Golden Son (Red Rising Saga 2)

After the last Gray is loaded on a gurney, I

stand in the empty hangar. Augustus has gone to the bridge. The Jackal avoids the Telemanuses who accompany him, and instead makes for the communications hub. I’m left alone. Roque is gone. I don’t know what to do, where to go.

Blood and scorch marks stain the deck. I look at my hands. These are the consequences of my actions, and I feel so alone. I lean my head against the cold metal wall.

She comes from behind. I don’t think she says my name. I’m not sure. I just smell her damp hair as her arms wrap around me. Squeezing me tightly.

“I know you’re tired,” Mustang says quietly. “But Sevro needs you.”

“What about Roque?” I ask, turning to face her. So much lingers unsaid between us. So many questions unanswered. So many crimes left unforgiven. So much anger and perhaps still the faint flicker of something more. I feel it as she cups my neck, and lets the strength in her fingers lend itself to me.

“Not now,” she says. He blames me. And he should. They all should blame me. And it’s only going to get worse.

23

Trust

I find him in a communal washroom. He’s earned one of the staterooms that the others are claiming for the return voyage to Mars, but that’s not how he thinks. This is still the boy who hid in the horse. No, I think. Not a boy any longer.

“She cared for you, Sevro.”

His arms cross before him, freckled and thin. A towel wraps around his waist, another hangs around his shoulders. Golds don’t care about nudity but Sevro always has. He’s gained a tattoo since last I saw him. A huge black and gray wolf along his back. The Howlers are his everything. Once they were just a tool to me; now I think of them as something more. But what does that mean, when I use them just the same? He stares at the water running into the drain of the shower. Down and down it spirals.

“In the end, I believe I’ll enjoy war,” he says. “Gotta toughen my spine a bit. Callous my hands. Bastards tell us it’s all roses and glory.” He looks up. “Don’t you smell the roses, Reaper?”

I sit beside him on the bench. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Course I gory heard you. I’m missing an eye, not an ear.” He taps his bionic eye with a bony finger. “Course I know she cared. But never in the way I wanted. She deserved to live. If any of us ugly little shiteaters deserve it, it was her. There wasn’t a cruel bone in her body. Not one. But it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if we’re good or we’re evil. It’s all up to chance.”

“It was chance you knew her at all,” I say. “Chance that brought her to House Mars.”

“No. It was my father,” Sevro says. “He drafted her, traded a pick with Juno to get her.” He shakes his head. “All because he thought she would temper us, govern our anger. If he hadn’t picked her, we wouldn’t have met her, and she’d be alive.”

“Maybe,” I say, thinking of Eo. “But she chose to come here. She chose to follow me. To follow you.”

“Just like Pax.”

I nod, touching my pegasus.

“It’s all piss and shit. Isn’t it?” Sevro says. “Doesn’t matter how pretty they dress it up. We’re still in the game. We’re always going to be in a slagging game. Spit on their empire. Spit on this piss and this shit. I came for you because he told me what you are.”

I stare at him, unable to understand.

“What do you mean?” I ask with a nervous laugh.

“Turn it on,” he says. “I know you brought one. You’re thorough, Reaper. Always thorough.”

“Why are you acting so—”

“Shut up and turn it on.”

I nod and activate the device in my pocket. A jamField deploys. I’m not so prideful as the Sovereign to believe no one could listen in. Sevro stares as me till I shift uncomfortably.

“So what am I?” I ask.

“Even now?” he asks, shaking his head. “You are wound tight. Say the name of the person who sent me.”

“Mustang sent you. You told me she brought you in from the Rim. Same with all the Howlers.”