“Ares is always on the move,” mother says.
“Lots to do. Only one Ares,” Narol replies defensively. “They’re still out looking for survivors. They’ll be back soon. By morning, luck holds.” My mother shoots him a harsh look and he shuts up.
I lean back in the bed, overwhelmed by speaking to them. By seeing them. I can barely form sentences. So much to say. So much unfamiliar emotion running through me. All I end up doing is sitting there, breathing fast. My mother’s love fills the room, but still I feel the darkness moving beyond this moment. Pressing in on this family I thought I lost and now fear I cannot protect. My enemies are too great. Too many. And I too weak. I shake my head, running my thumb over her knuckles.
“I thought I would never see you again.”
“Yet here you are.” Somehow she makes it sound cold. So like my mother to be the one with dry eyes when both the men can barely speak. I always wondered how I survived the Institute. It damn well wasn’t because of my father. He was a gentle man. Mother is the spine in me. The iron. And I clutch her hand as if such a simple gesture could say all that.
A light knock comes at the door. Dancer pokes his head in. Devilishly handsome as ever, he’s one of the only Reds alive who makes old age look good. I can hear his foot dragging slightly behind him in the hall. Both my mother and uncle nod to him in deference. Narol steps aside respectfully as he approaches my bedside, but my mother stays put. “This Helldiver’s not done yet, it would seem.” Dancer grips my hand. “But you gave us a hell of a scare.”
“It’s bloodydamn good to see you, Dancer.”
“And you, boy. And you.”
“Thank you. For taking care of them.” I nod to my mother and uncle. “For helping Sevro…”
“It’s what family is for,” he says. “How are you?”
“My chest hurts. And everything else.”
He laughs lightly. “It should. Virany says that crank the Nakamuras gave you almost killed you. You had a heart attack.”
“Dancer, how did the Jackal know? Every day I’ve wondered. Picked it apart. The clues I left him. Did I give myself up?”
“It wasn’t you,” Dancer says. “It was Harmony.”
“Harmony…” I whisper. “She wouldn’t…she hates Gold.” But even as I say it, I know how reckless her hate is. How vengeful she must have felt after I did not detonate the bomb she gave me to kill the Sovereign and the others on Luna.
“She thinks we’ve sold out the rebellion,” Dancer says. “That we’re compromising too much. She told the Jackal who you were.”
“He knew when I was in his office. When I gave him the gift…”
He nods tiredly. “Your presence proved her claims. So the Jackal let us rescue her and the others. We brought her back to base, and an hour before his kill squads came, she disappeared.”
“Fitchner is dead because of her. He gave her a purpose…I understand how she could betray me, but him? Ares?”
“She found out he was a Gold. Then she gave him up. Must have given the Jackal the base’s coordinates.” Ares was her hero. Her god. After her children died in the mines he gave her a reason to live, a reason to fight. And then she discovered he was the enemy, and she got him killed. It crushes me to think that’s why he died.
Dancer surveys me quietly. It’s clear I’m not what he expected. Mother and Narol watch him almost as carefully as they watch me, deducing the same.
“I know I’m not what I was,” I say slowly.
“No, boy. You’ve been through hell. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
He exchanges a look with my mother. “You’re sure?”
“He needs to know. Tell him,” she says. Narol nods too.
Dancer hesitates still. He looks for a chair. Narol rushes to pull one out for him and set it near the bed. Dancer nods his thanks and then leans over me, making a steeple of his fingers. “Darrow, you’ve gone too long with people hiding things from you. So I want to be very transparent from here forward. Until five days ago, we thought you were dead.”
“I was close enough.”
“No. No, I mean we stopped looking for you nine months ago.”
My mother’s hand tightens on mine.
“Three months after you were captured, the Golds executed you on the HC for treason. They dragged a boy identical to you out to the steps of the citadel in Agea and read off your crimes. Pretending you were still a Gold. We tried to free you. But it was a trap. We lost thousands of men.” His eyes drift over my lips, my hair. “He had your eyes, your scars, your bloodydamn face. And we had to watch as the Jackal cut off your head and destroyed your obelisk on Mars Field.”
I stare at them, not fully comprehending.
“We grieved for you, child,” Mother says, voice thin. “The whole clan, city. I led the Fading Dirge myself and we buried your boots in the deeptunnels beyond Tinos.”
Narol crosses his arms, trying to seal himself off from the memory. “He was just like you. Same walk. Same face. Thought I had watched you die again.”
“It was likely a fleshMask or they Carved someone, or digital effects,” Dancer explains. “Doesn’t matter now. The Jackal killed you as an Aureate. Not as a Red. Would have been foolish for them to reveal your identity. Would have handed us a tool. So instead you died just another Gold who thought he could be king. A warning.”
The Jackal promised he would hurt those I love. And now I see how deeply he has. My mother’s façade has broken. All the grief she’s kept inside thickens behind her eyes as she stares down at me. Guilt straining her face.
“I gave up on you,” she says softly, voice cracking. “I gave up.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Sevro did,” she says.
“He never stopped looking for you,” Dancer explains. “I thought he was mad. He said you weren’t dead. That he could feel it. That he would know. I even asked him to give up the helm to someone else. He was too reckless searching for you.”
“But the bastard found you,” Narol says.
“Aye,” Dancer replies. “He did. I was wrong in it. I should have believed in you. Believed in him.”