Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

It scares me to hold it again.

And it rasps like a pitviper’s mating call as it forms into a curved slingBlade. It was blank and smooth when last I saw it, but it ripples now with images etched into the white metal. I tilt the blade so I can better see the form etched just above the hilt. I stare dumbly. Eo looks back at me. An image of her etched into the metal. The artist caught her not on the scaffold, not in the moment that will forever define her to others, but intimately, as the girl I loved. She’s crouched, hair messy about her shoulders, picking a haemanthus from the ground, looking up, just about to smile. And above Eo is my father kissing my mother at the door of our home. And toward the tip of the blade, Leanna, Loran, and I chasing Kieran down a tunnel, wearing Octobernacht masks. It is my childhood.

Whoever made this art knows me.

“The Golds carve their deeds into their swords. The grand, violent shit they’ve done. But Ares thought you’d prefer to see the people you love,” Holiday says quietly from behind Trigg. She glances back to the door.

“Ares is dead.” I search their faces, seeing the deceit there. Seeing the wickedness in their eyes. “The Jackal sent you. It’s a trick. A trap. To lead you to the Sons’ base.” My hand tightens around the razor’s grip. “To use me. You’re lying.”

Holiday steps back from me, wary of the blade in my hand. But Trigg is ripped apart by the accusation. “Lying? To you? We’d die for you, sir. We’d have died for Persephone…Eo.” He struggles to find the words, and I get a sense he’s used to letting his sister do the talking. “There’s an army waiting for you outside these walls—does that register? An army waiting for its…its soul to come back to it.” He leans forward imploringly as Holiday looks back to the door. “We’re from South Pacifica, the ass end of Earth. I thought I’d die there guarding grain silos. But I’m here. On Mars. And our only job is to get you home….”

“I’ve met better liars than you,” I sneer.

“Screw this.” Holiday reaches for her datapad.

Trigg tries to stop her. “Ares said it was only for emergencies. If they hack the signal…”

“Look at him. This is an emergency.” Holiday strips her datapad and tosses it to me. A call is going through to another device. Blinking blue on the display, waiting for the other side to answer. As I turn it in my hand, a hologram of a spiked sunburst helmet suddenly blossoms into the air, small as my clenched fist. Red eyes glow out balefully from the helmet.

“Fitchner?”

“Guess again, shithead,” the voice warbles.

It can’t be.

“Sevro?” I almost whimper the word.

“Oy, boyo, you look like you slithered out of a skeleton’s rickety cooch.”

“You’re alive…,” I say as the holographic helmet slithers away to reveal my hatchet-faced friend. He smiles with those hacksaw teeth. Image flickering.

“Ain’t no Pixie in the worlds that can kill me.” He cackles. “Now it’s time you come home, Reap. But I can’t come to you. You gotta come to me. You register?”

“How?” I wipe the tears from my eyes.

“Trust my Sons. Can you do that?”

I look at the brother and sister and nod. “The Jackal…he has my family.”

“That cannibalistic bitch ain’t got shit. I got your family. Grabbed them from Lykos after you got snagged. Your mother’s waiting to see you.” I start crying again. The relief too much to bear.

“But you gotta sack up, boyo. And you gotta move.” He looks sideways at someone. “Gimme back to Holiday.” I do. “Make it clean if you can. Escalate if you can’t. Register?”

“Register.”

“Break the chains.”

“Break the chains,” the Grays echo as his image flickers out.

“Look past our Color,” Holiday says to me. She reaches a tattooed hand down. I stare at the Gray Sigils etched into her flesh, then look up to search her freckled, bluff face. One of her eyes is bionic, and does not blink like the other. Eo’s words sound so different from her mouth. Yet I think it’s the moment my soul comes back to me. Not my mind. I still feel the cracks in it. The slithering, doubting darkness. But my hope. I clutch her smaller hand desperately.

“Break the chains,” I echo hoarsely. “You’ll have to carry me.” I look at my worthless legs. “Can’t stand.”

“That’s why we brought you a little cocktail.” Holiday pulls up a syringe.

“What is it?” I ask.