Tiberias blushes too.
We walk in silence. The glass walls of Ridge House look out on flat darkness, the long, clean lights of the passages bouncing back at us. Our reflections keep pace, and I’m struck by the sight of us side by side. I never forget how tall he is, but this is a firm reminder of how ill suited we are. Despite the training session, the sweat still clinging to his skin, Tiberias is a prince born, descended from three centuries of kings. He was bred to be better than anyone else, and it shows.
I feel smaller than usual beside him. A dirty little speck of scars and heartache.
He feels my gaze and glances down. “So, New Town.”
Sighing, I brace myself for the discussion. “We need to do it,” I reply. “Not just for the war, but for us. Reds. The tech towns are little more than enslavement.” I’ve never set foot inside one, but I’ve seen Gray Town, a city of ash and smoke crowded onto the poisoned riverbank. I’ve seen Cameron’s neck and her brother’s, both harshly tattooed with their assigned place. Their “profession.” Their prison.
I intend to leave New Town and the other slums as little more than corpses. Empty, dead. Doomed to rot and disappear and be forgotten.
“I know,” Tiberias says softly, his voice tinged by blue regret. As I watch, his eyes darken. He knows what I’m really saying. If there were no crown between us, I would take his hand, kiss his shoulder. Thank him for even such a small display of support.
I bite my lip, blinking quickly to chase off the urge to touch. “I’ll need Cameron.”
Her name wakes him up. “Is she . . .”
“Alive?” I offer, letting the word echo off the tumbled stone of the passageway. It lingers, a question as much as a hope. “She has to be.”
He slows his pace. “Farley still hasn’t heard anything?”
“She will soon.”
The Scarlet Guard contingents in Piedmont, now converging on the Lowcountry to evacuate anyone who escaped the base, should have reports back in a matter of hours. And Ibarem should have more intelligence to relay when Rash gets to the other survivors. There is no realm of possibility where Cameron isn’t on the list. She’s too strong, too smart, and too damn stubborn to get herself killed.
I can’t even entertain the idea.
Not because we’ll need her to help destroy her wretched home, New Town, but because she’ll be one more body on my conscience. Another friend I pushed toward death.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to think about the others who were still in Piedmont when Bracken took the base. Cameron’s brother, Morrey. The teenagers of the Dagger Legion, rescued from one siege only to be caught in another.
Nothing compares to the agony of losing Shade, but losing the others could destroy me just as easily. How long will this last? How many people will we risk losing?
This is war, Mare Barrow. You risk everyone, every single day.
Especially the person next to me.
I bite my lip, almost drawing blood, to stave off the thought of Tiberias, Cal, dead and gone.
“It doesn’t get easier,” he says, the words ragged.
I open my eyes to find him staring ahead with the dogged focus he usually saves for a battlefield or a war council.
“What?”
“Losing people,” he growls. “There’s never a moment where it goes away, no matter how many times it happens. You never get used it.”
An eternity ago, when I was Mareena Titanos, I stood inside a prince’s bedchamber. He had books all over the place: manuals, treatises on war, strategy, diplomacy. Maneuvers and manipulations for gigantic armies and single soldiers. Calculations weighing the risk and reward. How many people could die and yet he’d still be able to claim victory. Back then it was a stark reminder of who he was, and whose side he was on.
It disgusted me to think of him as a person who would trade life so carelessly. Spill blood for another inch of progress. Now I’ve done the same thing. So has Farley. So has Davidson. None of us are innocent.
None of us will ever be able to forget what we do in these days.
“If it never goes away,” I murmur, feeling as if I might be drowned, “it will eventually be too much.”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely.
I wonder how close he is to his line, and how close I am to mine. Will we cross it on the same day? Is that the only answer?
Do we walk away, broken and beyond repair, together? Or apart?
His eyes smolder over me. I think he’s asking himself the same thing.
Shuddering, I quicken my steps. A firm signal to both of us. “What’s the plan for Harbor Bay?” I ask, looking down the long hall. It bridges this wing of Ridge House to the next, arcing over a weaving garden of trees and fountains barely visible in the darkness.
Tiberias matches my pace easily. “Nothing is set until Davidson comes back. But Farley has ideas, and her contacts in the city will certainly be of help.”
I nod in agreement. Harbor Bay is the oldest city in Norta, a warren of Red criminals and their gangs. A few months ago, one of those gangs, the Mariners, tried to sell us to Maven as we searched for newbloods. But the tide is changing. The Reds of Norta are falling into line as the Scarlet Guard grows in power and notoriety. Our victories are having an effect on some, at least.
“There will be civilian casualties,” Tiberias adds, matter-of-fact. “It isn’t Corvium or Piedmont. Harbor Bay is a city, not a fort. Innocent people, Silver and Red, will be stuck in the middle of this.” He flexes a hand, stretching out long, keen fingers before cracking his knuckles one by one. “We’ll start with Fort Patriot. If we can take control there, the rest of the city will fall.”
I’ve only see Patriot from afar, and the memory is vague. It’s smaller than the Piedmont base, but better equipped and far more important to Maven’s armies.
“Governor Rhambos and his house are sworn to Maven,” I reply. “They’re still firm allies.” Due in no small part to me, since I killed his son in the arena during a failed execution. Of course, he was also trying to kill me. “They won’t surrender easily.”
Tiberias scoffs. “No one ever does.”
“And if you win the city?” I prod. If you survive?
“Then I think we can get Maven to the table.”
The name sends a jolt through me. At my collarbone, Maven’s brand smarts and warms, itching for attention.
“He won’t negotiate. He won’t surrender at all.” I feel sick at the thought of Maven’s empty eyes, his wicked smile. The cloying, unbreakable obsession plaguing us both. “There’s no point in it, Tiberias.”
He winces at my use of his full name, eyes sliding shut for a second. “That’s not why I want to see him.”
The implication is clear. “Oh.”
“I have to be sure,” he grinds out. “I asked the premier about whispers in his country. If there are any newbloods like Elara. Anyone who might be able to help him.”
“And?”
When I walked away from Tiberias in Corvium, he looked heartbroken, agonized. This is no different. Love has a way of cutting us apart like nothing else. “He didn’t think so,” he admits quietly. “But he said he would keep looking.”
I lay a hand on his arm, still damp with sweat. My fingers know his skin as well as my own by now. He feels like quicksand. If I linger too long, I won’t be able to escape.
I try to be gentle. “I doubt even Elara could fix him now. If he would let her.”
His flesh flares hot beneath my hand and I pull away, remembering myself. He doesn’t react. There’s nothing he can say, and nothing he has to say to me. I know what letting go of Maven Calore looks like.
The passage ahead of us dead-ends at a T-shaped junction, trailing off to the left and right. His rooms to one side, mine to the other. We stare at the wall in silence, neither of us daring to move.
Speaking to him feels like a dream, a painful one. Even so, I don’t want to wake up.
“How long?” I whisper.