SERAPHINA BOLTS UPWARD LIKE A KUON released from its leash. She leaps, clearing the heads of those seated beneath us, and pulls free her razor before she lands on the killing floor. Diomedes watches in fear for his little sister. But the Golds clamoring for their chance to face Cassius now sit back down in disappointed silence. They think the matter settled. Seraphina is the executioner.
Cassius bleeds and sweats, his golden curls matted to his forehead. His knuckles sliced and savaged by metal. Blood soaks his shoes. His body is shaking from pain as steam trails off his flayed skin and open meat, but still he stands, using one of the discarded hasta for a crutch, watching neutrally as tall Seraphina lopes into the circle. This is his end. But there’s nothing glorious about it.
All I feel now is dread.
The same dread from that day when I watched my grandmother die and did nothing to stop it. Not even when I saw Cassius and the Reaper’s pack finish Aja. I cannot hate him for his part. It was I who did nothing to protect those I love. And I do love him. In this moment, he is true and pure and, in a way, everything I wanted to be as a child. Tears, unwelcome and unfamiliar, leak out my eyes as Cassius looks at me and shakes his head. Let me die, he is saying. That is all he wants. Absolution in death. But it is the wrong absolution.
The wrong death.
Seraphina steps past the corpses of her cousins and nods to Cassius. “Bellona, would that we had met as equals. You deserve better.”
“We all deserve the worms, Raa,” Cassius replies. He wipes blood from his paling face. “Shall we meet them together?”
In reply Seraphina draws up into the Shadowfall, a shade herself, and Cassius sinks into the Willow Way.
Hoping to surprise her, and knowing he can’t last for long, Cassius lunges forward with his remaining strength. It is not enough. She ripples into motion. Not as fast as Darrow, not as strong as Aja, but smoother than either could ever hope to be, sliding sideways easy as a bird’s shadow over the sea. She blocks his blade with her hasta and spins her kitari from her belt and hammers the blunted handle into his knuckles. Cassius’s razor slips out of his hand and skitters over the bloody marble. He hunches without a weapon, panting. Sluggishly, he lunges for another discarded razor, but Seraphina cracks her whip and sends the weapon Cassius seeks flying into one of the walls.
She stands over Cassius and allows him one last honor. My friend crawls to his knees. Pauses there, gathering his breath, and with a groan manages to gain his feet. Dazed, he looks around the arena, lost until his eyes desperately find me. He gives me one last smile.
One of thanks because he thinks that I have let him die for his cause.
But I watched Aja die. I watched Grandmother die. And I did nothing but huddle in fear. I stayed silent and obeyed when Cassius said follow because I was afraid by crossing him I would lose him and be alone. Here at the end of the worlds, in the belly of a mountain surrounded by enemies, what is left to fear?
I will not watch any longer.
I launch myself from my seat, sailing in the low gravity over the heads of the Golds beneath me to land on the white stone of the killing floor just outside the circle. Seraphina turns around at the sound, stunned. I hold out my hands to the guards, showing I have no weapons.
“Don’t…” Cassius slurs.
“I won’t let them kill you.”
“Do not step into the Circle,” Seraphina growls. “You have no right to this fight. His crimes are his alone.”
I turn to face Dido and the host of Raa.
“I have every right.”
I let the Martian drawl molt away from my voice like a tattered cloak to reveal my Hyperion heart beneath, and for a moment, I feel proud to represent the City of Light here, so far from home. Luna may never have been perfect, may never have been as noble as I thought it was as a boy, but it gave peace for seven hundred years. I tire of apologizing for it, of being afraid of my own heritage.
My days of running and hiding behind others are finished.
I will no longer fear my name.
“My name is Lysander au Lune,” I bellow into the cold room.
I did not know what weight my name still had, but the seismic tremors that now shake the room bring chills to my flesh and deep, powerful pride. Hate my grandmother all they like, the blood in my veins came from Silenius the Lightbringer—greatest of our kind. It is the myth of my ancestors these people wrap themselves in. The first Raa elected Silenius Sovereign. They bowed to him, as did all Raa thereafter until this generation. Seraphina almost drops her razor. Her jaw hangs open. Dido curses under her breath and leans back in her seat, unable to comprehend it. Diomedes stands, a look of childish awe on his grave face.
Cassius watches in silence, his heart breaking in his chest.
“I am the blood of Silenius the Lightbringer, son of Anastasia, son of Brutus, grandson of Lorn au Arcos the Stoneside, and Octavia the Sovereign of Man. I was born upon the Palatine, west of Hyperion, at the heart of Luna and the City of Light. I may know little of the Rim, but even in the heart of empire, they spoke of the honor of House Raa. Of the Moon Lords, chief among them the Ionian Golds. Where has it gone? Has it deserted you? Has it fled after the tremors of war? You may have lost it, forgotten it, but I have not forgotten mine. And my honor will not let me sit idly as this travesty unfolds.” I feel Cassius’s agony, but I cannot look at him.
“Your bloodfeud is sated by any measure. The Bellona have been wiped from the face of the worlds. Do not fall prey to the very cannibalism that allowed the Rising to flourish. This man, this Gold, is not your enemy. I am not your enemy. The Slave King is.” I turn in a cold fury to Dido. “Bring me the safe.”