Morning Star

I find Victra in an isolated room with several Sons guarding the door. She lies with her feet sticking off the edge of a medical cot, watching a holo at the foot of her bed as Society news channels drone on about the valiant Legion attack on a terrorist force that destroyed a dam and flooded the lower Mystos River Valley. The flooding has forced two million Brown farmers out of their homes. Grays deliver aid packages from the backs of military trucks. Easily could have been Reds who blew up the dam. Or it could have been the Jackal. At this point, who knows?

Victra’s white-gold hair is bound in a tight ponytail. Every limb, even the paralyzed legs, is cuffed to the bed. Not much trust here for her kind. She doesn’t look up at me as the holo story kicks over to a profile on Roque au Fabii, the Poet of Deimos and the newest heartthrob of the gossip circuit. Searching through his past, conducting interviews with his Senator mother, his teachers before the Institute, showing him as boy on their country estate.

“Roque always found the natural world to be more beautiful than cities,” his mother says for the camera. “It’s the perfect order in nature that he so admired. How it formed effortlessly into a hierarchy. I think that’s why he loved the Society so dearly, even then….”

“That woman would look much better with a gun in her mouth,” Victra mutters, muting the sound.

“She’s probably said his name more in the last month than she did his entire childhood,” I reply.

“Well, politicians never let a popular family member go to waste. What was it Roque once said about Augustus at a party? ‘Oh, how the vultures flock to the mighty, to eat the carcasses left in their wake.’ ” Victra looks at me with her flashing, belligerent eyes. The madness I saw in them earlier has retreated but not vanished entirely. It lingers like mine. “Might as well have been talking about you.”

“That’s fair,” I say.

“Are you leading this little pack of terrorists?”

“I had my chance to lead. I made a mess of it. Sevro is in charge.”

“Sevro.” She leans back. “Really?”

“Is that funny?”

“No. For some reason I’m not surprised at all, actually. Always had a bigger bite than bark. First time I saw him, he was kicking Tactus’s ass.”

I step closer. “I believe I owe you an explanation.”

“Oh, hell. Can’t we skip this part?” she asks. “It’s boring.”

“Skip it?”

She sighs heavily. “Apologies. Recrimination. All the trifling shit people muddle through because they’re insecure. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“How do you figure?”

“We all enter a certain social contract by living in this Society of ours. My people oppress your tiny kind. We live off the spoils of your labor. Pretending you don’t exist. And you fight back. Usually very poorly. Personally, I think that’s your right. It’s not good or evil. But it’s fair. I’d applaud a mouse that managed to kill an eagle, wouldn’t you? Good for it.

“It’s absurd and hypocritical for Golds to complain now simply because the Reds finally started fighting well.” She laughs sharply at my surprise. “What, darling? Did you expect me to scream and rant and piss on about honor and betrayal like those walking wounds, Cassius and Roque?”

“A little,” I say. “I would….”

“That’s because you’re more emotional than I am. I’m a Julii. Cold runneth through my veins.” She rolls her eyes when I try to correct her. “Don’t ask me to be different because you need validation, please. It’s beneath the both of us.”

“You’ve never been as cold as you pretend to be,” I say.

“I’ve existed long before you ever came into my life. What do you really know of me? I am my mother’s daughter.”

“You’re more than that.”

“If you say so.”

There’s no artifice to her. No coy manipulation. Mustang’s all smirks and subtle plays. Victra’s a wrecking ball. She softened before the Triumph. Let her guard down. But now it’s back and it’s as alienating as when I first met her. But the longer we speak, the more I see her hair is shot with gray, not just pale Gold. Her cheeks are hollow, her right hand, the one on the opposite side of the cot, clenching the sheets.

“I know why you lied to me, Darrow. And I can respect it. But what I don’t understand is why you saved me in Attica. Was it pity? A tactic?”

“It’s because you’re my friend,” I say.

“Oh, please.”

“I would rather have died trying to get you out of that cell than let you rot in there. Trigg did die getting you out.”

“Trigg?”

“One of the Grays who were behind me when we came into your cell. The other one is his sister.”

