“Helly, no.”
“Faris, Rallius, get her to Harper. You know how to find him. Help him however you can. There are still Plebeians in the city, in these tunnels, and we need to get them out.” I lean toward both of them, pinning them with my gaze. “If anything happens to her or the child, I swear to the skies, I will kill you both myself.”
They salute, and I turn to my sister, taking one last look at the baby. Upon seeing my face, he goes quiet. “I’ll see you soon, young one.” I kiss him and Livia, and turn back, ignoring my sister’s pleas, then demands, for me to return to her side at once.
When I get back to the Black Guard barracks, I immediately choke on the smoke that fills the laundry closet. Flames roar at the front of the barracks. From a few streets away, the howls of rampaging Karkauns fill the streets. They have not reached here yet, but they will soon.
I draw a scarf up over my face and crouch low to avoid the smoke, my war hammer drawn. When I emerge from the room, I nearly slip on the pools of blood everywhere.
The men of Gens Aquilla, sworn to protect Marcus, lie dead, though it is clear that they took many of the Commandant’s men with them. Her body is not among the carnage. But then, I knew it would not be. Keris Veturia would never die in so undignified a manner.
There are other bodies among the dead—Mariners. Before I can understand what the hells they were doing here, a voice calls out.
“Sh-Shrike.”
The voice is so quiet that I do not at first know where it comes from. But I hunt through the smoke until I find Marcus Farrar, Imperator Invictus and Overlord of the Realm, pinned against a wall by his own scim, drowning in his own blood, unable to move. His hands are limp over the wound in his stomach. He has hours yet until he dies. The Commandant did this on purpose.
I go to him. Flames lick the wood of the stairwell, and a loud crack sounds from downstairs—a beam falling. I should escape through a window. I should let this monster burn.
How long have I waited for this? How long have I wanted him to die? And yet when I see him pinned here like an animal killed for sport, I feel only pity.
And something else. A compulsion. A need. A desire to heal him. No. Oh no.
“Keris moved the Hall of Records, Shrike.” He speaks calmly, if softly, saving his breath to relay what he must. “She moved the treasury.”
I sigh in relief. “Then the Empire will still stand, even if we lose Antium.”
“She did it weeks ago. She wanted the city to fall, Shrike. She knew the Karkauns would bring ghosts. She knew they would win.”
A dozen disparate puzzle pieces click into place.
“The Illustrian Paters—”
“Left days ago for Serra,” Marcus says. “She evacuated them.”
And the master of the treasury met with her despite her murdering his son. She must have told him what was coming. She must have promised to get his family out in exchange for him moving the Empire’s wealth.
And the Hall of Records. The record archivists were preparing for a move. Harper told me that when he was getting information on the Commandant. We simply didn’t realize what it meant.
Keris knew the city would fall. She was planning for it right in front of me.
Skies, I should have killed her. Whether the Plebeians hated me or not, whether Marcus was overthrown or not, I should have killed that demon.
“The legions,” I say, “from Silas and Estium—”
“They aren’t coming. She sabotaged the communiqués.”
It did not have to be this way, Blood Shrike. Keris’s words haunt me. Remember that, before the end.
He does not say it is my fault; he doesn’t have to. “Antium will fall,” Marcus goes on quietly. “But the Empire will survive. Keris has ensured that, though she wishes to make certain that my son will not survive with it. Stop her, Blood Shrike. See him on the throne.” He reaches for my hand, his own still strong enough to dig into my flesh so hard that it draws blood. “Swear a blood oath that you will see it done.”
“I swear it,” I say. “By blood and by bone.” The compulsion to heal him comes over me again. I fight it, but then he speaks.
“Shrike,” he says. “I have a final order for you.”
Heal me. I know he’s going to say it. The magic rises in me, ready, even as I shrink away from the thought, disgusted, repulsed by it. How can I heal him, the demon who killed my father, who ordered my torture, who abused and beat my sister?
The fire edges closer. Leave, Shrike! Run!
Marcus releases my hand and scrabbles at his side for a dagger, which he thrusts into my hand. “Mercy, Blood Shrike. That is my order. I do not deserve it. I do not even wish it. But you’ll give it to me anyway. Because you’re good.” He spits out the word, a curse. “It’s why my brother loved you.”
The Emperor meets my eyes. As ever, his are filled with rage, hatred. But beneath that is something I have never seen before in the fifteen years I have known Marcus Farrar: resignation.
“Do it, Shrike,” he whispers. “He waits for me.”
I think of baby Zacharias and the innocence of his gaze. Marcus too must have looked that way once. Perhaps that’s what his twin, Zak, saw when he looked at him: not the monster he had become, but the brother he had been.
I remember my father as he died. My mother and my sister. My face is wet. When Marcus speaks, I can barely hear the words.
“Please, Shrike.”
“The Emperor is dead.” My voice shakes, but I find my strength in the mask I wear, and when I speak again, it is without emotion. “Long live the Emperor.”
Then I drive the dagger into his throat, and I do not look away until the light in his eyes is gone.
LII: Laia
The ring does not evanesce.
I do not allow myself to look at it until I am outside the Black Guard barracks, tucked in an alcove near the stables, safely away from Emperor Marcus. The baby is strong, and the Blood Shrike’s sister is as well. I whispered to her to keep herself clean, to take care of herself to prevent infection. But she saw my face when Marcus entered. She knew.
“Go,” she whispered. “Take the towels, as if you are changing them.”
I did as she said. Swiping the rings at the same time was only a moment’s work. No one even looked my way.
I took both, not knowing which was the Shrike’s ring and which was the ring of her family. Now I stand with them in the madness of Antium’s streets, staring. Hoping.
Only the Ghost may stand against the onslaught. Should the Lioness’s heir claim the Butcher’s pride, it will evanesce, and the blood of seven generations shall pass from the earth before the King may seek vengeance again.
The ring should be gone. Why did it not happen? I put it on my finger, pull it off. But there’s something wrong with it. It does not feel like my armlet. It just feels like a normal hunk of metal.
I rack my brain trying to remember if I missed something in the prophecy. Perhaps I have to do something to it. Burn it, or break it with Serric steel. I cast about for a weapon—something a soldier might have dropped.
Which is when my neck prickles, and I know instantly that someone watches me. It is a feeling that has become unsettlingly familiar in the past few months.
But this time, he shows himself. “Forgive me, Laia of Serra.” The Nightbringer speaks quietly, but the violence latent in his voice still cuts through the shrieks of missiles flying and men dying painfully. “I wished to see your face when you realized that all your work, all your hope, was for nothing.”
“It is not for nothing,” I say. It cannot be.
“It was.” He saunters toward me. “Because what you hold is not the Star.”
“You lie.”
“Do I?” He closes the distance between us and snatches the rings from my hand. I cry out, but he closes his hand around them and, before my eyes, crushes them to powder. No. Impossible.