Hours pass. Or maybe days. I have no way to know. Blackcliff’s bells
don’t penetrate the dungeon. I can’t even hear the drums. The
granite walls of my windowless cell are a foot thick, the iron bars two
inches wide. There are no guards. There’s no need for them.
Strange, to have survived the Great Wastes, to have fought supernatural
creatures, to have sunk so low as to kill my own friends, only to die now —
in chains, still masked, stripped of my name, branded a traitor. Disgraced —
an unwanted bastard, a fai lure of a grandson, a murderer. A nobody. A man
whose life means nothing.
Such foolish hope, to have thought that despite being raised to violence I
might one day be free of it. After years of whippings and abuse and blood, I
should have known better. I should never have listened to Cain. I should
have deserted Blackcliff when I had the chance. Maybe I’d have been lost
and hunted, but at least Laia would be alive. At least Demetrius and
Leander and Tristas would be alive.
Now it’s too late. Laia’s dead. Mar cus is Emperor. Helene’s his Blood
Shrike. And soon I’ll be dead. Lost as a leaf on the wind.
The knowledge is a demon gnawing insatiably at my mind. How did this
happen? How could Marcus — mad, d epraved Marcus — be overlord of the
Empire? I see Cain naming him Emperor, see Helene kneeling before him,
swearing to honor him as her master, and I bang my head against the bars in
a futile and painful attempt to get the images out of my mind.
He succeeded where you failed. He showed strength where you showed
weakness.
Should I have killed Laia? I’d be Emperor if I had. She died anyway, in
the end. I pace my prison cell. Five st eps one way, six another. I wish I’d
never carried Laia up the cliffs after my mother marked her. I wish I’d
never danced with her or spoken with her or seen her. I wish I had never
allowed my accursedly single - minded male brain to linger over every detail
about her. That is what brought her to the Augurs’ attention, what made
them choose her as the prize for the Third Trial and the victim for the
Fourth. She’s dead, and it’s because I singled her out.
So much for ke eping my soul.
I laugh, and it echoes in the dungeon like shattered glass. What did I
think was going to happen? Cain was clear enough: Whoever killed the girl
won the Trial. I just didn’t want to believe that rulership of the Empire
could come down to something so brutal. You’re naïve, Elias. You’re a fool.
Helene’s words from a few hours before come back to me.
I couldn’t agree more, Hel.
I try to rest but instead fall into the dream of the killing field. Leander,
Ennis, Demetrius, Laia — bodies everywhere, death everywhere. My
victims’ eyes are open and staring, and the dream is so real I can smell the
blood. I think for a long time that I must be dead, that this is some ring of
hell I’m walking.
Hours, or minutes later, I jerk awake. I know immediately that I’m not
alone.
“Nightmare?”
My mother stands outside my cell, and I wonder how long she’s been
watching me.
“I have them too.” Her hand strays to the tattoo at her neck.
“Your tattoo.” I’ve been wanting to ask about those blue whorls for
years, and, as I’m going to die anyway, I figure I have nothing to lose.
“What is it?” I don’t expect her to answer, but to my surprise, she unbuttons
her uniform jacket and pulls up the shirt beneath to reveal a stretch of pallid
skin. The markings that I mistook as designs are actually letters that twine
around her torso like a coil of nightshade: ALWAYS VICTO
I raise an eyebr ow — I wouldn’t expect Keris Veturia to wear her house’s
motto so proudly, especially considering her history with Grandfather.
Some of the letters are newer than others. The first A is faded, as if it was
inked years ago. The T, meanwhile, looks just days old.
“Run out of ink?” I ask her.
“Something like that.”
I don’t ask her anything else about it — she’s said all she’s going to. She
stares at me in silence. I wonder what she’s thinking. Masks are supposed to
be able to read people, to understand them by obs erving them. I can tell if
strangers are nervous or fearful, honest or insincere, just by watching them
for a few seconds. But my own mother is a mystery to me, her face as dead
and remote as a star.
Questions spring free in my mind, questions I thought I no longer cared
about. Who is my father? Why did you leave me to die? Why didn’t you love
me? Too late to ask them now. Too late for the answers to mean anything.
“The moment I knew you existed” — her voice is soft — “I hated you.”
Despite myself, I look up at her. I know nothing about my conc eption or
birth. Mamie Rila only told me that if the Tribe Saif hadn’t found me
exposed in the desert, I’d have died. My mother wraps her finger s around
the bars of my cell. Her hands are so small.
“I tried to get you out of me,” she says. “I used lifesbane and
nightswood and a dozen other herbs. Nothing worked. You thrived, eating
away at my health. I was sick for months. But I managed to get my
commander to send me on a solo mission hunting Tribal rebels. So no one
knew. No one suspected.
“You grew and grew. Got so big I couldn’t ride a horse, swing a sword. I
couldn’t sle
Ep I couldn’t do anything but wait until you were born so I
could kill you and be done with it.”
She leans her forehead against the bars, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “I
found a Tribal midwife. After I’d attended a few dozen births with her and
learned what I needed, I poisoned her.
“Then one winter morning, I felt the pains. Everything was pr epared. A
cave. A fire. Hot water and towels and cloths. I wasn’t afraid. Suffering and
blood I knew well. The loneliness was an old friend. The anger — I used it to
carry me through.
