Page 104

I cough and shake my head. She waits patiently till I have a small, annoying epiphany. “Do you always toy with your guests?”

“Sometimes.” She smirks. “You do look a little like a toy. All that hair and those dandy little limbs.”

“Dandy?”

“Dandy. And your nose has only been broken recently. Are your eyes real?” She leans in. “You didn’t have them carved like a Corish Pixie, did you?” I don’t dignify the question with an answer.

“You’re not going to leave, are you?”

“Why would I? Everyone is busy preparing for supper. I am bored. You are entertaining.”

“Very well then.” I drop my robe to the floor, intending to embarrass her. She doesn’t look away. She scrutinizes.

“You have more scars than most Pixies,” she says after a moment.

“Because I am not a Pixie.”

She surprises me with a laugh and counts my scars till she finds one curious. It is a long, thin scar, like a necklace around my neck. “Who gave you this one?” Her pale fingers brush against the scar, and impossibly I hear the howling of the wind outside my window. And in the darkness there and in my mind, he lurks, the Reaper’s beast, the demon of my childhood. Instinctively, I put my robe back on and sit on the ground. She looks suddenly apologetic.

“A man gave it to me when I was young,” I say, chastising myself for losing control of the memory. Some demons never leave. Grandmother wanted to laser the scar off. I convinced her to let me keep it.

She joins me on the floor. “A lover?”

“No.”

“Did you kill him for it? For hurting you?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

“Like I said, I was young. He was not.”

“Did you find him and kill him later? You are a man now.”

“No.”

“Why not? If he hurt you and remains alive, then he is your master. That is why I slayed the Obsidian warchief who beat me on the Vindabona.”

“It’s in the past. The past doesn’t define me.” I repeat Cassius’s words like they were my own. How many times did he tell me this? How many times have I failed to believe him?

“Stupid gahja.” She taps my forehead. “Nothing is past. Everything that was, is. That scar is a story of your subjugation. Slay the man who gave you that, and it becomes the story of your liberation.”

“Did your father teach you that?” I say, angry that she would preach to me.

Her eyes turn cold and flinty, sensing the accusation.

I’m suddenly achingly aware of the difference between us. She might be the child of a Sovereign like me, but she is a soldier. She was raised in gladiatorial academies amongst sinewy killers on a moon that breaks down your DNA if you step outside without at least three centimeters of high-grade radiation shielding. She has a scar from the Io Institute. There is none more brutal. The students don’t kill as much as Martians or rape as much as Venusians, but the games can last for years in temperatures that freeze your blood before it drips from a wound.

What have I done but read and run all my life? I suddenly feel indicted by my own banter. Like I’m a dog barking at a wolf who knows very well that I’m not from the wild, but lets me bark because it entertains.

“Apologies,” I say carefully.

“Forgiven,” she replies. “Yes, my father taught me that scars are why our ancestors were able to shape the worlds. As Golds, we were born as perfect as man can be. It is our duty to embrace the scars our choices give us, to embrace and remember our mistakes, else we live believing our own myth.” She smiles to herself. “He says a man who believes his own myth is like a drunk thinking he can dance barefoot on a razor’s edge.” The smile disappears as she perhaps remembers her father’s face when he was led away by her brother. And I see clear as day the true war that rages inside the girl. It softens me to her, because it feels a reflection of the same war inside of me. I fight back the urge to touch her hand.

“You think me wicked,” she says quietly, her eyes fixed on the window. “Betraying my own father…”

Why does she care? “Families are…complicated.”