Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“PDMs aren’t that strong.”

“His are.” Theodora smears the smelling salt under Holiday’s nose. “Should be lucid now. Do tell us if you start getting a little warm down between the thighs, dear.”

A flush spreads across Holiday’s cheeks. “I’m fuckin’ fine.”

Theodora turns back to me. “You were right for us to use salts. He’s also trained in psychesonics. Even my Splinters had to wear earcaps to filter.”

I sniff the air. “Smells like roses and poppyseed oil.”

Theodora is impressed. “You can actually distinguish it? My, my. Would I love to take your nose on a walk through the forest.”

“Yes, well, sewers are interesting. How did Ephraim manage against that man?” I ask. “Those pheromones would knock Darrow on his ass.”

“Zoladone,” Holiday says. “He was jacked to the gills for a decade.”

“Of course. Conclusion on our breed hypothesis?”

“Custom hybrid, Eunomian embryo and either Priapian or Aenean sperm. Whichever it is, it made a Rose of a very dangerous strain.” Theodora looks back at the cell with a contempt so gracefully articulated with her lips and eyes that it makes me feel as coordinated as a bowlegged colt. “Rarer even than mine. I believe he came from the Hysperia Gardens breeding tubes.”

“Hysperia.” Holiday’s eyes go sour.

“You’ve heard of it?” I ask.

She nods. “Trigg and I were sent there on a Dracones kill detail once. We saw the death rooms. It was what made Trigg pull the trigger to seek Ares.”

“I believe they were called pruning chambers,” Theodora says.

“Atalantia was a patron,” I say, examining the man. Could he serve her? Would he still? This whole charade doesn’t fit Atlas. But even absent hard evidence linking Atalantia, it’s certainly eccentric enough for someone who learned her trade in the silk viper pit that was Octavia’s court. I knew Atalantia for a little over a year. She made even Daxo seem tame. “Octavia often worried her erotophonophilia spoke of greater character flaws—not that I can imagine anything worse than deriving sexual pleasure from executions. Aja despised her for it.”

“And now the psycho has the Gold war machine.” Holiday grunts. “Shame your brother’s pet crashed her ship into Hysperia. Trigg and I had a date with the proprietors.”

This Duke of Hands will have seen the worst of my kind. I feel no small amount of pity for that. But the two women standing with me are proof anyone can write their own destiny. I open my white box and head to the cube. “I’ll conduct the extraction myself.”

“You’ll want the salts,” Theodora says, glancing warily at the cylinders in the box.

“Please. This horse rides for only one man.”

* * *

—

An hour later, pressurized air hisses as the door seals me inside again. The walls, ceiling, and floor are white, but there are no corners and no perceivable curvature. It is as if the slender man sits in a chair at a table suspended in nothingness.

Even with his pink hair lank and a bruise swallowing his left eye, the Duke of Hands is how I imagined Narcissus would look, mythic vanity made supple flesh and angular bone, so physically attractive he could drown himself in his own reflection and not pity his own death. Already his body will be adjusting to me, intuiting my predilections, beginning its assault on my sexual drive. But they didn’t call my father a cold fish for nothing. Houses of the Conquering, especially mine, learned long ago the dangers an alluring Pink could pose to the young scions of their line. In reply to this one’s pheromonal assault, my neurological defense systems activate. Deep in my medulla my chemoreceptor trigger zone detects the pheromones, interprets them as emetic agents, and relays stimuli to the integrative vomiting center, which nearly triggers emesis. It feels rather like radiation poisoning. Familiar.

Thank you, Father.

Swallowing the nausea, I peek around the table at the Duke’s pink feather loafers. “Ridachi?”

He snorts in amusement. “Quite.”

“Hummingbird?”

“Griffin.”

I wag a finger at him. “The Valkyrie would have your rib cage.”

“Oh dear, a pity you’ve none about. Word streetwise is that they’ve simply vanished. Like a carnival trick. That must set you on edge…my Sovereign.”