Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

I pull away. “Ajax will—”

“Ajax is a puppy.” She puts a finger to my lips as I try to protest. “On your back, love.” I find myself obeying, watching in lust as she removes her jacket and clothes till she wears nothing but the snake and the gold gauntlets. She cuts off my pants with a small blade that emerges from a finger of the gauntlets. She takes me in her mouth, and I shudder in pleasure as she crawls up my body to put me inside her. She gives a little gasp, her mouth hovering just above mine, and then a devilish smile grows on her lips as she begins to grind back and forth between the drowned city and the mural of our dead family.

GLIRASTES HAS GIVEN KALINDORA a villa by the sea in which to die. If any doubted the honor of the Love Knight, one need only look at the quantity and worth of those friends who gathered to see her once more before she passes from this world. Despite the Triumph, the air is somber. I have felt dirty since I awoke with Atalantia. But not too dirty to reject her morning advances.

Kalindora’s room is littered with tokens of affection, including two golden gauntlets from Atalantia. The same gauntlets she wore when we had sex in her meditation room just hours before. A patio ambles down to the waterline, where blue crabs skitter in the surf. It smells not at all like death.

Kalindora lies on a humble bed. There are no servants in the room, nor any sign of the immense wealth she inherited as the last eligible member of House San. She looks up at me with a wan smile as she sees the flowers I’ve brought. “Where did you find haemanthus?” she whispers.

“Glirastes knew of a hothouse in Naran that carried them,” I say, wondering if, even after showering, I still smell of Atalantia.

“Of course you remembered.” I hold them close so she can smell them. “Like home,” she says with closed eyes. “Put them by the bed for me.” She nods to the door. “Are they all still swarming?”

“About a hundred or so,” I say of the well-wishers in the courtyard. “There’s some good ones in there. Rhone came.”

“I saw him. You gave him the Dux.”

“Yes.”

“No one deserves it more. He will guard you well. I only wish I did not have to leave.” She looks so weak. Her remaining arm is wrapped in bandages. After Darrow’s savagery, it is a wonder she did not lose it. His poison has leeched the color from her face. She is so pale. To remember her in the Palatine—young and so full of promise—and to see her now…it is almost too much. She was the future. Now she will be the past. It isn’t right that she dies and all the sycophants and monsters get to live. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says.

“Like what?”

Her face tightens. “I should say congratulations on your betrothal, I think.”

“It is a political affair, nothing more.”

“You think so?” She knows. I feel wicked looking down at her. I should have left the Triumph. Come here instead. Her eyelashes flutter in pain as a spasm racks the left side of her face. A bit of drool works its way down her chin. I dab it off with my cloak. “Has Ajax called you out?”

“Not yet.”

“He will.”

“He won’t risk Atalantia’s displeasure.”

“He will. Love may give one wings, but everything burns when it flies too close to the sun.” She looks down at the sheets that cover her dying body. “It’s funny. You always promise yourself you won’t become a cliché. You won’t be the person who yammers about their school years with old friends, trying to relive the glory. Then you do. You won’t be the soldier who doesn’t bother learning the names of the fresh troops because they won’t be there tomorrow. Then you are. You won’t give last-breath confessions, then you must.” Her smile disappears. “Sit down.”

I take the stool at her bedside.

“There are things you must know.” She looks at the door and takes a small jammer from under her sheets. Her fingers suffer nerve damage and fumble with the controls, so I must help her. The noise outside the room disappears, and the sound of the sea can be heard no more.

“I have known Atalantia all my life,” she says slowly. “I’ve seen her as a courtier, and a soldier. She has always had…something missing. She was here before you.” She looks at the gauntlets. “Despite what I did—bringing the Praetorians for you—she held my hand and confessed that she believes you’re her missing piece.”

For a moment, I don’t think she’ll continue. Then, with a sigh, she forges on.

“Those were the happiest days for her, you know. When Octavia would let you alone from your lessons and Atalantia would take you to Hyperion. She does love you…in her way. She thought you were the saddest little boy. We all did.” She touches my knee. “Don’t take it as a slight. You saw too much to ever truly be a child. You never had a chance to be one, not really, and neither did she. Octavia was hard on her. She was hard on us all.” She coughs and blood flecks her lips. She waits as I wipe it away. “She was like a poison.”

I’ve never heard her utter so much as a single word against my grandmother.

“Octavia was a hard woman, but she made us what we are.”

“She poisoned us.”

“She was our Sovereign.”

“Sovereign.” She spits the word. “All my life I’ve served. Octavia, then Magnus, then Atalantia. Everyone sits on that stool and tells me I did it with such honor. And every time I hear it, I want to tear their tongues out.”

She looks out at the sunlight as if it were the enemy.