Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

When I reach the top of the stairs, the crowd goes silent. Atalantia is in pure white. Her shoulder spikes are gold, her necklace that dreadful pet Hypatia, and two ornate gauntlets of gold cover either hand. Her gold razor is at her side, but I know she looks at the broken slingBlade I wear on my right hip. It is the envy of all the legions.

“Darling, I do believe you took me far too literally,” she says with a sexual sigh as she looks at the left half of my face. “I said earn a scar, not become one.”

“I left room for one more.”

“From boy to man, and all it took was a little friction,” she replies. “If I knew it was that easy, I could have made a man of you myself.” She winks and draws her razor. “Shall we make it formal?”

I can practically hear the tension coiling in the parade behind me. I expected my stomach to ravel into knots, but I feel impossibly calm. “All men are not created equal.” She draws the razor along the right side of my cheekbone, cutting deeper than necessary to give me my Peerless scar. “So you have proven.” She does not return her razor to her hip, but watches my blood run along its edge. Ajax stares a hole through my head from amongst her officers.

“Look how they fawn over you,” she whispers of the crowd. “Ten years you abandon them, and now they drool like inebriated sheep. Disgusting.” She tilts her head at me. “It’s funny, isn’t it? How some questions continue to be asked even though they’ve been answered in every age. My favorite is one you’re probably dwelling on right now. Is it better to be feared or loved?”

“We both know the answer to that.”

Her teeth flash as she glances at Atlas several steps beneath me. “Don’t we just?”

“I imagine it will be a sniper?” I ask.

“Oh, you did not fence half so well as a child. It’s a dreadful Red pulled from the depths of their unholy horde. I thought about doing it myself,” she replies. “But we’ve seen the value of martyrs, haven’t we? And to think, the heir had returned, only for his head to disappear with the flash of a distant muzzle.” She leans forward. “Good thing he has others to carry the flame in his name.”

“And it will come when I put on the laurel,” I say.

She coos. “Aren’t you just the most precocious of creatures. Yet you came anyway.”

“Could I have refused?”

“No, not really.”

“There is an alternative to nepoticide,” I say.

“No, I don’t think there is, and you’re not technically my nephew anyway.”

I glance at Ajax. “From what I hear, the position is taken.”

She laughs at my boldness. “I wished you no ill. But Ajax did what he did for me. Because he guards my heart’s delight. You see, I will sit on the Morning Chair. I will become Sovereign. I will establish an empire. First there was Lune. Then there was Grimmus. Much as I love you, darling, my destiny will not be denied, not by those sneaky Moonies, not by Darrow or his piglet wife, not by you. But by all means, beg.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Then shall we proceed with your assassination?”

She motions for the White. I hold up a hand for her to stop. The crowd whispers behind us. The legions shift anxiously. Ajax can barely wait another moment for my blood.

With a smile made especially for Atalantia, I bend a knee. Ajax stiffens, and takes a half step forward before remembering how many watch. “All this, I did for you,” I say, playing to her vanity.

Atalantia laughs. “Oh Jove, it is begging, then.” She looks away. “How vile.”

“All this, I did for you,” I repeat. Her eyes become interested. This fits her understanding of the world. “When you looked at me on the Annihilo, you saw the boy who used to run with Ajax through the Palatine. All I’ve wanted since my return is to be a man in your eyes.” Her suspicion heightens. “I don’t want to be the Sovereign,” I say with all honesty. “I have no desire for it. No claim on it. It was never meant to be hereditary. It was meant to go to the strongest. And if I tried to take it from you, it would tear Gold apart.”

Her gold gauntlets clink together. “You apart, at any rate.”

“I did not beat Darrow. You did. I just pushed the blade home.” I glance at the Gold families behind her, ignoring Ajax. “The carrion birds circle us both. They seek division between us because it feeds their own delusions of ascendance. We must show them unity.”

Her eyes narrow. “What are you proposing?”

“That Grimmus and Lune become indivisible, once and for all.”

Her lips curl into a wary smile. She doesn’t even glance back at Ajax. “Formally?”

“You are feared, I am loved, what better marriage could one hope for?” I ask. To save Heliopolis, I had to undermine her. To undermine her, I made an enemy of her and validated her suspicions and the poison Ajax and the Carthii have likely been putting in her ear. I do not love her as my parents loved each other, but duty outweighs my heart.