Mia looked Leona up and down, sighing inside.
Could I have grown up the same way, if mine hadn’t been killed?
Mia saw Furian look to his domina from the corner of her eye, perhaps seeking some gesture of acknowledgment. But true to her ruse, tall and proud and O, so proper, Leona did not even grace him with a glance.
“My Crow,” the dona said, smiling at Mia. “A word.”
“Domina.”
Mia followed Leona from the room, conscious of Furian’s burning gaze on her back. Arkades and Magistrae followed, the older woman shutting the door as Sidonius started recounting the battle again, using a jug of wine and a toothpick for props.
“You are well?” Leona asked.
“Well enough,” Mia replied. “My thanks, Domina.”
“’Tis I who should be thanking you,” Leona said, her eyes dancing. “Our collegium is the talk of the entire city. The governor of Stormwatch, Quintus Messala himself, has declared this the finest contest the Republic has ever seen, and you”—Leona squeezed Mia’s shoulders—“you, my bloody beauty, are the heart of it all.”
“I live to honor you, Domina,” Mia said.
Arkades narrowed his eyes at that, but Leona seemed almost giddy.
“Governor Messala holds a traditional feast the nevernight after the venatus,” the dona said. “Every marrowborn and administratii attends his palazzo, and he invites every sanguila who fields gladiatii in the games, along with their champion.” Leona’s eyes twinkled with fierce delight. “But he has sent personal missive, asking that in addition to Furian, I bring you, that all may gaze upon the savior of Stormwatch.”
“ . . . The Savior of Stormwatch?” Mia murmured.
“It has a fine ring to it, neh?” Leona chuckled. “The minstrels are already singing of your victory in taverna across the city. You will be the pride of the feast, the jewel in my crown. And we’ll be showered in coin—the elite of the city will be throwing offers of patronage at my feet. The eyes of every sanguila upon you, burning with jealousy.”
Every sanguila . . .
“Messala has always favored fighters from my father’s collegium,” Leona said. “For years, he has heaped accolades upon the Lions of Leonides. How badly it will burn, to see me in the seat of favor at Messala’s right hand.”
The dona pressed her fingers to her lips, smothering her mad grin.
“Imagine the look on the old bastard’s face.”
“Mi Dona,” Magistrae warned, glancing at Mia. “You should not speak so . . .”
“Mmm, aye.” Leona remembered herself, nodding and smoothing down the lines of her dress. “I keep you from your revels, my Crow. Go and celebrate your victory. But not too much wine, neh? I want you looking your best at the feast amorrow.”
Like a prized pet, Mia realized. Like a dog at her mistress’s feet. To be sold in an instant if she fails to bark on command.
Sit.
Roll over.
Play dead.
Be dead.
Mia pressed her lips tight. Thinking of her father, swinging at the end of his rope. Her mother bleeding to death in her arms. Her baby brother, taking his first steps in some lightless pit and dying there in the dark.
Thinking of Duomo.
Thinking of Scaeva.
Eyes on the prize, Corvere.
And looking into Leona’s eyes, she bowed, hand to her heart.
“Your whisper, my will,” she said. “Domina.”
* * *
“Black fucking Mother, you were brilliant!”
Ashlinn crashed into Mia as soon as she climbed through the taverna window, arms wrapped around her tight. Mia nodded, “Aye, aye,” and extricated herself from the girl’s grip, drew the curtains behind her. She was the most well known person in Stormwatch, after all, and the streets were still filled with revelers celebrating the venatus. The suns were burning her eyes, the beating she’d taken that afternoon was leaving its bruises, and after the feast with her brother and sister gladiatii, Mia was feeling more than a little drunk. Looking about the tiny room, she saw there were no chairs to sit in—just a single cot with a mattress as thin as a slice of fine cheese.
“Not exactly the consul’s villa, is it?”
“Every inn, outhouse and brothel was full because of the venatus,” Ash shrugged. “The Mother smiled on me to even get a berth in this hovel. Don’t ask how much we’re paying for it. Good thing Mercurio gave us so much coin. But anyway, to the ’byss with the room, you just killed a colossus! The whole city is talking about you!”
Mia slumped down on the bed, massaged her aching ribs.
“Aye,” was all she mustered.
“’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 we
nt 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 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.
“Fuck you!”
“Get your hand out of my face, Ashlinn,” Mia warned.
“I should knock that cigarillo out of your mouth!” she yelled.
Mia shook her head, taking another drag. “Have you ever noticed how people start to shout when they’ve nothing worthwhile to say?”
“Maw’s teeth, you’ve got some stones. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s one person in the entire world right now who’s on your side, and—”
“Mercurio’s on my side, Ashlinn. Long before you.”
“I don’t see him anywhere around here, do you?” Ash shouted. “I don’t see him dragging his arse from Godsgrave to Whitekeep to Stormwatch. I don’t see him sneaking into arenas and planting wyrdglass in the sands and sending you warning about the monstrosity set to melt the flesh off your damned bones. He did nothing but try to talk you out of this, and I’ve done nothing but fucking help you!”
Mia shook her head, grinding her cigarillo into the wall. “Not because you hate the Ministry as much as I do. Not because you stand to gain from all this, O, no, Mother forbid. Because you care so much about me.”
“And that just fucking terrifies you, doesn’t it?”
Mia scoffed. “I have two shadow daemons who quite literally eat my fear, Ashlinn. I’m not terrified of anything.”
