“Kill him,” I tell Cassius again.
Atlas looks over at me like I’m a worm that has crawled out from an apple he was eating. “Ask Lysander about the weapon,” he says.
“What weapon?” Cassius asks.
“Silenius’s. Biological. Eidmi. It can target a Color. Any Color. On any—”
I shoot Atlas au Raa in the head. Everything above his eyes turns to mist. He teeters, takes a step, and falls. His bored smile remains. Mocking me.
I wait for something terrible to transpire. For Gorgons to rush in. For the Lightbringer to break apart. For gas or snakes to hiss out from Atlas’s corpse. Nothing happens. The man is quite simply dead. Part of me did not believe he could die. Watching his blood flow around the bits of his fragmented brain, I begin to accept it.
I push off the ground with the pistol and stumble up toward the pack. A weight slides off my chest, replaced by one far worse. Cassius turns on me with a strange expression.
“Lysander.”
“You need to leave before anyone sees you,” I say.
His eyes have fallen on the pack. I’m not far now. Only a few more steps.
“Lysander. Stop.”
My boots scrape forward.
“Take one of the nightRaptors…let Diomedes and Darrow know the deed is done.” I spit blood. My vision is clearing a little. “I’ll let you know when I have control of the ship. Then…we can talk accords.”
The pack is at my feet. I bend down to unlatch its clasp. It opens a little, but I dare not give it any more attention. Not with how Cassius is looking at me. I straighten. My heart sinks, because even Atlas’s last words have sown misery.
“Lysander, what did Atlas bring back?” Cassius asks.
“Peace.”
“Is that what he told you?” he asks. “Lysander, what is that? Eidmi. My linguistic education was not as expansive as yours, but that sounds like ‘I eat’ to me.” He takes a step forward, his razor bloody and straight in his left hand.
A loaded pistol can weigh twenty-four ounces or a lifetime of regret. At my side, Rhone’s is heavy in my hand. The magazine is full with armor-piercing rounds. I let Cassius see it.
A small laugh of surprise escapes him. The betrayal in his eyes shakes me. I never wanted to hurt Cassius, just like I never wanted to hurt Glirastes. Not ever. But war is a game of double down. Once it starts, if you flinch, it’s all for nothing.
He looks at the blood. The bodies. His disembodied right hand lying on the floor. The bag at my feet. Horror grips him.
“You used me? For that? For this?” he asks. “To cut your strings and pin it all on me. The Betrayer.”
“Yes.”
He sways and looks around as if mortally wounded. “Lysander…I thought we were…I…believed in you.”
“You believed in your own reflection,” I say. “We’re not brothers. Let us go our separate ways. Take a nightRaptor. Fly away. Live. Escape this. I can’t. I won’t. I will be Sovereign. I will be a fair Sovereign. I will fix what is broken. But I must break what no longer works. Division.” I toe the bag. “With this.”
“That’s a biological weapon,” he concludes.
I nod. “I couldn’t trust it in Atlas’s hands.”
“But it’s safe in yours?”
“If I don’t control it, someone else will. Why not me?” I ask. “I didn’t start the war. I have only ever tried to do what is right! Why not me?”
“Because I don’t trust you, Lysander,” he says. “If you give it to me, I will take a nightRaptor and drive it straight into that monster.” He jerks his head toward Jupiter. The Gas Giant swirls beyond the pulseField to the hangar. “Your strings are cut, Lysander. You’re free. We can take on Atalantia. Is that not enough?”
“It’s time for you to go, Cassius.”
He watches me for a long moment.
“Say I don’t?”
“Then you’re choosing death.”
He staggers, exasperated. “No, Lysander. You choose. That’s the point of it all. Isn’t it? You choose. The chair means this much to you? More than the people in your life who love you?”
“Go, Cassius.”
“Not without that weapon.”
“This is not a debate. You are thirteen meters away. Your armor has quit. My mind is made up. And my pistol has nineteen rounds.”
“What happened to y—”
I point the gun at him. “Go.”
He looks at the gun as if it were an interloper, goes very dark for a moment, and then laughs. “You’re being ridiculous. In the end I’ll be more famous than you anyway. Cassius Bellona, the Man Who Killed Fear.”
“Leave. Cassius. Please.”
“You won’t kill me. You love me too much. The guilt will crush you.”
“I will learn to bear it.”
He looks me in the eye, sad. “No. You won’t. But if it must be guilt that drags you down, brother, I will be your millstone.” He smiles at me, forlorn. “Remember when you told me Octavia never allowed you sweets? First chance I got, I took you to that candy emporium on Eros and piled a stack of credits in your hand. That look on your face when I said you could buy as much as we could carry…”
He takes a deep breath and sighs it out. He adjusts his armor and gets a better grip on his razor.
“Cassius…don’t—” I warn.
“I must. I am Cassius Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, brother of Darrow, Morning Knight of the Solar Republic, and my honor remains.”
Then he rushes forward.
He is not fast. Not injured and in dead armor. But he is determined and he is brave and he is tough and he is clever and he is daring. He is only things I admire in him in that moment, and none of the things I don’t. He covers his exposed head with his armored arms and runs at me for all he’s worth. I fire methodically, breathing through my nose, both eyes open, like Rhone taught me. At first Cassius runs through my fire, then he plows, trudges, stumbles, until the gun is empty and he sways. But he does not fall. Not Cassius au Bellona.
The tip of his razor wobbles just two fingerbreadths from my heart.
Even though I have made a ruin of him, I cannot tell if he could not kill me or would not kill me. Nor can I tell if he opens his arms to embrace me or if he’s simply teetering forward. A seizure wracks his once-powerful body. The blade falls out of his hands. I catch him and carry him to the ground, desperate for one last word from him. But Cassius is already dead and he is smiling.
The rest of the world vanishes. I see a black door. A hand pushing it. A chair waits for me between shafts of light. On that chair I see a boy whose feet don’t touch the ground. In his hands he holds a candle and with a single breath, he blows it out, and with it go all the shafts of light.
The hangar is quiet. My broken scarabSkin creaks as I twist around. I am alone. I am in an agony in which the pain of wounds is a welcome distraction. It is quiet, but for the first time all the strings are cut.
Gentle now that I can afford to be, I strain and lift Cassius to the side. Beneath him lies the pack. The solution to disunity. The greatest fear of my life grips me and I look at Atlas and his bored smile, then back at the bag. What if it is empty? The gun is still in my hand. Odd. I thought I’d cleared the clip. There is one bullet left, in the chamber. I set the gun within reach and I open the pack.