Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

The words flood her with hope, as if she’s only just remembered where we are. What we’ve done. That we’re together, alive. She blinks quickly and smiles at me. Then she looks at my arm, where my right hand used to be and touches my stomach where Aja stabbed me. “How are you still standing?”

“Because we’re not yet done.”

Battered and bloody, we join Cassius, Lysander, and Sevro before the door leading out of the Sovereign’s inner sanctum as Cassius types in the Olympic code to open the doors. He pauses to sniff the air. “What’s that smell?”

“Smells like a sewer,” I say.

Sevro stares intensely at the razors he’s taken from Aja, including the one belonging to Lorn. “I think it smells like victory.”

“Did you shit your pants?” Cassius squints at him. “You did.”

“Sevro…” Mustang says.

“It’s an involuntary muscle reaction when you’re fake executed and swallow massive amounts of haemanthus oil,” Sevro snaps. “You think I would do that on purpose?”

Cassius and I look at each other.

I shrug. “Well, maybe.”

“Yeah, actually.”

He flips us the crux and makes a face, twisting his lips till it looks like he’s going to explode. “What’s happening?” I ask. “Are you…still…”

“No!” He throws his water bottle at me. “You stuck a needle full of adrenaline into my chest, asshole. I’m having a heart attack.” He swats our hands as we try to help him. “I’m good. I’m good.” He wheezes for a moment before straightening with a grimace.

“Are you sure you’re prime?” Mustang asks.

“Left arm’s numb. Probably need a Yellow.”

We snort laughs. We look like walking corpses. Only thing keeping me up are the stim packs we found on the Praetorians. Cassius hobbles like an old man, but he’s kept Lysander close to him, vetoing Sevro’s offers to end the Lune bloodline here and now by drawing his razor. “The boy is under my protection,” Cassius sneered. And now he walks with us as a sign of our legitimacy.

“I love you all,” I say as the door begins to groan open. I adjust the unconscious Jackal, who I carry on my shoulder as a prize. “No matter what happens.”

“Even Cassius?” Sevro asks.

“Especially me, today,” Cassius says.

“Stay close,” Mustang says to us, clutching the scepter tight.

The first great door parts. Mustang squeezes my hand. Sevro vibrates with fear. Then the second rumbles and dilates open to reveal a hall filled with Praetorians, their weapons drawn and pointed into the mouth of the bunker. Mustang steps forward bearing two symbols of power, one in each hand.

“Praetorians, you serve the Sovereign. The Sovereign is dead. A new star rises.”

She continues walking toward them, refusing to break her step when she nears their line of bristling metal. I think a young Gold with furious eyes might pull the trigger. But his old captain puts a hand on the man’s weapon, lowering it.

And they break for her. Parting and lowering their weapons one by one. They back away to let her pass. Their helmets slithering back into their armor. I’ve never seen a woman so glorious and powerful as she is now. She is the calm eye of the storm and we follow in her wake.

Riding the Dragon Maw lift up in silence. More than four dozen of the Praetorians have come with us.

We find the Citadel in chaos. Servants ransacking rooms, guards leaving their posts in two and threes, worried for their families or their friends. The Obsidians we said were coming are still in orbit. Sefi is with the ships. We only created the ruse to draw men from the room. But it seems word has spread. The Sovereign is dead. The Obsidians are coming.

Amidst the chaos there is only one leader. And as we move through the Citadel’s black marbled halls, past towering Gold statues and departments of state, soldiers gather behind us, their boots stampeding over the marble halls to flock to Mustang, the one symbol of purpose and power left in the building. She lifts both her symbols of power high in the air, and those who first raise weapons against us see them and me and Cassius and the swelling mass of soldiers behind us and realize they’re fighting the tide. They join us, or they run. Some take shots at us, or rush forward in small bands to halt our progress, but they’re cut down before they get within ten meters of Mustang.

By the time we come before the great ivory-white doors to the Senate Chambers, behind which Senators have been sequestered inside by Praetorians, an army of hundreds is at our backs. And only a thin line of Praetorians bars our way to the Senate Chamber. Twenty in number.

An elegant Gold Knight steps forward, leader of the men guarding the chamber. He eyes the hundred behind us, seeing the purple adherents Mustang has gathered, the Obsidians, the Grays, me. And he makes a decision. He salutes Mustang sharply.

“My brother has thirty men in the Citadel,” Mustang says. “The Boneriders. Find them and arrest them, Captain. If they resist, kill them.”