It is over.
He has won. The matter is settled, though I don’t know what shape the next moments will take. And then I look over at Seraphina, readying to console her on the loss of her cousin, only to see implacable Dido’s face unchanged, her hand in the air, her fingers snapping together.
“Fabera,” she calls.
My hope sinks and Cassius’s face falls as a young hawkish woman with a bald pate hefts her razor and jumps from the second row over the heads of those sitting on the benches beneath. She lands on the edge of the white marble and paces toward Cassius, her long razor rigid. She spits on the floor and enters the circle, where she crows her challenge to Cassius, her name and her right as cousin to open his veins.
“It’s over!” I say in protest to Dido. “The feud was settled with Bellerephon!”
“His feud is with House Raa,” she replies.
There is a part of me that wants to rail against her and decry her hypocrisy, but the look she gives me is so reptilian that it activates the colder part of my own blood. The shock disappears and I work to understand. “Do you support this?” I ask Seraphina.
Though surprised at her mother’s action, Seraphina says nothing. “Don’t look to her,” Dido snarls. “I preside here. That creature murdered my daughter. He killed Revus!” The room cries for blood. Then, very softly, Dido leans toward me. “But I can forget. I can forgive. And you can end this. Open the safe.”
Dangerous woman.
I look down at Cassius and let my silence answer. Dido sighs. “A pity. Fabera, honor House Raa.”
She is not a shade, but she is fast and knows this gravity. She lunges at him with her razor, roving and probing like she’s hunting boar. Knowing he’s losing too much blood, she tries to draw out the duel, but Cassius continues to charge and close. She’s more agile than Bellerephon, but not so powerful. Cassius manages to pin her against the rim of the circle, where they exchange a dangerous series of slashing parries. She scores two cuts on his right leg, but has no time to savor the moment. I see her die two seconds before it happens. Cassius flows into the Autumn Wind movement as easily as if we were sparring together with blunted weapons on the Archi. He strikes three times at head level, locks blades, pushes against her so she counters his force, then he pivots right and slides his blade overtop hers in a leverage position so the tip enters her forehead and pushes through her brain before coming out her throat and through her jaw. She dies before she hits the ground. He slides his blade from her skull, flicks off the gray gristle coating it, and limps to turn and face Dido.
“I am Cassius au Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, Morning Knight, and my honor remains.”
Dido snaps her fingers. “Bellagra.”
Another knight jumps down.
“Seraphina, you’re going to lose another cousin,” I say, knowing that this execution wears on her.
Diomedes does not retain his composure. “Mother, enough.”
“Bellagra, honor House Raa.”
The knight surges toward Cassius. This one was not the same quality as the first two and dies quicker than Fabera. Cassius parries a weak blow and splits the man down the middle. His halves twitch on the floor and leak his life’s blood into the Gold Sigil. But something strange has happened. Despite the condemnation of the Olympic Knights, the room roils with volunteers. Each death decays their manners and resolve and reaches into the crowd with forked rootlike fingers to enrage and poison another soul—a lover there, a cousin, a friend, a drinking companion, a brother in arms. From Dido’s allies to Romulus’s, the anger boils. It dawns on me then the cruel stratagem the woman has devised. I don’t doubt that her hatred of Cassius is real. But they do not waste in the Rim. Each death is a down payment for her war. Absent her holodrop evidence, she uses my friend to boil the blood, to distract, to bind her allies and foes together in anger. And the more Raa that fall, the more her position solidifies, the more the blood of the Rim is raised against the Interior and not against her coup.
This is the depth of her conviction, a willing sacrifice of her own kin to reveal whatever truth hides within our safe.
I witness Dido at long last: the immensity of her resolve, the cruelness of her intellect, and I am terrified to think that I ever was so arrogant as to presume her Romulus’s inferior simply because I’d heard his legend more. She reminds me of the woman who taught me all I know—more passionate, less subtle. But a shade of my grandmother dwells in this woman. At her side, Seraphina sits with a weary expression that seems to say she understands all but will suffer it because she must.
But I cannot watch my brother suffer much longer.
There will be no end to it.
No mercy. Just death, and for what?
Cassius limps to his feet, again standing over the body of his foe. The floor is littered with them. “I am Cassius au Bellona.” He pants for breath, barely able to go on. “Son of Tiberius…son of Julia.” He squares his shoulders and summons his pride to lift his voice. “Morning Knight, and my honor remains.”
“Mother! Stop this madness!” Diomedes cries out. “He has won. How many of our blood will you throw away?”
“As many as honor demands,” she says. “Save your kin, Diomedes.”
He does not rise.
“A pity,” Dido replies. I feel the words coming before they leave her lips, because I saw Seraphina’s legs bouncing, her fingers tightening the laces on her boots, and I saw Dido notice the glances shared between us at dinner. Now the woman turns to me, only one card left to play and she plays it well. “Seraphina, honor House Raa.”
SERAPHINA BOLTS UPWARD LIKE A KUON released from its leash. She leaps, clearing the heads of those seated beneath us, and pulls free her razor before she lands on the killing floor. Diomedes watches in fear for his little sister. But the Golds clamoring for their chance to face Cassius now sit back down in disappointed silence. They think the matter settled. Seraphina is the executioner.
Cassius bleeds and sweats, his golden curls matted to his forehead. His knuckles sliced and savaged by metal. Blood soaks his shoes. His body is shaking from pain as steam trails off his flayed skin and open meat, but still he stands, using one of the discarded hasta for a crutch, watching neutrally as tall Seraphina lopes into the circle. This is his end. But there’s nothing glorious about it.
All I feel now is dread.
The same dread from that day when I watched my grandmother die and did nothing to stop it. Not even when I saw Cassius and the Reaper’s pack finish Aja. I cannot hate him for his part. It was I who did nothing to protect those I love. And I do love him. In this moment, he is true and pure and, in a way, everything I wanted to be as a child. Tears, unwelcome and unfamiliar, leak out my eyes as Cassius looks at me and shakes his head. Let me die, he is saying. That is all he wants. Absolution in death. But it is the wrong absolution.