“Where is Quinn?” Sevro asks sharply. “Did they get her to the medBay yet?”
Mustang does not answer. Instead, she looks to the ramp of the stork, where Roque descends, carrying Quinn in his arms. She’s pale. Long. And lifeless. Sevro does not move. Does not speak. His nostrils flare as a breath catches in his chest, a pitiful sob locked tight in the boy who never cries. He goes numb. Ghostlike. And I reach for him, but he pulls away not in anger, but in confusion, as though he was told the future once, and this reality is not what was promised. He stumbles backward, away from her body, looking around, before turning and fleeing the hangar.
Roque walks past me with Quinn. His face is slack and tired. He wants to say something bitter, but he bites his tongue and just shakes his head at me. He still does not know why I attacked him in his room before the gala. And now this. I’ve never seen him so broken.
“Look at her,” he tells me. “Darrow, look at your friend.”
I look at Quinn and feel everything go quiet. Here she is, peaceful in death. Why can we not breathe life back into her? Why can we not simply restart the day? Do everything right. Save the ones we love.
Roque moves away with Quinn toward the hangar’s transparent pulse field, which opens into space. He’s bent and broken as he walks to the stars to push his lost girl out amongst them.
I grab the Jackal when I see him exit the stork, demanding to know what happened. She died, he tells me. It’s just that. He’s tired like the rest of us. He rolls down his sleeves. “I won’t apologize. I did my best.”
“Of course you did,” I say, shaking myself. “Of course.”
He asks me where my helmet cam is. I stare at him. “The footage,” he says. “Do you even understand what you just did?” He waves around. “Two men took one of the greatest vessels ever built. Golds will flock to our banners. All it takes is my media and your story.”
I tell him, absently, almost forgetting the dataRecorder the Sons of Ares put in my tooth to record the bomb blast. It’s activated with a clench of my molars. I clenched them as soon as I sat down in the Sovereign’s office. I reach inside my mouth and delicately pry it loose of the gums. It is smaller than a hair. The Jackal’s eyes light up.
“Where did you get this?” he asks.
“Black market,” I say. “Sovereign has damned herself. Use the recording. Make this war a fair fight.”
I leave the Jackal there and am about to leave the cleanup to others, when I notice the Oranges and lowColors watching me. I can’t simply lead with violence. So I join Pebble and Harpy and lend my aid in helping the wounded to the sickbay. The rest of the Howlers help too. And Mustang, and eventually even Victra.
After the last Gray is loaded on a gurney, I stand in the empty hangar. Augustus has gone to the bridge. The Jackal avoids the Telemanuses who accompany him, and instead makes for the communications hub. I’m left alone. Roque is gone. I don’t know what to do, where to go.
Blood and scorch marks stain the deck. I look at my hands. These are the consequences of my actions, and I feel so alone. I lean my head against the cold metal wall.
She comes from behind. I don’t think she says my name. I’m not sure. I just smell her damp hair as her arms wrap around me. Squeezing me tightly.
“I know you’re tired,” Mustang says quietly. “But Sevro needs you.”
“What about Roque?” I ask, turning to face her. So much lingers unsaid between us. So many questions unanswered. So many crimes left unforgiven. So much anger and perhaps still the faint flicker of something more. I feel it as she cups my neck, and lets the strength in her fingers lend itself to me.
“Not now,” she says. He blames me. And he should. They all should blame me. And it’s only going to get worse.
23
Trust
I find him in a communal washroom. He’s earned one of the staterooms that the others are claiming for the return voyage to Mars, but that’s not how he thinks. This is still the boy who hid in the horse. No, I think. Not a boy any longer.
“She cared for you, Sevro.”
His arms cross before him, freckled and thin. A towel wraps around his waist, another hangs around his shoulders. Golds don’t care about nudity but Sevro always has. He’s gained a tattoo since last I saw him. A huge black and gray wolf along his back. The Howlers are his everything. Once they were just a tool to me; now I think of them as something more. But what does that mean, when I use them just the same? He stares at the water running into the drain of the shower. Down and down it spirals.
“In the end, I believe I’ll enjoy war,” he says. “Gotta toughen my spine a bit. Callous my hands. Bastards tell us it’s all roses and glory.” He looks up. “Don’t you smell the roses, Reaper?”
I sit beside him on the bench. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Course I gory heard you. I’m missing an eye, not an ear.” He taps his bionic eye with a bony finger. “Course I know she cared. But never in the way I wanted. She deserved to live. If any of us ugly little shiteaters deserve it, it was her. There wasn’t a cruel bone in her body. Not one. But it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if we’re good or we’re evil. It’s all up to chance.”
“It was chance you knew her at all,” I say. “Chance that brought her to House Mars.”
“No. It was my father,” Sevro says. “He drafted her, traded a pick with Juno to get her.” He shakes his head. “All because he thought she would temper us, govern our anger. If he hadn’t picked her, we wouldn’t have met her, and she’d be alive.”
“Maybe,” I say, thinking of Eo. “But she chose to come here. She chose to follow me. To follow you.”
“Just like Pax.”
I nod, touching my pegasus.
“It’s all piss and shit. Isn’t it?” Sevro says. “Doesn’t matter how pretty they dress it up. We’re still in the game. We’re always going to be in a slagging game. Spit on their empire. Spit on this piss and this shit. I came for you because he told me what you are.”
I stare at him, unable to understand.
“What do you mean?” I ask with a nervous laugh.
“Turn it on,” he says. “I know you brought one. You’re thorough, Reaper. Always thorough.”
“Why are you acting so—”
“Shut up and turn it on.”
I nod and activate the device in my pocket. A jamField deploys. I’m not so prideful as the Sovereign to believe no one could listen in. Sevro stares as me till I shift uncomfortably.
“So what am I?” I ask.
“Even now?” he asks, shaking his head. “You are wound tight. Say the name of the person who sent me.”
“Mustang sent you. You told me she brought you in from the Rim. Same with all the Howlers.”
“That’s right. She did. Took six months to get from Pluto. But guess who came to me during my layover in Triton. Go on, Reap. Guess.”
“Lorn?” His lips curl into a sneer. “Fitchner?”
Sevro spits in my face, right under the eye. “Guess wrong again and I leave you like this.” He snaps his fingers. “I will not come back. I will not help you. I will not bleed for you. I will not sacrifice my friends for a man who doesn’t give enough of a shit about me to put his neck out just once. Trust goes both ways, Darrow. This time you have to take a leap.”
He’s not bluffing. And I know what I want to say. But how can it be? Sevro is a Gold. A bloodydamn Gold. He heard me say “bloodydamn” to Apollo. He covered it up. Didn’t he? Or was that a mistake? Is he trapping me? No. No, if that’s true, then the game is already over. Eo’s dream has failed. Who is closer to me than he? Who loves me more than this strange, nasty outcast? No one.
So I look him in his dull gold eyes. “Ares sent you.”
Silence between us.
A terrible five seconds. Six. Seven. He stands and locks the door before pulling a small black crystal from the pocket of his crumpled pants. “For your breath only.”