“Hours later, when you emerged, I didn’t want to touch yo u.” She
releases the bars and paces outside my cell. “I needed to tend to myself, to
make sure there was no infection, no danger. I wasn’t about to let the son
kill me after the father had failed.
“But some weakness took me, some ancient beast’s inclination. I found
myself cleaning your face and mouth. I saw that your eyes were open. And
they were my eyes.
“You didn’t cry. If you had, it would have been easier. I’d have broken
your neck the way I’d break a chicken’s neck, or a Scholar’s. Instead, I
wrapped you, held you, fed you. I laid you in the crook of my arm and
watched as you sl ept. It was de ep night then, the time of night that doesn’t
feel quite real. The time of night that’s like a dream.
“One dawn later, when I could walk, I got on my horse and carried you
to the nearest Tribal camp. I watched them for a time and saw a woman I
liked. She picked up children like sacks of grain and carried a large stick
wherever she went. And though she was young, she didn’t seem to have any
children of her own.”
Mami e Rila.
“I waited until night. And left you in her tent, on her bed. Then I rode
away. But after a few hours, I turned back. I had to find you and kill you.
No one could know of you. You were a mistake, a symbol of my failure.
“By the time I got back, the caravan was gone. Worse, they’d split up. I
was weak and exhausted and had no way to track you. So I let you go. I’d
already made one mistake. Why not one more?
“And then six years later, the Augurs brought you to Blackcliff. My
father ordered me back from the mission I was on. Ah, Elias — ”
I start. She’s never said my name before.
“You should have heard the things he said. Whore. Slut. Streetwalker.
What will our enemies say? Our allies? As it turns out, they said nothing.
He ma de sure of that.
“When you survived your first year at the school, when he saw his own
strength in you, then you were all he could talk about. After years of
disappointment, the great Quin Veturius had an heir he could be proud of.
Did you know, son, that I was the best student this school had seen in a
generation? The fastest? The strongest? After I left, I caught more
Resistance scum alone than the rest of my class put together. I brought
down the Lioness herself. None of that mattered to my father. Not b efore
you were born. Even less so once you arrived. When it came time for him to
name an heir, he didn’t even consider choosing me. Instead, he named you.
A bastard. A mistake.
“I hated him for it. And you, of course. But more than both of you, I
hated myself. For being so weak. For not killing you when I had the chance.
I vowed I’d never again make such a mistake. I’d never again show
weakness.”
She comes back to the bars and pins me with her eyes.
“I know what’s in your mind,” she says. “Remorse. Anger. Y ou go back
in your head and imagine yourself killing the Scholar girl, the way I
imagined killing you. Your regret weighs you down like lead in your blood
— if you’d only done it! If only you’d had the strength! One mistake and
you’ve given up your life. Is it not so? Is it not torture?”
I feel an odd mix of disgust and sympathy for her as I realize that this is
the closest she’ll ever come to relating to me. She takes my silence as
assent. For the first and probably the only time in my life, I see something a
little like sadness in her eyes.
“It’s a hard truth, but there is no going back. Tomorrow, you’ll die.
Nothing can stop it. Not me, not you, not even my indomitable father,
though he’s tried. Take comfort in knowing that your death will give your
mother peace. That the gnawing sense of wrong that has haunted me for
twenty years will be set right. I’ll be free.”
For a few seconds, I can’t bring myself to say anything. That’s it? I’m
going to my death, and all she’s willing to say is what I already know? T hat
she hates me? That I’m the biggest mistake she ever made?
No, that’s not true. She’s told me that she’d been human once. That
she’d had mercy in her. She hadn’t exposed me as I’d always been told.
When she left me with Mamie Rila, she’d tried to give me life.
But when that brief mercy faded, when she regretted her humanity in
favor of her own desires, she became what she is now. Unfeeling. Uncaring.
A monster.
“If I feel regret,” I say, “it’s that I wasn’t willing to die sooner. That I
wasn’t willing to cut my own throat in the Third Trial instead of killing men
I’d known for years.” I stand and go toward her. “I don’t regret not killing
Laia. I’ll never regret that.”
I think of what Cain said to me that night we stood on the watchtower
and looked out at the dunes. You’ll have a chance at true freedom — of body
and of soul.
And suddenly, I don’t feel bewildered or defeated. This — this — was what
Cain spoke of: the freedom to go to my death knowing it’s for the right
reason. The freedom to call my soul my own. The freedom to salvage some
small goodness by refusing to become like my mother, by dying for
something that is worth dying for.
“I don’t know what happened to you,” I say. “I don’t know who my
father was or why you hate him so much. But I know my death won’t free
you. It won’t give you peace. You’re not the one killing me. I chose to die.
Because I’d rather die than become like you. I’d rather die than live with no
mercy, no honor, no soul.”
I wrap my hands around the bars and look down into her eyes. For a
second, confusion flashes there, an all - too - brief crack in her armor. Then
her gaze turns to steel. It doesn’t matter. All I feel for her in this moment is
pity.
“Tomorrow, I’m the one who will be set free. Not you.”
I release the bars and move to the back of the cell. Then I slide to the
floor and close my eyes. I don’t see her face as she leaves. I don’t hear her. I
don’t care.
The killing blow is my release.
Death is coming for me. Death is nearly here.
I am ready for him.