An Ember in the Ashes

When he is done speaking, he hangs the scim up. The streaks running down his mask catch the firelight, and I understand, now, why he was shaking when he walked in, why his eyes are so haunted.

“So you see,” he says, “I’m just like the Mask who killed your grandparents. I’m just like Marcus. Worse, actually, because such men consider it their duty to kill. I know better. And I did it anyway.”
“The Augurs didn’t give you a choice. You couldn’t find Aquilla to end the Trial, and if you hadn’t fought, you’d have died.”
“Then I should have died.”
“Nan always said that as long as there is life, there is hope. If you’d refused to give the order, your men would be dead right now—either at the hands of the Augurs or on the blades of Aquilla’s platoon. Don’t forget: She chose life for herself and her men. Either way, you’d have blamed yourself. Either way, people you cared about would have suffered.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter. Of course it matters. Because you’re not evil.” The knowledge is a revelation and one so staggering that I badly want him to see it too. “You’re not like the others. You killed to save. You put others first. Not—not like me.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Veturius. “When the Mask came, I ran.” The words spill out of me, a tumbling river I’ve dammed up for too long. “My grandparents were dead. The Mask had Darin, my brother. Darin told me to run, even though he needed me. I should have helped him, but I couldn’t. No.” I dig my fists into my thighs. “I didn’t. I chose not to stay. I chose to run, like a coward. I still don’t understand it. I should have stayed, even if that meant dying.”
My eyes seek the floor in shame. But then his hand is on my chin, tipping my face up. His clean scent washes over me.
“As you say, Laia,” he forces me to meet his eyes, “there’s hope in life. If you hadn’t run, you’d be dead. And Darin too.” He lets me go and sits back.
“Masks don’t like defiance. He’d have made you pay for it.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Veturius smiles that knife’s-edge smile. “Look at us,” he says. “Scholar slave and Mask, each trying to persuade the other that they’re not evil. The Augurs do have a sense of humor, don’t they?”
My fingers are clenched around the hilt of the dagger Veturius gave me, and a hot anger rises inside me—at the Augurs for letting me think I was to be interrogated. At the Commandant for leaving her own child to die a torturous death, and at Blackcliff for training that child to be a killer. At my parents for dying and my brother for apprenticing himself to a Martial. At Mazen for his demands and secrets. At the Empire and its iron-fisted control over every aspect of our lives.
I want to defy all of them—the Empire, the Commandant, the Resistance.
I wonder where such defiance comes from, and my armlet feels hot suddenly.
Perhaps there’s more of my mother in me than I thought.
“Maybe we don’t have to be Scholar slave and Mask.” I drop the dagger.
“For tonight, maybe we can just be Laia and Elias.”
Emboldened, I reach out and pull at the edge of his mask, which has never seemed like a part of him. It resists, but now I want it off. I want to see the face of the boy I’ve been speaking to all night, not the Mask I always thought he was. So I pull harder, and the mask falls into my hands with a hiss. The back is bent into sharp spikes wet with blood. The tattoo on his neck glistens with a dozen small wounds.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize...”
He looks into my eyes, and something undefined burns in his gaze, a flash of emotion that brings a different sort of fire to my skin.
“I’m glad you took it off.”
I should look away. I cannot. His eyes are nothing like his mother’s. Hers are the brittle gray of broken glass, but Elias’s, with their ring of dark lashes, are a deeper hue, like the thick heart of a storm cloud. They draw me in, mesmerize me, refuse to release me. I lift tentative fingers to his skin. The stubble of his cheek is rough beneath my palm.
Keenan’s face flashes through my mind and fades as quickly. He is far away, distant, dedicated utterly to the Resistance. Elias is here, before me, warm and beautiful and broken.
He’s a Martial. A Mask.
But not here. Not tonight, in this room. Here, now, he is just Elias and I am just Laia, and we are, both of us, drowning.
“Laia...”
There is a plea in his voice, in his eyes. What does it mean? Does he want me to back away? Does he want me to come closer?
I lift myself up on my toes, and his face comes down at the same time. His lips are soft, softer than I could have imagined, but there is a hard desperation behind them, a need. The kiss speaks. It begs. Let me forget, forget, forget.
His cloak falls away from me, and my body is against his. He pulls me to his chest, his hands running down my back, clasping my thigh, drawing me closer, closer. I arc into him, reveling in his strength, his fire, the alchemy between us twisting and burning and melding until it feels like gold.
Then he breaks away, his hands held out before him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m a Mask and you’re a slave, and I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s all right.” My lips burn. “I’m the one who...started it.”
We stare at each other, and he looks so confused, so angry at himself that I smile, sadness and embarrassment and desire coursing through me. He picks his cloak up from the floor and holds it out to me, averting his eyes.