Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

But the pride is quickly eaten up by fear.

The wound is bad and there’s no exit hole on my back. My fingertips are going cold. My teeth rattle together and the pain becomes unimaginable. I look over at the children, who talk amongst themselves, as we fly over the manufacturing districts of Endymion—areas hard hit by the Battle of Luna and not as well loved by Quicksilver—and wonder if they know how bad the wound is. I shift over to the ship’s holopad, which rests to the right of the flight control console, and tap in Holiday’s number from memory. She answers the call almost immediately. I face her, the Sovereign, and several others.

“Ephraim…” she says in relief. “Did you…”

“Right here,” I say. I expand the camera view to include the entire cockpit so they can see the children too.

“Pax!” the Sovereign says, her voice almost breaking. Tears fill the Gold’s obnoxiously symmetrical eyes.

“I’m here, Mother.”

“Did they h

urt you?”

“No,” he lies. “I’m safe.” The Sovereign looks to someone off-camera. “Call Victra, tell her Electra is alive.”

“She’ll hit the Syndicate if she knows.”

“I’m counting on it.”

The Sovereign looks back to the camera. “Where are you, Ephraim? Send us your coordinates and my men will rendezvous.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not going to risk you shutting me in prison. Release Volga, and soon as she’s safe and tidy I’ll dump the kids on a rooftop, then your men can find them.”

“That wasn’t what we agreed upon.”

“Tough bloody luck.”

“You’re bleeding everywhere…” Electra says. She looks past me. “He’s going to crash the ship anyway.”

“I’ll trust a backalley Yellow’s clinic before I’ll trust a Gold’s word,” I sneer.

“We’re going to the Citadel,” Pax says from behind me.

“Maybe you didn’t hear…” I turn and find the tip of a razor centimeters from my right eyeball. He stands in a fencer’s position.

“Comply, citizen. Or I’ll be forced to learn how to fly a ship.”

FROM A BALCONY, I watch a squadron of ripWings rise from the Palatine landing pads up into the night. Their engines plume blue and shrink in the distance, leaving the Citadel wall behind and crossing the trees toward Hyperion.

The children are safe. And so is Ephraim. My own relief in knowing the bastard lives comes as a surprise to me. I’ve never been the forgiving type, but I feel pity for the man and his pain. I recognized the fear in him when he saw the Obsidian the Sovereign’s men captured. He’s a man. Like my father, like my brothers, raised in a place without love, trampled by the same clumsy Republic that brought us from the mines. I can’t hate him any more than I can hate myself. Maybe that isn’t forgiveness, but it’s all I have to give.

Just because he has pain doesn’t mean he should bring others into it.

That’s on him.

Holiday stands motionless beside me, watching the ships, a wistful expression caged by the hard lines of her face. The Sovereign held her back from the mission. Says it was because she hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours, but even I know it’s because of Holiday’s connection to Ephraim. There’s no forgiveness in the hard woman. I wonder if she was always this intense.

“What odds did you give him?” I ask.

At first I think she doesn’t hear me and might be listening to the pilots and commandos on her internal com, then I realize she’s just ignoring me.

“I don’t gamble,” she says after a moment.

“Course you don’t.”

“Ephraim won’t die,” she says.