“Were,” the Jackal says.
“You freak…” Sevro shrieks, rushing the Jackal. Cassius gets in his path, knocking him back. “Get out of my way!”
“Sevro, calm down.”
“Careful, Goblin! There’s hundreds more,” the Jackal says.
Sevro’s overwhelmed, clutching his chest where his heart must be wrenching from the drugs. “Darrow, what do we do?”
“You obey,” the Jackal says.
I force myself to ask: “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” He wraps a bit of cloth around his bleeding arm, using his teeth. “I want you to be what you always wanted, Darrow. I want you to be like your wife. A martyr. Kill yourself. Here. In front of my sister. In return, three billion souls live. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To be a hero? You die, and I will be crowned Sovereign. There will be peace.”
“No,” Mustang says.
“Lilath, detonate another bomb. Mare Anguis, this time.”
Another red blossom erupts on the display. Nuclear fire ends the lives of millions. “Stop!” Mustang says. “Please. Adrius.”
“You just killed six million people,” Cassius says, not comprehending.
“They’ll think it’s us,” Sevro sneers.
The Jackal agrees. “Each bomb looks like part of an invasion. This is your legacy, Darrow. Think of the children burning now. Think of their mothers screaming. How many you can save by simply pulling a trigger.”
My friends look at me, but I’m in a distant place, listening to the moan of the wind through the tunnels of Lykos. Smelling the dew on the gears in the early morning. Knowing Eo will be waiting for me when I come home. Like she waits for me now at the end of the cobbled road, as Narol does, as Pax and Ragnar and Quinn and, I hope, Roque, Lorn, Tactus and the rest of them do. It would not be the end to die. It would be the beginning of something new. I have to believe that. But my death would leave the Jackal here in this world. It would leave him with power over those I love, over all I’ve fought for. I always thought I would die before the end. I trudged on knowing I was doomed. But my friends have breathed love into me, breathed my faith back into my bones. They’ve made me want to live. They’ve made me want to build. Mustang looks at me, her eyes glassy, and I know she wants me to choose life, but she will not choose for me.
“Darrow? What is your answer?”
“No.” I punch him in the throat. He croaks. Unable to breathe. I knock him down and jump atop him, pinning his arms to the ground with my knees so his head is between my legs. I jam my hand into his mouth. His eyes go wild. Legs kicking. His teeth cut my knuckles, drawing blood.
The last time I pinned him down, I took the wrong weapon. What are hands to a creature like him? All his evil, all his lies, are spun with the tongue. So I grab it with my helldiver hand, pinning it between forefinger and thumb like the fleshy little baby pitviper it is. “This is always how the story would end, Adrius,” I say down to him. “Not with your screams. Not with your rage. But with your silence.”
And with a great pull, I rip out the tongue of the Jackal.
He screams beneath me. Blood bubbling from the mutilated stump at the back of his throat. Splashing over his lips. He thrashes. I shove off him and stand in dark rage, holding the bloody instrument of my enemy as he wails on the ground, feeling the hatred rolling through me and seeing the stunned eyes of my friends. I leave the com in his ear so Lilath can hear him wailing and I stalk to the holocontrols and hail Victra’s ship. Her face appears, eyes widening at the sight of my face.
“Darrow…you’re alive…” she manages. “Sevro…The nukes…”
“You need to destroy the Lion of Mars,” I say. “Lilath is detonating the bombs on the surface. There’s hundreds more hidden in the cities. Kill that ship!”
“It’s at the center of their formation,” she protests. “We’ll destroy our fleet trying to get to it. It will take hours if we even manage.”
“Can we jam their signal?” Mustang asks.
“No.”
“EMPs?” Sevro asks, coming up behind me. Victra’s face brightens at the sight of him, before she shakes her head.
“They have shielding,” she says.
“Use the EMPs on the bombs to short-circuit their radio transmitters,” I say. “Fire an Iron Rain and drop EMPs on the city till they’re out.”
“And plunge three billion people into the Middle Ages?” Cassius asks.
“We’ll be slaughtered,” Victra says. “We can’t drop a Rain. We’ll lose our army. And Gold will just keep the moon.”
Another bomb detonates. This one nearer the southern pole. And then a fourth at the equator. We know the consequences to each one. “Lilath doesn’t know exactly what’s happened to Adrius,” Cassius says quickly. “How loyal is she? Will she detonate all of them?”
“Not when he’s still whimpering,” I say. Least that’s my hope.
“Excuse me,” a small voice says. We turn to see Lysander standing behind us. We forgot about him in the mayhem. His eyes are shot red from tears. Sevro raises a pulseFist to shoot him. Cassius knocks it aside.
“Call my godfather,” Lysander says bravely. “Call the Ash Lord. He will see reason.”
“Oh, like hell…” Sevro says.
“We just killed the Sovereign and his daughter,” I say. “The Ash Lord…”
“Destroyed Rhea,” Lysander interrupts. “Yes. And it haunts him. Call him and he will help you. My grandmother would have wanted him to. Luna is our home.”
“He’s right,” Mustang says, pushing me from the console. “Darrow, move.” She’s in that locked zone of concentration. Unable to relate her own thoughts as she starts opening direct com channels to the Gold Praetors in the fleet. The towering men and women appear around us like silvery ghosts, standing among the corpses they watched us make. Last to appear is the Ash Lord. His face stricken with rage. His daughter and master both dead by our hands.
“Bellona, Augustus,” he growls, seeing Lysander among us. “Is it not enough…”
“Godfather, we have no time for recrimination,” Lysander says.
“Lysander…”
“Please listen to them. Our world depends on it.”
Mustang steps forward and raises her voice. “Praetors of the fleet, Ash Lord. The Sovereign is dead. The nuclear blasts you see destroying your home are not Red weapons. They come from your own arsenal which was stolen by my brother. His Praetor, Lilath, is overseeing the detonation of more than four hundred nuclear warheads from the bridge of The Lion of Mars. They will continue until Lilath is dead. My fellow Aureate, embrace change or embrace oblivion. The choice is yours.”
“You are a traitor….” one of the Praetors hisses.
Lysander walks off the holopad to the table where he sat earlier. He picks up his grandmother’s scepter and returns as the Praetors are issuing threats to Mustang.
“She is no traitor,” Lysander says, handing her the scepter. The blood of his grandmother staining his hands. “She is our conqueror.”
The Lion of Mars dies an ignoble death, fired upon from all sides by loyalist and rebel alike. Watching Luna crackle with nuclear explosions did more to kill the bloodlust between the two navies than any peace or truce ever did. Few men truly like seeing beauty burn. But burn it does. Before the Lion is put to rest, more than twelve bombs detonate, carving new cities of fire and ash among those of steel and concrete. The moon is in turmoil.