“Young master.”
The voice is not my mother’s, but rather one of her ladies in waiting. She enters, pushing a chair that hovers on a pneumolift. A decrepit thing, a rail-thin woman, sits in its seat, the ribs and clavicle at the top of her emaciated chest made visible by the v-line of the medical smock she wears. Her neck lurches forward, barely supporting a swollen head. Her eyes wander independently of each other, rolling at odd, dull angles. A red, puckered scar above her right eye zigzags over her shorn skull to the back of her neck.
She was left like this on purpose. She was left like this for me to see.
“No,” I whisper. I run to her. “Mother, it’s me, Edmon! What’s happened to you? What’s happened?” I hold her in my arms, but she’s so frail. She groans like an unthinking animal. I pull away in horror as spittle runs down her chin.
“What happened?” I ask over and over. My heart threatens to pound through my chest. The servant looks away, unable to meet my gaze.
Alberich steps forward. “It was your father who did this, Edmon. I’m sorry, young lord.”
Nausea envelops my stomach. My world spins.
“You knew,” I whisper. “You knew and never told me—” Bile chokes the rest of the words before they reach my lips.
“When you left, she threatened revolt. She gathered a group of islanders to travel to Meridian to protest your ‘abduction,’ as she called it publicly,” the seneschal explains.
“You promised you would protect her.” I try to hold back the grief and sickness. I ball my fists as tightly as I can to fight the shock. My palms feel cold and clammy.
I should’ve been here to protect her. This shouldn’t have happened. I collapse to my knees and vomit onto the marble floor. The retching continues until I repeatedly heave and nothing comes out.
“You promised you would protect her,” I moan.
“I’m sorry, Edmon,” Alberich says softly. “The Isle of Bone is a vassal state of House Wusong-Leontes. She threatened open, armed rebellion. The punishment for treason is execution, or worse, the Wendigo.”
“This is better?” Rage boils in my veins. “She’s lobotomized!”
“She lives,” Alberich says. “She’s here at home with her people to care for her.”
“I could’ve stopped this. I would’ve told her to call off the revolt. You never told me!”
“Edmon, you had already tried. There was nothing more you could have done. You needed to focus on your studies,” Phaestion adds gently. “We have training, preparation, a commitment to shut out the outside world in order to be ready . . .”
I turn on him, daggers in my eyes.
All those letters I wrote. He told me that I had done a great service for my people and for the Pantheon. He led me to believe that I had averted the crisis. He made me think that my mother was not able to respond because of her treason. The truth was that treason’s punishment took away her words forever.
“You’re a liar,” I say with cold finality.
The tension between us is severed by laughter.
Sigurd guffaws from his belly. “Look at you, little snail guppy! You ask for her to be saved. And the very thing you want turns her into this. Priceless.”
He’s right. This is my fault. Alberich was trying to protect her life because of what I said. Phaestion was trying to protect me from the truth. This is my fault.
Hanschen smirks uneasily. Perdiccus grins. Only Phaestion doesn’t join. “Sigurd, shut up,” he says.
“Phaestion, it’s just too good,” the giant continues.
My fists clench. Hot blood rushes to my face.
“His own mother? She’s just a Daysider.”
I scream with rage and plunge forward. Sigurd looks up in momentary shock, then he readies himself. He cocks a fist and lets it fly. I duck the blow and plow my shoulder into his gut, pushing him against the wall. He brings a knee up under me. My forearms shield the strike. I hurl my right fist under his chin and feel his mandible crack. He swings a wild hook at my head. I block and snag his wrist with a claw technique. I yank his arm and twist, hearing it pop from his shoulder socket. He stifles a scream, but I’m not done. I don’t even see a person in front of me; I see a monster. I see my father. I want him to suffer. I slam my forearm against his elbow hyperextending the joint. There is a wet breaking sound. His bones spike out of his flesh. He falls to the floor. I smash my knee into his face destroying his nose as he goes down.
“Edmon!” Phaestion yells.
I stand over Sigurd, panting as the red clears from my vision. He tries to stand and falls back down in pain.
“Stay down, monster,” I hiss. “Never mock me or my family again.”
I walk out the door, leaving them to clean up the mess.
I head to the beach, to the place where Alberich trained us. I stand at the shore, looking out at the vast Southern Sea as the water laps my toes. They sink into the wet sand. The waters splash the rock of Bone and over time will break it down, eventually swallowing it whole. The sun will explode. The universe will freeze. I’ve lost another piece of myself; I can never have it back.
How many pieces can be chipped away? What will remain when there is nothing left to carve?
I almost killed a person today, and I don’t even care. I remember what my mother told me about killing. I remember what she said the first day I saw my father:
You will forget what you saw here today.
I’m becoming like the others because I feel no remorse. I feel only the desire for more violence to somehow fill the hole inside of me.
“Edmon, I’m sorry.”
I turn, and he’s there. His molten hair blows across his eyes in the summer wind.
How long have I been standing here?
“Alberich was trying to keep her alive. He was trying to save you the pain of her death.”
“What do you know?” I cut him off. “I asked him to make sure no harm came to her. I should’ve known my father would discard her. I should have known.”
“Here’s what I know,” he says gently. “There was nothing else you could have done to save her.”
“You knew the whole time,” I say.
His silence is all the answer I need. I stalk past him. He puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“Edmon.”
I belt him with my fist as hard as I can. He falls to the sand, blood streaming from his mouth. He looks at me with utter confusion. No one has ever struck him with such disdain before. Phaestion, the beautiful boy-king, the godlike prince of House Julii, has never even seen his own blood. He’s so bewildered, he almost cries but doesn’t. He stands and wipes the red from his chin with the back of his hand.
“If that’s how you want it.”
Yes. This is the violence I need.