Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

With Ragnar at my side I return to the command room where Sevro and Dancer are hunched over a blueprint. Theodora’s in the corner exchanging correspondences. They turn as I enter, surprised to see the smile on my face and to see that I’m now standing. Not on my own, but with Ragnar’s help. I left the chair in the hospital and had him guide me back to the command room I fled only an hour prior. I feel a new man. And I may not be what I was before the darkness, but perhaps I’m better for it. I have humility I didn’t have before.

“I’m sorry for how I acted,” I say to my friends. “This has been…overwhelming. I know you’ve done the best you can. Better than anyone could, given the circumstances. You’ve all kept hope alive. And you saved me. And you saved my family.” I pause, making sure they know how much that means to me. “I know you didn’t expect me to come back like this. I know you thought I’d come back with wrath and fire. But I’m not what I was. I’m just not,” I say as Sevro tries to correct me. “I trust you. I trust your plans. I want to help in whatever way I can. But I can’t help you like this.” I hold up my thin arms. “So I need your help with three things.”

“Always so dramatic,” Sevro says. “What are your demands, Princess?”

“First I want to send an emissary to Mustang. I know you think she betrayed me, but I want her to know I’m alive. Maybe there’s some chance it’ll make a difference. That’s she’ll help us.”

Sevro snorts. “We already gave her the opportunity once. She almost killed you and Rags.”

“But she did not,” Ragnar says. “It is worth the risk, if she will help us. I will go as emissary so she does not doubt our intentions.”

“Like hell,” Sevro says. “You’re one of most wanted men in the System. Gold have shut down all unauthorized air traffic. And you won’t last two minutes in a space port, even with a mask.”

“We’ll send one of my spies,” Theodora says. “I have one in mind. She’s good, and a hundred kilograms less conspicuous that you, Prince of the Spires. The girl’s in a port city already.”

“Evey?” Dancer asks.

“Just.” Theodora looks my direction. “Evey’s done her best to make amends for the sins of the past. Even ones that weren’t hers. She’s been very helpful. Dancer, I’ll make the arrangements for travel and cover, if that’s all right with you.”

“It’s all right,” Sevro says quickly, though Theodora waits for Dancer to nod his agreement.

“Thank you,” I say. “I also need you to bring Mickey back to Tinos.”

“Why?” Dancer asks.

“I need him to make me into a weapon again.”

Sevro cackles. “Now we’re talking. Get some man-killing meat on your bones. No more of this anorexic scarecrow shit.”

Dancer shakes his head. “Mickey’s half a thousand clicks away in Varos, working on his little project. He’s needed there. You need calories. Not a Carver. In the state you’re in, it coul

d be dangerous.”

“Reap can handle it. We can get Mickey and his equipment here by Thursday,” Sevro says. “Virany has been consulting with him anyway about your condition. He’ll be tickled Pink to see you.”

Dancer watches Sevro with strained patience. “And the last request?”

I grimace. “I have a feeling you’re not gonna like this one.”

I find Victra in an isolated room with several Sons guarding the door. She lies with her feet sticking off the edge of a medical cot, watching a holo at the foot of her bed as Society news channels drone on about the valiant Legion attack on a terrorist force that destroyed a dam and flooded the lower Mystos River Valley. The flooding has forced two million Brown farmers out of their homes. Grays deliver aid packages from the backs of military trucks. Easily could have been Reds who blew up the dam. Or it could have been the Jackal. At this point, who knows?

Victra’s white-gold hair is bound in a tight ponytail. Every limb, even the paralyzed legs, is cuffed to the bed. Not much trust here for her kind. She doesn’t look up at me as the holo story kicks over to a profile on Roque au Fabii, the Poet of Deimos and the newest heartthrob of the gossip circuit. Searching through his past, conducting interviews with his Senator mother, his teachers before the Institute, showing him as boy on their country estate.

“Roque always found the natural world to be more beautiful than cities,” his mother says for the camera. “It’s the perfect order in nature that he so admired. How it formed effortlessly into a hierarchy. I think that’s why he loved the Society so dearly, even then….”

“That woman would look much better with a gun in her mouth,” Victra mutters, muting the sound.

“She’s probably said his name more in the last month than she did his entire childhood,” I reply.

“Well, politicians never let a popular family member go to waste. What was it Roque once said about Augustus at a party? ‘Oh, how the vultures flock to the mighty, to eat the carcasses left in their wake.’?” Victra looks at me with her flashing, belligerent eyes. The madness I saw in them earlier has retreated but not vanished entirely. It lingers like mine. “Might as well have been talking about you.”

“That’s fair,” I say.

“Are you leading this little pack of terrorists?”

“I had my chance to lead. I made a mess of it. Sevro is in charge.”

“Sevro.” She leans back. “Really?”