Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“Whatever you do, wherever you go…” She pokes my chest, then her own. “There is no distance between. Do you understand?” A snort escapes me. She reels back, insulted. “I am very serious—”

“Sorry,” I say between fits of laughter. “That’s just so…dripping in syrup. That’s gotta be from Lyria.” She draws in on herself and I pat her knee. “Hey, hey. I know what you meant. Me too. Verbatim.” She relents and gives me a sideways grin.

There’s a knock at the door. Volga rushes to open it. Pax walks in with a small box. I’ve seen little of him since we landed in Attica. He wears the crest of a lion on his right shoulder, and that of a pegasus on his left. He looks as if he has aged two years. “Your parents?” I ask.

“They say my mother is alive. In captivity, but alive.”

“Oh, kid.” I feel tears welling up and I grip his shoulder. “Your father?”

He nods. “Alive. But the Golds are preparing a final assault on Heliopolis, and Luna is a mess. No fleet will come. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nods and pushes the box into my hands. “Victra wanted me to give this to you.”

“What is it?”

“Why don’t you just open it?” I sit down. He turns to Volga and says, “Volga, we haven’t had a chance to meet. I am—”

“I know,” she says, wide-eyed.

He doesn’t blush away from the recognition. By the way he looks at her, I know he sees his father’s old friend. Julii told him. “You should know, Tin—Ephraim spoke very highly of you.”

She blushes and makes a show of going to make more coffee.

I open the box. Inside is a slim metal disk and a holodrop.

“Victra is proud,” Pax says. “Obnoxiously so. And hasn’t spoken much since…” He glances at Volga and leaves it unspoken. “But she owed a debt to Trigg. Without him, she would have died in the Jackal’s prison ten years ago. She will forgive your trespass.” He gestures to the disk. “A one-way signal pass to get you past Republic patrols and off Mars.”

I play the holodrop. A recording of a ship-to-ship transmission appears. Xenophon’s face fills the frame as he requests approach clearance to the Pandora for a shuttle bearing Pax and Electra. It is dated the day of the attack on the Pandora.

I look up at Pax.

“It was Xenophon all along, not Ozgard,” he says. “He was the intermediary. Victra thought we were making the exchange. The first shuttle destroyed their main sensors, and allowed the rest of the Ascomanni to approach and board. He is Fá’s inside man. Ozgard, Amel, both framed.”

I set the holodrop down. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Tell Sefi.”

“You tell her. You have the coms.”

He shakes his head. “We can’t reach Olympia. Alltribe has gone paranoid. They think every communiqué carries a virus. To be fair, the Republic did launch one that took down a quarter of their ships. Even so, everything goes through Xenophon. We have no allies left. He’s isolated her.”

“You want me to go back.”

“Who else could get in there? They’re on war-watch.”

“This is getting ridiculous.”

“I know.” He glances at Volga in the kitchen as the coffee machine somehow overflows. Some things never change. “The older I get, the more I feel for my parents. Especially my father. Hate him or not. There’s never a right call, just people who make the hard ones.” He stands. “I have to go now. If you do not have breakfast plans, I would love you to join me. I have invited Lyria as well.”

“Depends on the lass here,” I say. Volga nods enthusiastically from the coffee mess.

I walk Pax into the hall. “Are you going to tell her?” he asks. When I don’t answer, he takes the chain from his neck and presses Trigg’s ring into my hands. I’d nearly forgotten about it. “You’re a good man,” he says. I laugh. “Stop. Whatever you decide, you’ve earned the right to be called that.”

I mess up his hair and he takes that for answer enough.

“I like him,” Volga says when the door closes. She hides the coffee she made for him behind the bar. “Did he really fly that ship?”