“’Byss and blood, Corvere,” Ash said, flopping down on the mattress beside her. “You slew a retchwyrm! Saved the lives of hundreds of people in front of ten thousand more! Leona would have to be three shades mad and five bottles drunk to even think about selling you now! Aren’t you happy?”
Mia had asked herself that same question on the way here, sneaking out from the arena cells and Stepping through the shadows. She should be happy. Aside from the retchwyrm breaking its chain, all had gone more or less to her design. Leona’s favor won. Patronage for the collegium assured. Her name ringing in the streets. One laurel closer to the magni, Scaeva’s and Duomo’s throats.
But the wrongness of it was creeping on her like a cancer. Every turn she spent with this brand on her cheek made it harder and harder for her to ignore the folk who couldn’t just skip away from their chains through the shadows like she could. Not just gladiatii. The whole Republic was oiled by the machine of human misery. Now that her eyes were opened to it, she couldn’t unsee it. Didn’t want to.
But she also knew she couldn’t fix it. She couldn’t even help the other members of the collegium without dooming her plan to failure. She’d gambled too much to be here already. And not just her. Mercurio. Ashlinn, too. And all for the greater good, aye? Couldn’t she truly say that? That the Republic would be better off without a tyrant in the consul’s chair?
That everyone would be better off once Julius Scaeva was dead?
But what would happen to her brothers and sisters in the collegium, if somehow her plan succeeded? Two slaves kill their master, and the administratii murder every slave in their house. What would they do to the ones she left behind in Crow’s Nest, if she killed a cardinal and a fucking consul? Even if she managed to pull off her miracle, Sidonius, Bryn and Byern, Bladesinger … they’d all be executed.
Mia looked at the girl, staring back at her with those bright blue eyes.
“A long turn is all,” she sighed. “Got a smoke?”
Ash grinned, fished inside her shirt and produced her thin silver cigarillo case. It was embossed with the sigil of the Familia Corvere—a crow in flight over two crossed swords. It had been a present from Mercurio, the nevernight Mia turned fifteen. The metal was warm from the press of Ashlinn’s skin.
Mia lit the cigarillo with a flintbox, sighed gray.
“Where are Eclipse and Mister Know-it-all?” Ash asked.
“Eclipse is watching the street. Mister Kindly is trailing Dona Leona. There’s a big soiree at the governor’s palazzo amorrow. Leona’s attempting to secure patronage, end her money troubles once and for all. The governor asked to bring me with her.”
“Of course,” Ash nodded. “You should’ve seen yourself. Damned retchwyrm looked set to devour half the crowd, and you call it a rude word and it just turns on you like a snake. Unbelievable.”
“Aye,” Mia muttered. “I can scarce believe it myself.”
She took another drag of her cigarillo, shaking her head. Ash was still grinning, blue eyes shining with the memory of her victory. She reached across, rubbed at the scowl between Mia’s brows as if attempting to erase it. Mia battered her hand away.
“Maw’s teeth, what’s wrong?” Ash sighed, exasperated. “You’re the toast of the city. You won a laurel, gained your dona’s favor, and guaranteed the future of the collegium. Everything went your way, and you’re scowling up a summer storm.”
Mia chewed her lip. Debating if she should say anything at all. She looked at Ashlinn, dark eyes picked out with a pinprick of flame as she dragged on her cigarillo. The wine in her belly had loosened her tongue, but the distrust in her veins was keeping her jaw firmly clenched.
“…’Byss and blood, Mia, what is it?” Ashlinn asked.
“The retchwyrm,” Mia finally said.
“What of it?”
“… In the desert outside the Quiet Mountain, back when was I chasing you and Remus to Last Hope…” She exhaled gray, waiting for some kind of reaction at talk of their confrontation last year, but Ashlinn was only listening. “A sand kraken attacked the Luminatii wagon. Killed scores of Remus’s men.”
“I remember.”
Mia drew a deep breath, held it for a long, pregnant moment.
“I made it do that,” she exhaled at last.
Ashlinn blinked. “How?”
Mia shrugged. “I’ve no idea. I just know that anytime I called the shadows in the Whisperwastes of Ashkah, sand kraken would come, and they’d be angry. And that retchwyrm in the arena reacted the same way. I tried to hold it in place with its own shadow, and it near lost its fucking mind.”
Mia shook her head, took another drag on her smoke.
“Loresmen say that sand kraken and other beasts of the Ashkahi wastes were twisted by the magikal pollutants left over from the empire’s destruction.”
The Crown of the Moon.
The fall of the Ashkahi Empire.
The monstrosities left in its wake.
“I’m wondering … could all of it be connected?”
“To the empire’s fall?” Ashlinn asked. “The darkin?”
Mia shrugged, a now familiar frustration welling up inside her. Cassius hadn’t learned a thing of himself. Furian didn’t want to. Mercurio and Mother Drusilla had told her she was Chosen of the Mother, but what the ’byss did that actually mean?
No one she’d ever met had any real answers for her. But that thing in the Galante necropolis … it seemed to know more.
“YOUR TRUTH LIES BURIED IN THE GRAVE. AND YET YOU PAINT YOUR HANDS IN RED FOR THEM, WHEN YOU SHOULD BE PAINTING THE SKIES BLACK.”
“I’m just fucking sick and tired of not knowing what I am, Ashlinn.”
“Well, that’s easy,” the girl declared, reaching across and squeezing Mia’s hand.
“O, aye?”
“Aye,” Ashlinn smiled. “You’re brave. And you’re bright. And you’re beautiful.”
Mia scoffed, shaking her head and gazing at the wall.
“I mean it,” Ashlinn said, leaning in and kissing Mia’s cheek.
Mia turned to stare, dark eyes fixed on sunsburned blue. Ashlinn was still close, drifting closer, ever so slow. The scent of lavender coiled on her skin, red hair cascading around her lightly freckled face, Mia’s stomach thrilling as she realized the girl was about to kiss her.
“You’re beautiful,” Ash whispered.
And closing her eyes, she leaned in and—
“Don’t,” Mia said.
Ashlinn stopped, lips just a breath from Mia’s. Looking from her eyes, down to her mouth.
“Why not?” she whispered.
“Because I don’t trust you, Ashlinn,” Mia replied. “And I don’t want you thinking you can drag me into bed just to get me in your pocket.”
Ashlinn leaned back on her haunches, looked at Mia in disbelief.
“You think I’d—”
“Do anything to get your way?” Mia asked. “Lie? Cheat? Fuck? Murder?”
Mia took a long drag of her smoke, eyes narrowed. Her tongue felt a little too thick for her mouth from the wine she’d drunk at dinner, but she’d set it loose now.
“Aye, Ash, that’s the problem,” she said. “I think I do.”
Ashlinn reared up off the bed like Mia had struck her. She walked across the room, far as the tiny space would allow. Hands on hips and staring at the wall. She was silent a long moment, finally turning on Mia with a snarl.
“Fuck you, Mia.”
Stamping back across the room, she raised the knuckles in Mia’s face.