She knew her father was a handsome man, and she was old enough to note the longing stares of the marrowborn ladies as they watched him sweep past across the ballroom floor. But despite the finest of Godsgrave’s donas (and no few dons) staring after him wistfully, Mia’s father had eyes only for her.
“I love you, Mia.”
“I love you, too.”
“Promise you’ll remember. No matter what comes.”
She gave him a puzzled smile. “I promise, Father.”
They danced on, twirling across the polished boards to the magikal song. Mia looked to the ceilings high above her, pale and gleaming. The consul’s extravagant palazzo sat at the base of the first Rib, right near the Senate House and Godsgrave’s Spine. The dance floor was a revolving mosaic of the three suns, circling each other just as the dancers did. The building was carved from the gravebone of the Rib itself, same as the longsword at her father’s waist, the armor he wore when he rode to war. The heart of the Itreyan Republic, chiseled from the bones of some long-fallen titan.
Mia peered through the crowd and saw her mother, speaking with a man upon a dais at the end of the room. He was resplendent in robes of brilliant purple, a golden laurel around his brow and golden rings upon his fingers. His hair was thick and dark, his eyes were darker still, and he was—though Mia would never have admitted it—perhaps a little more handsome than her father.
Mia saw her mother bow to the handsome man. An elegant woman seated on the dais looked displeased as the man kissed Alinne Corvere’s hand in turn.
“Who is that, Father?” Mia asked.
“Our new consul,” he replied, his eyeline following hers. “Julius Scaeva.”
“Is he a friend of Mother’s?”
“Of a sort.”
Mia watched as the handsome man placed one hand on Alinne Corvere’s swollen belly. A brief touch, light as feathers. A glance between them, quick as silver.
“I do not like him,” the girl declared.
“No fear, my dove,” the justicus replied. “Your mother likes him well enough for both of you. She always has.”
Mia blinked, looking up at her father with black, narrowed eyes. There was a length of rope about his neck in place of his cravat now, tied in a perfect noose.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“O, wake up, Mia,” he sighed.
“Father, I—”
“Wake up.”
* * *
“Wake up.”
Mia felt a hard kick in her belly. A child’s voice, somewhere distant.
“Wake up, curse you!”
Another kick, this time into the fresh wound at her shoulder. Mia gasped with pain and opened her eyes, seeing a silhouette leaning over her in the gloom. Without thinking, she lashed out with her good hand, seizing the figure’s throat. It squeaked and thrashed, little fingers digging into her forearm. Only then, through the pain and retreating toxic haze did she recognize …
“… Jonnen?”
She released the boy’s neck as if his skin were scalding metal. Utterly aghast, she reached out to smooth his filthy purple toga.
“O, Jonnen, I’m sor—”
“My name is Lucius!” the boy spat, slapping her hands away.
Mia caught her breath, tried to still her thundering heart. She was horrified at herself—she’d almost hurt him without thinking. Her mind was swimming with pictures of a glittering ballroom and a truedark sky and Scaeva’s hand on her mother’s belly. Of an arena full of people, screaming as she buried her gravebone dagger in Scaeva’s chest. Of Jonnen’s face, pale and horrified as she laid his father low before him.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
The boy simply scowled, his eyes as dark and bottomless as Mia’s. She glanced around them, wondering where they might be. A vast black space surrounded them, lit by the glow of a single lantern on the ground beside her. The ghostly light extended only a handful of feet, and beyond that lay a darkness too deep to fathom.
The floor was uneven beneath her, and Mia realized it was made entirely of human faces and hands—stone reliefs, carved from the snow-pale bedrock itself. The faces were all female—all the same woman, in fact—her features beautiful, her tresses long and gently curled. But her expressions were all of anguish, of terror, her stone mouths open wide and silently screaming. The multitude of hands were upturned to the hidden ceiling, as if it were about to collapse.
Mia blinked hard, trying to remember how she got here. She recalled her confrontation with Solis and Hush. That spectral figure who’d rescued her in the Galante necropolis,