Page 20 of Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

“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.”

“How did you find me?”

“Theodora designed an operation.”

“She’s here?”

“Working for us in intelligence. Woman’s got contacts. Some of her informants in a Pearl Club caught word that the Olympic Knights were taking a package from Attica back to Luna for the Sovereign. Sevro believed you were that package, and he put a huge portion of our reserve resources behind this attack, burned two of our deep assets…”

As he speaks, I watch my mother stare distantly at a crackling lightbulb in the ceiling. What is this like for her? For a mother to see her child broken by other men? To see the pain written in scars on his skin, spoken in silences, in far-off looks. How many mothers have prayed to see their sons, their daughters return from war only to realize the war has kept them, the world has poisoned them, and they’ll never be the same?

For nine months, Mother has grieved for me. Now she’s drowning in guilt for giving up and desperation in hearing the war swallow me again, knowing she’s helpless to stop it. In the past years, I’ve trampled over so many to get what I think I want. If this is my last chance at life, I want to do it right. I need to.

“…But now the real problem isn’t materiel, it’s manpower we need….”

“Dancer…stop,” I say.

“Stop?” He frowns in confusion, glancing at Narol. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. But I’ll talk with you in the morning about this.”

“The morning? Darrow, the world is shifting under your feet. We’ve lost control over the other Red factions. The Sons will not last the year. I have to give you a debriefing. We need you back….”