An Ember in the Ashes

“You followed orders,” I say. This burden, at least, I can take. “Orders I gave. Their deaths aren’t on you. They’re on me.”
Faris meets my eyes, a ghost of the big, joyful boy he had once been.

“They’re free now,” he says. “Free of the Augurs. Of Blackcliff. Not like us.”
When Dex and Faris walk away, I rappel to the desert floor, where Helene sits cross-legged in the shade of the cliffs, her feet buried to the ankles in the hot sand. Her hair ripples in the wind, glowing gold-white like the curve of a sunlit dune. I approach her as one would an angry horse.
“You don’t need to be so cat-footed,” she says when I’m a few feet away.
“I’m not armed.”
I sit beside her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m alive.”
“I’m sorry, Helene. I know you can’t forgive me, but—”
“Stop. We didn’t have a choice, Elias. If I’d gotten the upper hand, I’d have done the same thing to you. I killed Cyril. I killed Silas and Lyris. I nearly killed Dex, but he backed off, and I couldn’t find him again.” Her silver face could be carved of marble, it’s so emotionless. Who is this person?
“If we’d refused to fight,” she says, “our friends would have died. What were we supposed to do?”
“I killed Demetrius.” I search her face for anger. She and Demetrius grew close after his brother died—she was the only one who ever knew what to say to him. “And—and Leander.”
“You did what you had to. Just as I did what I had to. Just as Faris and Dex and all the others who survived did what they had to.”
“I know they did what they had to do, but they followed an order I gave. An order I should have been strong enough not to give.”
“You’d have died, Elias.” She doesn’t look at me. She’s working so hard to convince herself that it’s all right. That what we did was necessary. “Your men would have died.”
“The battle will end when you defeat or are defeated by the leader of the enemy. If I’d been willing to die first, Tristas would still be alive. Leander. Demetrius. All of them, Helene. Zak knew it—he begged Marcus to kill him. I should have done the same. You’d be named Empress—”
“Or the Augurs would name Marcus, and I’d be his—his slave—”
“We told our men to kill.” Why doesn’t she understand? Why isn’t she willing to face it? “We gave the order. We followed it ourselves. It’s unforgiveable.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” Helene pushes herself to her feet, and I stand, too. “Did you think the Trials would get easier? Didn’t you know this would come? They’ve made us live our deepest fears. They’ve thrown us at the mercy of creatures that shouldn’t exist. Then they turned us against each other. Strength of arms and mind and heart. You’re surprised? You’re na?ve, is what you are. You’re a fool.”
“Hel, you don’t know what you’re saying. I almost killed you—”
“Thank the skies for it!” She’s in front of me, so close that strands of her long hair blow into my face. “You fought back. After losing so many training battles, I wasn’t sure you would. I was so scared—I thought you’d be dead out there—”
“You’re sick.” I back away from her. “Don’t you have any regret? Any remorse? Those were our friends we killed.”
“They were soldiers,” Helene says. “Empire soldiers who died in battle, who died with honor. I’ll celebrate them. I’ll mourn them. But I won’t regret what I did. I did it for the Empire. I did it for my people.” She paces back and forth. “Don’t you see, Elias? The Trials are bigger than you or me, bigger than our guilt, our shame. We’re the answer to a five-hundred-year-old question. When Taius’s line fails, who will lead the Empire? Who will ride at the head of a half-million-strong army? Who will control the destinies of forty million souls?”
“What about our destinies? Our souls?”
“They took our souls a long time ago, Elias.”
“No, Hel.” Laia’s words ring in my head, words I want to believe. Words I need to believe. You have a soul. Don’t let them take it from you. “You’re wrong. I can never fix what I did yesterday, but when the Fourth Trial comes, I won’t—”
“Don’t, Elias.” Helene puts her fingers over my mouth, her anger replaced with something like despair. “Don’t make vows when you can’t know their cost.”
“I crossed a line yesterday, Helene. I won’t cross it again.”
“Don’t say that.” Her hair flies about, and her eyes are wild. “How can you become Emperor if that’s the way you think? How can you win the Trials if—”
“I don’t want to win the Trials,” I say. “I’ve never wanted to win them. I didn’t even want to take them. I was going to desert, Helene. Right after graduation, when everyone else would be celebrating, I was going to run.”
She shakes her head, holding up her hands as if to ward off my words. But I don’t stop. She needs to hear this. She needs to know the truth of who I am.
“I didn’t run, because Cain told me the only chance I had to be truly free was to take the Trials. I want you to win the Trials, Hel. I want to be named Blood Shrike. And then I want you to set me free.”
“Set you free? Set you free? This is freedom, Elias! When will you understand that? We’re Masks. Our destiny is power and death and violence. It’s what we are. If you don’t own that, then how can you ever be free?”
She’s delusional. I’m trying to comprehend this dreadful truth when I hear the sound of approaching bootsteps. Hel hears it too, and we whirl to find Cain rounding a curve in the cliffs. A squadron of eight legionnaires accompanies him. He says nothing of the fight Helene and I are having, though he must have heard at least part of it. “You will come with us.”
The legionnaires split, four taking hold of me and the other four grabbing Helene.
“What’s going on?” I try to shake them off, but they’re big brutes, bigger than me, and they don’t budge. “What is this?”
“This, Aspirant Veturius, is the Trial of Loyalty.”
XLIII: Laia