once more saving her skin among the houses of Godsgrave’s dead. She could still feel Solis’s poison in her veins, though she noted the wound at her shoulder had been bound with a scrap of dark cloth. She still felt sluggish from the toxin, cold from the brittle chill around her. She felt the ache of her wounds and the tug of dried blood crusting on her skin, and somewhere distant, a nameless, shapeless anger. And looking around at that sea of frozen, terrified faces, like the sensation of sound for a man long since deafened, Mia suddenly realized she felt …
Afraid.
She searched the dark about her. Seeking her passengers among those stone hands and open mouths and realizing she couldn’t feel them anywhere. Her skin prickled, her belly rolled, and with a hiss of pain, she forced herself to her feet.
“Mister Kindly?” she called. “Eclipse?”
No answer. Nothing but the thud of her pulse in her veins, the dreadful empty of their absence. Eclipse had walked beside her since Lord Cassius had died, Mister Kindly since her father had been hanged. She’d not been without them save by request for an age. But now, to find herself alone …
“Where are we?” she whispered, studying the sea of faces and hands.
“I do not know,” Jonnen said, a small tremble in his voice.
Her heart softened, and she reached out to him in the dark. “It’s all right, Jonnen, I’m here with—”
“My name is Lucius!” he shouted, stamping his little foot. “Lucius Atticus Scaeva! I am firstborn son of Consul Julius Maximillianus Scaeva, and I am honorbound to kill you!” He pointed an accusing finger, cheeks pink with fury. “You murdered my father!”
Mia withdrew her hand, studying the boy’s face. The bared teeth and quivering lip. Those dark, brooding eyes, so like her own. So like his.
“I used to sing to you,” she said. “When you were little and it stormed. You hated the thunder.” She found herself smiling at the memory. “A squalling, pink-faced screamer with a pair of lungs on him that might wake the dead, you were. The nursemaids couldn’t do anything to still you. I was the only one who could give you calm. Do you remember?”
She cleared her throat, croaking a rusty tune.
“In bleakest times, in darkest climes,
When wind blows cold—”
“You sound like a harpy shrieking for supper,” the boy snarled.
Mia bit her lip, struggling to keep her infamous temper in check. She’d spent almost eight years plotting the deaths of the men who’d killed her kin. Six years training under the most dangerous killers in the Republic, another year in service to the Red Church, almost another year fighting for her life on the sands of Itreya’s arenas, up to her armpits in blood. Never once in all that time did she learn how to deal with a spoiled marrowborn brat grieving the loss of his bastard father. But still, she tried to imagine what the boy must think. How he must feel looking at the girl who’d murdered his da.
In truth, it wasn’t that hard to see his side. She remembered her own version of this moment, years past. Watching the men who hanged her own da in the forum. Her vow of vengeance ringing in her head, the hatred like white-hot acid in her veins.
Did Jonnen now feel the same way about her?
Am I his Scaeva?
“Jonnen, I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this is hard. I know you’re frightened and angry, that there’s things you—”
“Do not speak to me, slave,” he growled.
Her hand went to the arkemical brand on her cheek. The twin circles that marked her as the property of the Remus Collegium. She could feel the scar on the other side of her face. The gash cutting down through her brow, curling in a cruel hook along her left cheek—a memento from her ordeals on the sands. She thought briefly of Sidonius. Bladesinger and the other Falcons. Wondering if they’d made it to safety.
“I am no slave,” she said, iron creeping into her voice. “I’m your sister.”
“I have no sister,” Jonnen snarled.
“Half sister, then,” Mia said. “We’ve the same mother.”
“You’re a liar!” he cried, stamping his feet again. “Liar!”
“I’m not lying,” Mia insisted, pinching the bridge of her nose to stop the ache. “Jonnen, listen to me, please … you were too young to remember. But you were taken from our mother as a babe. Her name was Alinne. Alinne Corvere.”
“Corvere?” he scoffed, his dark eyes narrowed. “The Kingmaker’s wife?”