Can I add him to the list of those I’ve already sent to the grave?
I finally find my answer the night of the gala, when Theodora brings me my pressed clothing from the laundry. She doesn’t say anything that reminds me of Roque. Doesn’t offer pithy wisdom. Instead, she does something I’ve never seen from her. She makes a mistake. While setting my uniform down on a chair, she knocks over a glass of wine on a nearby table. The wine splashes over the sleeve of my white uniform. What flashes through her eyes chills me—terror. The sort a deer might have when staring at an oncoming aircar. She streams out apologies as though I would hit her if she did not. It takes her a moment to compose herself, for the flash of panic to dissipate. When it does, she sits there on the floor, dabbing at the uniform in silence.
I don’t know what to do. I stand there awkwardly for a moment before putting a hand on her shoulder to tell her all’s well. That’s when she begins to cry in great heaving sobs that rack her small shoulders. She flinches from my touch and composes herself, telling me I’ll have to wear black instead of white. She may not know what is about to happen, but she can feel it in me, in the air.
While the other lancers play with each other, take microabrasion baths, and consult with stylists to prepare themselves for the gala, I lace up my thick military boots with trembling fingers. I’ve never been good at saving my friends. It seems I always drag them into harm’s way. Sevro, I believe, is only still alive because of the distance between us. Fitchner was always afraid I’d kill his son. Said my life’s strand was so strong that it frayed all those around it. Now, seeing Theodora like that … it reminds me how fragile and complicated we really are. I don’t know why she cried. Some past trauma? Some sense of what’s to come? Not knowing reminds me of the depth to the people around me. I am speechless, cold, but Roque is warm … he would have known what to say.
I knock on his door several minutes before Augustus’s entourage is set to depart the villa for the gala. There is no answer. I open the door and find my friend sitting on his bed, holding an ancient book gently by its spine. His smooth features ripple into a smile when he sees it is me.
“I thought you were Tactus come to beg me to shoot some stims before the gala. He always thinks because I’m reading, I’m not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted. Especially that beast. He will run himself into the ground one of these days.”
I force a chuckle. “At least he’s sincere about his vices.”
“Have you met his brothers yet?” Roque asks. I shake my head. “They make Tactus look like a lamb.”
“Goryhell,” I swear. I lean against the door’s frame. “That bad?”
“The Rath brothers? They are terrible. Terribly rich. Terribly talented. And their chief virtue lies in their ability to sin. They’re prodigies at it.” Roque grins conspiratorially. “If you believe rumors—and I love rumors, remind me of Byron and Wilde—Tactus’s brothers opened a brothel in Agea when they were fourteen. Classy affair till they started arranging more … customized experiences.”
“Then what happened?”
“Ruined daughters, sons. Insults. Duels. Dead heirs. Debt. Poison.” He shrugs. “It’s the Rath family. What do you expect from those blackguards? It’s why everyone was so surprised Tactus had taken up with an Iron Gold like you,” he clarifies. “You know his brothers mock him for being in your shadow. It’s why he’s always so sarcastic. He wants to be like you, but he can’t. So he resorts to his usual defenses.” He frowns. “Sometimes I feel like you understand all of us better than we understand ourselves. Then other times, it’s like you could care less.” Roque tilts his head at me when I say nothing. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re never one for nothing.” He sets his book down on his chest and pats the edge of the bed, drawing me into the room. “Sit, please.”
“I came because I wanted to apologize,” I say very slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’ve been distant these last months, particularly these last days. I don’t think I was fair to you. Not when you’ve been my most loyal friend. Well, you and Sevro, but he won’t stop sending me strange pictures over the net.”
“More unicorns?”
I laugh. “I think he has a problem.”
Roque pats my hand. “Thank you. But you’re like a hound apologizing for wagging its tail. You’re always distant, Darrow. You don’t have to apologize for how you are, not to me.”
“More distant, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” he agrees, allowing it. “We all have our own tides inside us. They go in. Out.” He shrugs. “Not really ours to control. The things, people, that orbit us do that, at least more than we’d like to admit.” After watching me a moment, he furrows his brow in thought. “Is this about Mustang? I know it was hard for you to leave her, no matter what you said at the time. You should seek her out while we’re here. I know you miss her.”
“I don’t.”
“Liar, liar, cheeks afire.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, we’re not talking about her.”
“Fine. Fine. Then you’re worried, aren’t you? About the auction?” He pauses, smiling and watching me. “You shouldn’t. I’ve settled that matter. I’m going to bid on you.”
“You don’t have the money,” I say flatly.
“Do you know how badly a Pixie would pay to get a Peerless with my pedigree and connections in their debt? Millions. I could even go to Quicksilver if I need. He loans to Golds all the time. Point is, I’ll have the money, even if my parents won’t help me. So never you worry, brother.” He pokes me with his foot. “House Mars has to mean something, eh?”
“Thank you,” I say, stuttering out the words, unable to really grasp what he’s done. And why? It puts his neck out. It endangers him and crosses his parents. “No one else has even mentioned the auction to me.”
“They’re afraid your bad luck is contagious. You know how it is.” He pauses, waiting because he knows me so well. “There’s something else. Isn’t there?”
I shake my head. “Do you …” My words fail me. “Do you ever feel lost?” The question hangs between us, intimate, awkward only on my end. He doesn’t scoff as Tactus and Fitchner would, or scratch his balls like Sevro, or chuckle like Cassius might have, or purr as Victra would. I’m not sure what Mustang might have done. But Roque, despite his Color and all the things that make him different, slowly slides a marker into the book and sets it on the nightstand beside the four-poster, taking his time and allowing an answer to evolve between us. Movements thoughtful and organic, like Dancer’s were before he died. There’s a stillness in him, vast and majestic, the same stillness I remember in my father.
“Quinn once told me a story.” He waits for me to moan a grievance at the mention of a story, and when I don’t, his tone sinks into deeper gravity. “Once, in the days of Old Earth, there were two pigeons who were greatly in love. In those days, they raised such animals to carry messages across great distances. These two were born in the same cage, raised by the same man, and sold on the same day to different men on the eve of a great war.
“The pigeons suffered apart from one another, each incomplete without their lover. Far and wide their masters took them, and the pigeons feared they would never again find one another, for they began to see how vast the world was, and how terrible the things in it. For months and months, they carried messages for their masters, flying over battle lines, through the air over men who killed each other for land. When the war ended, the pigeons were set free by their masters. But neither knew where to go, neither knew what to do, so each flew home. And there they found each other again, as they were always destined to return home and find, instead of the past, their future.”