IN THE BEDLAM THAT FOLLOWS, I’m spirited away by Diomedes and a coterie of his men. They take me back to my room and push me inside.
“Diomedes,” I say before the door closes. The knight turns. “Cassius, I want to see him. I need to know if he’s alive.”
“It is not safe for you in the halls.”
“I helped you.”
“You are still a Lune. Whether he lives or dies is up to him.”
“And your surgeons.”
Realization dawns. “Do you think we would not care for him? He showed his honor. I will stand vigil myself and send word when I know his fate.”
“Thank you.”
He hesitates. “He betrayed your grandmother, yet you travel with him….”
“He saved my life from the Rising. I am bound to him.”
“I understand.” He nods, his first sign of respect to me. “But if he dies, you will be free of him. Then to what will you be bound, Lune?” He leaves me with that and shuts the door. It locks from the other side. I pace the cold stone, unable to think of anything but Cassius on the floor asking me what I’ve done. I feel the walls closing in.
I retreat inward. Forcing myself into the Willow Way, imagining my breath as the breeze that moves the branches and sways the grass and kisses the water. A second movement of breath now comes, which moves the lavender and pushes the bees and tinkles the wind chimes of summer at Lake Silene. A third movement is that of fall. The fourth breath that moves the curtains and twists the flames in the braziers and brings the snow of Hyperion in through an open window and makes Cassius’s cape dance in the wind is that of Luna’s winter.
Deep in that distant pool of memory, I see him again for the first time.
The young Bellona stands with his back to me, looking out at the Citadel grounds beyond the balcony. Sun glints off the gold tip of the Legion Pyramid headquarters in the distance. His hair is coiled and shines with scented oil. Snow melts there. His coat is dark blue with feathered silver epaulets and a silver fringed collar. He wears a silver razor on his hip and silver buckles on his boots. He looks like a storybook knight, and it makes me distrust him.
Though capable, he is a petty, spoiled creature who lured my favorite House Mars student onto the bank of a river and there betrayed him. Why? Because he could not absorb what Grandmother extols as the highest lessons of the Institute—the bearing of loss. If the loss of a single brother in the Passage broke him, what good would he be under the grind of war?
“So you are the favorite son of Tiberius,” I say in the memory. He turns around to appraise me. In a white cashmere jacket with pearl buttons, holding a book of mathematics in my hands, I stand no higher than his waist. A condescending smile spreads across his lips. “Salve, my goodman,” I say.
“Lysander, isn’t it?” Cassius asks without attention to protocol.
“It is.” He waits for me to say something more. I do not.
“Well, you’re an eerie little creature, aren’t you?” He leans closer, his lively eyes narrowing. “Jove, you look eighty and eight all at the same time.”
“My grandmother is wroth with you,” I say.
His eyebrow arcs. “Is she now? Have I done much to be wroth about?”
“You have killed eleven men in the Bleeding Place since summer. And your villa has been a constant source of debauchery and media fodder. If you were attempting to encourage the stereotype of Martians as warmakers, you succeeded most admirably.”
“Well…” He flashes a smile. “I do like causing a stir.”
“Why? Does it make you feel important? Alis aquilae. The words of your house. ‘On eagle’s wings.’ I suppose an air of self-satisfaction is natural amongst the apex predator of the sky. Who would contradict them?”
His face darkens. “Careful, little moon boy. You may wag that tongue all you like on this hill. But on Mars, that’s how men meet their end.”
I blink up at him, knowing I have nothing to fear. “Does truth disconcert you so?”
“Call me a pedant for manners.”
“Manners. Well, if it’s manners you wish to discuss, I can call Aja in and you can debate the particulars with her. They are different on Luna.”
He wags a finger at me. “Using the claws of others is not brave, nor is it the same as having claws. I would have thought you of all people would know that.”
I’m not sure what he means, me of all people, so I fight the instinct to shrug, knowing it a foul habit, and incline my head to dismiss his puzzling insult. “One day I will have claws and I will learn to use them, my goodman. Until then, I do believe the claws of others will suffice.”
“Goryhell, you’re a terror.” He watches me a moment. “I’ve decided to like you, little moon boy.”
“Thank you,” I say. “But do not be offended if I withhold similar sentiment. I told Grandmother the other Martian would be better.”
His mood swings to darkness once again. A feeble trait to be so protean. “Which other Martian?”
“The orphan,” I smile. “Andromedus.”
“Darrow…”
“Yes. He was ArchPrimus. Was he not? He stormed Olympus. Unheard-of quality, despite his parents being of such…humble acclaim. The Andromeduses were Martian, bannermen of House Aquillus before they tried their hand in the Belt. Your bannermen. Did you know them?”
“House Aquillus?” He smirks. “Haven’t even heard of it.”