“I didn’t ask to be saved,” she says bitterly, her way of washing her hands of Trigg’s death. She looks away from me now. “You know Antonia thought we were lovers, you and I. She showed me your Carving. She taunted me. As if it would disgust me to see what you are. To see where you came from. To see how I had been lied to.”

“And did it?”

She sneers. “Why would I care what you were? I care about what people do. I care about truth. If you had told me, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. I would have protected you.” I believe her. And I believe the pain in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I was afraid.”

“But I wager you told Mustang?”

“Yes.”

“Why her and not me? I at least deserve that.”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s because you’re a liar. You said I wasn’t wicked in the hall. But you think it deep down. You never trusted me.”

“No,” I say. “I didn’t. That’s my mistake. And my friends have paid for it with their lives. That…that guilt was my only company in the box he kept me in for the nine months.” By the look in her eyes I know she didn’t know what had been done to me. “But now I’ve been given a second chance at life, I don’t want to waste it. I want to make amends with you. I owe you a life. I owe you justice. And I want you to join us.”

“Join you?” she says with a laugh. “As a Son of Ares?”

“Yes.”

“You’re serious.” She laughs at me. Another defense mechanism. “I’m not really into suicide, darling.”

“The world you know is gone, Victra. Your sister has stolen it from you. Your mother and her friends have been wiped out. Your house is now your enemy. And you’re an outcast from your own people. That is the problem with this Society. It eats its own. It pits us against one another. You have nowhere to go….”

“Well, you really know how to make a girl feel special.”

“…I want to give you a family that will not stab you in the back. I want to give you a life with meaning. I know you’re a good person, even if you laugh at me for saying it. But I believe in you. Yet…all that doesn’t matter—what I believe, what I want. What matters is what you want.”

She searches my eyes. “What I want?”

“If you want to leave here, you can. If you want to stay in this bed, you can. Say what you want and it’s yours. I owe you that.”

She thinks for a moment. “I don’t care about your rebellion. I don’t care about your dead wife. Or about finding a family or finding meaning. I want to be able to sleep without them jacking me full of chemicals, Darrow. I want to be able to dream again. I want to forget my mother’s caved-in head and her vacant eyes and her twitching fingers. I want to forget Adrius laughing. And I want to repay Antonia and Adrius for their hospitality. I want to stand above them and that piece of shit, Roque, as they weep for the end as I gouge out their eyes and pour molten gold into the sockets so they scream and writhe and spread their urine upon the floor and beg forgiveness for ever thinking they could put Victra au Julii in a gorydamn cage.” She smiles ferally. “I want revenge.”`

“Revenge is a hollow end,” I say.

“And I’m a hollow girl now.”

I know she’s not. I know she’s more than that. But I also know better than anyone that wounds aren’t healed in a day. I’m barely stitched together myself, and I have my entire family here. “If that is what you want, that is what I owe you. In three days the Carver who made me into a Gold will be here. He will make us what we were. He’ll mend your spine. Give you your legs back, if you want them.”

She squints at me. “And you trust me, after what trust has cost you?”

I take the magnetic key given to me by the Sons outside and press it to the inside of her cuffs. One by one they unlatch from the bed, freeing her legs, her arms.

“You’re dumber than you look,” she says.

“You might not believe in our rebellion. But I saw Tactus change before his future was robbed from him. I’ve seen Ragnar forget his bonds and reach for what he wants in this world. I’ve seen Sevro become a man. I’ve seen myself change. I truly do believe we choose who we want to be in this life. It isn’t preordained. You taught me loyalty, more than Mustang, more than Roque. And because of that, I believe in you, Victra. As much as I’ve ever believed in anyone.” I hold out my hand. “Be my family and I will never forsake you. I will never lie to you. I will be your brother as long as you live.”

Startled by the emotion in my voice, the cold woman stares up at me. Those defenses she erected forgotten now. In another life we might have been a pair. Might have had that fire I feel for Mustang, for Eo. But not in this life.

Victra does not soften. Does not crumble to tears. There’s still rage inside her. Still raw hate and so much betrayal and frustration and loss coiled around her icy heart. But in this moment, she is free of it all. In this moment, she reaches solemnly up to grasp my hand. And I feel the hope flicker in me.

“Welcome to the Sons of Ares.”