reflection of the violence in the viewport. I lift a hand toward Ajax. Lovely as he was as a child, his moods could switch at the drop of a pin. It’s far more noticeable now.

“Ajax…”

“That Bellona cunt killed my mother,” he growls, stepping on my groin. “She was more a mother to you than your own, you cockless cur.”

“Yes, she was,” I wheeze.

“And yet you tagged at Bellona’s heels for ten years? Ten fucking years.”

“I had few…alternatives.”

“You could have returned to us. To me. Brother.”

“I am sorry, Ajax. I…should have. But…” He pushes down harder, causing nausea to cascade up my belly and my lower back to ache. “I was afraid.”

He’s horrified by the admission, and almost takes his boot off me completely. “Of what? Us?”

“Not you, Ajax. Never you. Of court. Of Gold eating Gold.” I try to stand but he pushes me back down, more gently this time. “You think I enjoyed seeing Aja cut to ribbons? You think it meant nothing seeing Octavia hewn from groin to sternum? You think I did not see how we did the Rising to ourselves? The Jackal, Fitchner, Cassius, the Martian Feud—all symptoms of the same disease. I wanted no part of it.”

That, he understands.

As children, we mocked all the scheming snakes of the court. Only Atalantia ever made it look good anyway, and she did it for laughs. Moira was pure in her obsession for truth. Aja pure in her duty to Grandmother. Lorn pure in his honor. Even Darrow was pure in his then-inexplicable lust to win.

Those were the people we admired. Not the snakes.

“Then why return now?” Atalantia asks. She senses but cannot identify the private understanding Ajax and I share. Is she jealous of it? Or suspicious? Either way, she turns from the viewport.

“Because I believe it can be different,” I say. “The Rising has shown itself incapable of rule. While there were injustices in Octavia’s time, there were not two hundred million dead.”

“Two fifty,” Atalantia says. “We hid a famine on Venus.”

That the death of so many could be unknown staggers me. “It may not have been perfect, but it wasn’t this,” I say. “I believe if we quell the Rising, we have a chance to fix what was broken not just by them. But by us.”

“Gods,” Ajax mutters. “He hasn’t changed a damn bit.”

“Told you,” Atalantia replies.

Ajax hauls me up by my jacket. “Still wants to be Marcus Aurelius, I suppose.” He leans close, his voice confiding. “The fact is, my mother spoke for Cassius. You remember. When Octavia questioned his loyalty, my mother begged her to give him a chance. She saw Lorn in his heart, I wager. And he showed his gratitude by feeding her to the wolves. I know you rationalized it away, because you think your emotions are secondary programs or something. But look at what I am. What I have become.” He gestures to the kill marks. His dented armor. The double-thick gray razor on his hip. “Do you think I became this for pleasure?”

“We understand the war inside you, Lysander. We always have,” Atalantia says. “But that does not change that this is not the return you should have had. Not for you, not for us, not with them. You squandered yourself. You could have come back a god. Think how I could have used that. Think how your high-minded dream could have benefited from that.”

She sighs and lifts her hand like an opera singer.

“Of course, the legions will rejoice at your return. If used properly, the return of the Heir of Silenius could still inspire the worlds. I hear the songs even now.

“But you have much to prove. People will wonder—not me, but others—if you are not a lackey of the Rim.” She flings her hands about. “Is he perhaps the Traitor’s trained monkey? Perhaps even the Slave King’s puppet? They will wonder: Is Lysander really an Iron Gold?”

Ajax takes offense on my behalf. “He may be an egregiously pretentious quisby, but he’s no puppet of the Slave—”

She cuts him off with a look.

“Until the answers are incontrovertible, I fear I cannot allow your return to become known, Lysander.” She makes it seem like it’s for my own good, and succeeds, almost. I go very quiet inside, recognizing Silenius’s Stiletto when I see it. My path will grow very narrow very quickly, and it will certainly cut my feet.

There is only one way forward.

I did not come back to be her rival, and so long as I do not have a scar, I could never be. But if I survive what she asks, by the traditions that have guided my people since Silenius, I will earn a scar, and my inheritance, at great cost to her own strength.

The other Gold families will choose a side if they see but the tiniest crack of daylight between us. She knows that. This is a sign of trust. She could do with my support.