“Mister Shithead and Wolfy aren’t in the room,” Ash snapped. “It’s just you and me, now. And for all your bluster, that thought scares you witless. By the smell of you, you had to smash a bottle of goldwine just to muster the courage to send them away. But you did send them away. And you’re too much a coward to admit why.”
“Fuck you, Ashlinn.”
“I thought you’d never ask, Mia.”
Mia tensed, springing up off the bed, hands in fists. Ashlinn stood her ground, staring Mia down, jaw clenched. Their faces were only a few inches apart, the air between them crackling with arkemical current.
“Don’t pretend you don’t feel it,” Ash said. “Because it’s written in your every line and curve. You might know me, Mia Corvere, but I know you just as well. And I know what it is you want.”
Mia grit her teeth, one hand curling into a fist. She didn’t know whether she wanted to punch the girl or . . .
There was an ocean of lies between them. Ash’s betrayal. Tric’s murder. The certainty the girl would do or say anything to get what she wanted. But there was truth in her words too. Of every person she knew in the world, the only one here helping her in her darkest need was Ashlinn Järnheim.
Ashlinn Järnheim was made of lies.
Ashlinn Järnheim was poison.
And Ashlinn Järnheim was beautiful.
Mia couldn’t deny it. Soft lips parted in the smoky light. Long red hair spilling about her shoulders in waves. Her skin was smooth, a hint of anger in her cheeks, turning them to rose. Big blue eyes framed by dark curling lashes, the look in them making Mia’s fingers tingle, her belly flip. Wine humming in her veins, she stared into those pools of sunsburned blue and saw her reflection, saw the same thing in her eyes as she saw swimming in Ash’s own.
Want.
Want.
But . . .
. . . without her passengers beside her, Mia was afraid.
Not of wanting a girl, like perhaps Ash suspected. She’d had one before, after all. Even though that golden beauty in Aurelius’s bed was simply a means to an end, Mia could admit she might have found a way to kiss the senator’s son sooner. Might have ended him quite some time before she felt those golden lips between her legs, tasted the girl on Aurelius’s tongue.
No, if Mia was afraid, it wasn’t of wanting a girl.
It was wanting this girl.
Ashlinn Järnheim.
Thief.
Liar.
Killer.
r /> Traitor.
“How can I trust you?” Mia asked. “After all you’ve done?”
“If I wanted you dead, Mia . . .”
“I’m not talking about trusting you with my life, Ashlinn.”
Mia looked at Ashlinn’s heaving breast, pictured the heart beneath it. Wondering if it thundered as hard as hers, or if all this was simply a means to an end.
Ashlinn lifted her hand, bringing it up to Mia’s face. Her fingers brushed Mia’s skin, eliciting a dizzying rush of warmth that had nothing to do with the sunslight or the wine she’d drunk. She inched closer, eyes flitting from Mia’s own, down to her lips. Breathing harder, moving closer, just an inch away now, just a heartbeat. And Mia looked across the room and
Stepped
to the shadow
of the curtains
pulling them aside, throwing the window open, her head spinning from the drink, from the shadowalking, from all of it. Ash called her name, but she ignored it, scrambling over the sill and climbing down the wall, swift as a morning-after goodbye.
Calling Eclipse to her side, she dragged the darkness about her shoulders and over her head, stealing off into the nevernight streets. Celebrations of her victory were still ringing from taverna windows, from smokehouse doors, echoing in the very air. The fear draining from her like poison from a wound as Eclipse coiled inside her shadow, leaving her cold and hard and unafraid.
She couldn’t trust Ashlinn Järnheim. That much was certain. But the thought of standing over the corpses of the men who’d destroyed everything she loved? The feel of cold steel in her hand and warm blood on her face and the knowledge that everything she’d worked for over the past seven years was now finally within her reach?
That she could trust.
And nothing else mattered.
She ran her hand down her cheek where Ashlinn had touched her, her skin still tingling.
Nothing at all.
1 “The Tragedy of Pythias and Prospero” is a saga penned by the famous bard, Talia. Though banned by the Ministry of Aa, it remains one of the oldest and most renowned plays in history, predating the Itreyan Kingdom by centuries. The play is based on an ancient myth and is set in the time before the Mother of Night had been banished from the Itreyan sky.It follows the adventures of two lovers, Pythias, captain of the guard, and Prospero, son of the Sorcerer King, who are separated by Prospero’s father when he learns of their affair. Pythias is banished to the far corners of the earth, and in their quest to be reunited, the pair conquer armies, nations, and finally the Sorcerer King himself to be together again.Sadly, when a tale has the word “tragedy” in the title, it’s probably folly to expect a happy ending; Pythias is poisoned in the final confrontation. Dying in his lover’s arms, he delivers a stirring speech on the enduring power of hope, fidelity, and love—widely regarded as the finest monologue ever put to vellum. Prospero, inheritor of his father’s magiks, sets his lover’s body in the heavens as a constellation, and names it in his honor.Not a dry eye in the bloody house, gentlefriends.Though banned by the Ministry, and most copies of it destroyed in the Bright Light book burning of 27PR, Pythias’s monologue is still quoted in modern times. A few complete versions of the play are rumored to exist in secret—handwritten from memory by actors who performed it, or secreted away from the puritans of Aa’s church. The copies are rare, however, and have almost become myth among Itreyan theater groups. Any actor claiming to have read one is more than likely just a lying tosser.Although now I think about it, most actors I’ve met were lying tossers anyway . . .