Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

Silence. “That’s fucking hilarious.”

A second shadow parts from the ceiling and falls twenty meters to land with a thump beside Pebble. Covered head to toe in battered scarabSkin and weapons, my son’s godfather stands to his full, unimpressive height. He swings his multiRifle around to his back, where it attaches to its magnetic hols

ter. Though his fingers play with the hilt of his father’s old razor. Never has trusted me fully.

He stops as he passes Theodora and fixes his helmet’s eyes on her citycloak. “Where’s your wand, Merlin?”

“Where’s your wife, savage?” She eyes the scalps hanging from the hook on his utility belt, hardly impressed. “Vile. Have you gone full Ascomanni, my dear?”

“Please. The petty pirates copied me. Like Rollo with that goatee.” Sevro raises two fingers twisted together in the crux and slumps into the chair I kick out for him, though he does take a diva’s care not to rumple the rancid wolfcloak that hangs from his left shoulder. Holiday pours him a cup from a second thermos.

“You look ridiculous,” I say. “Take off the helmet.”

“Slag off. This is custom Cyther armor.” The weird wolfhead regards the cup with crimson duroglass eyes. “I drink coffee.”

I squint at the armor. “I knew it. You can’t see color in that thing.”

He pauses. Then the cracked snout and spiked ears ripple backward into their catch to reveal a pinched, cruel face, pitted by relics of childhood acne, and almost more feral than the helmet itself. His head is shaved but for a short warhawk with a zigzag running down the center of it. He squints at the cup, sniffs, and finds that it is indeed coffee, not tea.

“You think your tricks are so charming,” he says. He picks up the cup, pretending he isn’t desperate for his private stash of Jamaican Blue Mountain. “If I get even a slight bit dizzy, you get a tranq in the face from Min-Min.”

Holiday snorts. “Like that ruster could hit the broad side of a Telemanus’s ass.” In mockery, she holds up her teacup by its handle. Half the teacup in her hand turns to powder as a silent rail slug passes through it and into the wall behind, striking it like a gong. Unimpressed, Holiday measures the remaining half of the cup and holds up the measurement to wherever Min-Min is as if the Red were a sloppy shot. Guess it gets boring on campaign.

Sevro mutters under his breath and nods to Holiday. “Holi.”

“Sir.”

He fails to find a wolfcloak on her shoulder. “You look lost.”

She actually looks ashamed. For not going with Darrow? For sitting beside me instead of Sevro? I didn’t spend time to think of that. Just because she’s doing what she thinks is right doesn’t mean she likes it. Whatever closeness I feel to Holiday must pale in comparison with the intimacy of the pack. Ten years on four spheres. They’re her home, and Sevro is the master of the house. No wonder a toga would sound so horrible. I feel suddenly like a presumptuous interloper.

“I was lost, Sevro. How was Venus?”

“Vacations, you know. Hopped around the islands, visited some old friends, warmed ourselves by a fire, then came home to an empty house. Speakin’ of fire. How’s the cooch rash?”

“Better than your face.”

“Good, so you’ll be bringing your kid-stealing ratfuck relation to me in no time. He’s got a special reservation.” He pats his scalp hook. “Yeah, you can get back to me with that answer, but I’m charging interest.” He sips his coffee and glares at me. “So, ’Stang, you found the right bait to make yourself a wolf trap. Clever you.”

“Well, you weren’t answering my calls.”

He barely shrugs.

“Didn’t even have the courtesy of telling me you were on Luna. That’s hardly the behavior I expected from my son’s godfather.”

“Was busy eating my way up the food chain.” He rolls his head to crack his neck, uncomfortable with the stillness. “You talk with the apex asshole?”

I nod. “Before he made landfall.”

“He woke the Storm Gods.”

“He saved his army,” I correct.

“So Mercurian lives don’t count?” he asks.

“More to me than to you I imagine,” I reply.

He shrugs. “Pebble always wanted to surf.” He glances over his shoulder. “Didn’t you, Pebble?”