So we hope.
Under the supervision of Holiday, Sefi has set off to Mars to begin the slow process of freeing the rest of her people, visiting the poles with medicine instead of weapons. I remember how dark her eyes seemed when she looked at one of the Jackal’s nuclear craters in person. For now, she’s embraced the legacy of her brother, and plans to settle on warmer land set aside for her people on Mars. Though she wishes to keep her people from the alien cities, I think she knows deep down that she will not be able to control them. The Obsidians will leave their prisons. They will grow curious, spread, and assimilate. Their world will never be the same. Nor will that of my people. Soon I will return to Mars to help Dancer lead the migration of Reds to the surface. Many will stay and continue the lives they know. But for others, there will be a chance for life under the sky.
I said farewell to Cassius the day before last as he departed Luna. Mustang wanted him to stay and help us shape a new, fairer system of justice. But he’s had enough of politics. “You don’t have to go,” I told him as I stood with him on the landing pad.
“There’s nothing for me here but memories,” he said. “I’ve been living my life too long for others. I want to see what else is out there. You can’t fault me for that.”
“And the boy?” I asked, nodding to Lysander, who moved into the ship carrying a satchel of belongings. “Sevro thinks it’s a mistake to let him live. What were his words? ‘It’s like leaving a pitviper egg under your seat. Sooner or later it’s gonna hatch.’ ”
“And what do you think?”
“I think it’s a different world. So we should act like it. He’s got Lorn’s blood in his veins as much as he’s got Octavia’s. Not that blood makes a difference anymore.”
My tall friend smiled fondly at me. “He reminds me of Julian. He’s a good soul, despite everything. I’ll raise him right. Away from all this.” He extended a hand, not to shake mine, but to give me the ring he took from my finger the night Lorn and Fitchner died. I closed his hand back around it.
“That belongs to Julian,” I said.
He nodded softly. “Thank you…brother.” And there, on a citadel landing platform in what was once the heart of Gold power, Cassius au Bellona and I shake hands and say farewell, almost six years to the day since we first met.
—
Weeks later, I watch the waves lap at the shore as a gull careens overhead. Whitecaps mark the dark water that lashes the northern beach’s sea stacks. Mustang and I set our little two-person flier down on the east-northeast coast of the Pacific Rim, at the edge of a rain forest on a great peninsula. Moss grows on the rocks, on the trees. The air is crisp. Just cold enough to see your breath. It is my first time on Earth, but I feel like my spirit has come home. “Eo would have loved it here, wouldn’t she?” Mustang asks me. She wears a black coat with the collar pulled up around her neck. Her new Praetorian bodyguards sit in the rocks a half kilometer off.
“Yes,” I say. “She would have.” A place like this is the beating heart of our songs. Not a warm beach or a tropical paradise. This wild land is full of mystery. It holds its secrets covetously behind arms of fog and veils of pine needles. Its pleasures, like its secrets, must be earned. It reminds me of my dreams of the Vale. The smoke from the fire we made of driftwood rises diagonally across the horizon.
“Do you think it will last?” Mustang asks me, watching the water from our place in the sand. “The peace.”
“It would be the first time,” I say.
She grimaces and leans into me, closing her eyes. “At least we have this.”
I smile, reminded of Cassius as an eagle skims low over the water before rising up through the mist and disappearing in the trees that jut from the top of a sea stack. “Have I passed your test?”
“My test?” she asks.
“Ever since you blocked my ship from leaving Phobos, you’ve been testing me. I thought I passed on the ice, but it didn’t stop there.”
“You noticed,” she says with a mischievous little grin. It fades and she brushes hair from her eyes. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t just follow you. I needed to see if you could build. I needed to see if my people could live in your world.”
“No, I understand that,” I say. “But there’s more to it. Something changed when you saw my mother. My brother. Something opened up in you.”
She nods, eyes still on the water. “There’s something I have to tell you.” I look over at her. “You lied to me for nearly six years. Since the moment we met. In the Lykos tunnel you broke what we had. That trust. That feeling of closeness we built. Piecing that together takes time. I needed to see if we could find what we lost. I needed to see if I could trust you.”
“You know you can.”
“I do, now,” she says. “But…”
I frown. “Mustang, you’re shaking.”
“Just let me finish. I didn’t want to lie to you. But I didn’t know how you would react. What you would do. I needed you to make the choice to be more than a killer not just for me, but for someone else too.” She looks past me to the blue sky where a ship coasts lazily down. I hold my hand up against the autumn sun to watch it approach.
“Are we expecting company?” I ask warily.
“Of a sort.” She stands. I join her. And she goes to her tiptoes to kiss me. It is a gentle, long kiss that makes me forget the sand under our boots, the smell of pine and salt in the breeze. Her nose is cold against mine. Her cheeks ruddy. All the sadness, all the hurt in the past making this moment all the sweeter. If pain is the weight of being, love is the purpose. “I want you to know that I love you. More than anything.” She backs away from me, pulling me along. “Almost.”
The ship skims over the evergreen forest and sets down on the beach. Its wings fold backward like a settling pigeon. Sand and salt spray kicked up by its engines. Mustang’s fingers twine through mine as we trudge through the sand. The ramp unfurls. Sophocles sprints out onto the beach, running toward a group of seagulls. Behind him comes the voice of Kavax and the sweet sound of a child laughing. My feet falter. I look over at Mustang in confusion. She pulls me on, a nervous smile on her face. Kavax exits the ship with Dancer. Victra and Sevro come with, waving over to me before looking expectantly back up the ramp.
I used to think the life strands of my friends frayed around me, because mine was too strong. Now I realize that when we are wound together, we make something unbreakable. Something that lasts long after this life ends. My friends have filled the hollow carved in me by my wife’s death. They’ve made me whole again. My mother joins them now on the ramp, walking with Kieran to set foot on Earth for the first time. She smiles like I did when she smells the salt. The wind kicks her gray hair. Her eyes are glassy and full of the joy my father always wanted for her. And in her arms she carries a laughing child with golden hair.
“Mustang?” I ask. My voice trembling. “Who is that?”
“Darrow…” Mustang smiles over at me. “That is our son. His name is Pax.”
Pax was born nine months after the Lion’s Rain, as I lay in the Jackal’s stone table. Fearing that our enemies would seek the boy out if they knew of his existence, Mustang kept her pregnancy a secret on the Dejah Thoris until she was able to give birth. Then, leaving the child to be guarded by Kavax’s wife in the asteroid belt, she returned to war.
That peace she intended to make with the Sovereign was not just for her and her people, but for her son. She wanted a world without war for him. I can’t hate her for that. For keeping this secret from me. She was afraid. Not just that she could not trust me, but that I was not prepared to be the father my son deserves. That was her test, all this time. She almost told me in Tinos, but after conferring with my mother, she decided against it. Mother knew if I realized I had a son, I would not be able to do what needed to be done.