“It is in eastern Cimmeria. But of course he takes nothing after them in features either. He’s inordinately…durable and clever. Most importantly, he inspired loyalty. You, despite your natural gifts, did not.”
“I won’t be lectured by an unscarred brat, no matter his last name. You’re not even supposed to know about the Institute yet. Little cheat.”
“You prove my point. You have no humility. Andromedus would be better.”
“Better for what?”
“Now, Cassius, didn’t Lady Bellona teach you patience is the utmost virtue?” A young woman wearing my house colors but speaking with an Agean brogue leans at the doorway to my grandmother’s office, smiling nastily at Cassius.
“Virginia,” he says with a strange, Pinkish smile.
“Hello, handsome.” She smiles sweetly at me. “Lysander, did you write any poems for me today?”
I blush and suddenly wish I were as tall as Cassius. “None of worth, I fear.”
“That’s not what Atalantia told me.”
“She’s much too…forgiving.”
“Well, I’ll be the final judge of their quality. Shall you read them to me after supper?”
“Aja was going to take me to see the falcons at Gosamere,” I say.
“May I come?”
I nod despite knowing Aja will be annoyed.
“Wonderful, I do love falcons.”
“Eagles are better,” Cassius says. He looks her up and down admiringly and in an objectifying manner with which I immediately take umbrage. “Heard your man went off to play with ships.”
“Subtle,” she says. “In any matter, I don’t have a man.”
“Well, not for long anyway. Karnus has been enrolled. Perhaps my brother will have a better go at him than yours did. Where is that Bronzie miscreant these days anyway?”
“How should I know?”
They stand in awkward silence.
“The Sovereign’s waiting, Cassius….” Virginia gestures him to follow and winks at me. “Tell Aja not to leave without me.”
“I will…” I say distantly.
The memory evaporates as I open my eyes.
The room is quiet, and so far from home.
Cassius’s blood has dried on my hands and begun to itch. I wash them in the basin in the corner till the spigot tells me I’ve reached my daily ration of water. I pump the spigot once more. “Daily ration exceeded,” it drones again. My hands are still pink. I sit back on the sleeping pallet and wait, focusing on slowing my breath till I slip into a shallow slumber.
I wake at the sound of my door opening, hoping instinctively that it is Seraphina. But why would it be?
The Pink, Aurae, stands there nervously, her hands clutched together, her eyes on the ground. There’s blood under her nails.
“Dominus.” She bows. “The Storm Knight sent me.”
“Is Cassius alive?”
She shifts on the soles of her gray slippers.
“Is he? Be plain.”
“No.” Her eyes flutter up to meet mine. “He has passed.”
I say nothing for a full minute. “When?”
“Not long ago. I am sorry, dominus.”
I drift to the window. The darkness and cold outside creep in. “That long? I didn’t even feel him go.” It was while I was sleeping.
The roar of my crumbling world drowns out the woman’s voice. This is not how it was supposed to end. I thought I had saved him. That I would have a chance to show him that he was wrong. To help him realize the mistake he’d made choosing Darrow and convince him that there was still good he could do in the world. Still peace he could bring. Somehow I thought our lives would go on together, and one day he would follow me as I follow him.
Instead, he’s gone into the void.
His last moments spent thinking I betrayed him and stole his redemption.
I’m weightless there against the stone, floating and, at the same time, crushed by the weight of my choices and the impossible question I ask myself: what would I have done differently? In some other world, the Pink is still talking. “I was told that he died of exsanguination.”
“I understand,” I hear myself saying. Stand astride the sorrow. Do not let it touch you. “Thank you, Aurae,” I say. “May I see him?”
She looks back at my guards, and I realize they are not the same Diomedes left. These are Dido’s men. “I’m afraid that is impossible, dominus.”
“Why?” She looks at the ground. “Answer me.”
“His body was taken by schoolmates of Bellerephon to…desecrate in the Waste. Diomedes went to pursue them.”
“So he sent you.”
“I have his trust.”
“I see. Is there anything else?”
“No, dominus.”
When the door closes, the composure shivers. First a crack, like a plate of glass struck by an errant pebble. The crack stretches and spreads and proliferates till the whole plate of dignity shatters all at once. My legs cave from under me as I think of how Pytha will suffer from this news. A single sob escapes. It is alone in the room. No sound follows it to give it company or comfort. Just one long lament of a wounded animal and I am quiet, rocking there on the cold floor with my knees hugged to my chest like that distant child who heard from Aja that his parents had perished. Her dark arms held that boy as he trembled. Her whispers soothed his heart. This stone is cold like that stone. This pain is deep like that pain. This moment like that moment. Only now, with the passing of Cassius, there is no one left to hold the boy; all that was left of him is dead, and the life of the man must begin.