“I am no gutter urchin, slave,” Jonnen said, straightening his filthy robes. “I’ve a memory sharp as swords, all my tutors swear it. I know of the Kingmaker. My father sent that traitor to the hangman, and his harlot to the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Mind your tongue,” Mia warned, her finger rising along with her temper. “That’s your mother you’re talking about.”
“I am the son of a consul!” the boy stormed.
“Aye,” Mia nodded. “But Liviana Scaeva is not your mother.”
“You dare?” Jonnen pulled his little hands into fists. “You may be the daughter of some traitor’s whore, but I am no bas—”
Her slap sent him stumbling, dropping onto his backside like a brick. Mia could feel rage in her veins, swelling and rolling, threatening to swallow her whole. Jonnen blinked up at her, wide eyes brimming with tears, one hand raised to his burning cheek. He was a marrowborn lordling, heir to a vast estate, child of a noble house. Mia imagined no one had ever laid hands on him before. Especially no one with a slave brand. But still …
“Brother or no,” Mia warned, “you don’t talk about her that way.”
Beneath her anger, Mia was horrified at herself. Exhausted and frightened and aching all the way to her bones. She’d thought Jonnen dead all these years, else she’d never have left him in Scaeva’s keeping. She should have been throwing her arms about him for joy, not knocking him onto his pompous little arse.
Especially not for telling the truth.
Mia had learned from Sidonius that her parents’ marriage was one of expedience, not passion. Darius Corvere was in love with General Antonius, the man who’d sought to become king of Itreya. The Kingmaker’s arrangement with his wife was a political alliance, not a grand love affair. And it was no strange thing—such was life in many marrowborn houses of the Republic.
But of all the men Alinne Corvere could have taken as a lover, borne a child to, of all the men in all the world, how could she have chosen Julius fucking Scaeva?
Jonnen pawed at his eyes, at the handprint Mia had etched on his cheek. She could see he wanted to cry. But he stomped the tears down instead, clenching his teeth and turning his hurt to hate.
Maw’s teeth, he really is my brother.
“I’m sorry,” Mia said, softening her voice. “These are sharp truths I’m speaking. But your father was an evil man, brother. A tyrant who wanted to carve himself a throne out of the Republic’s bones.”
“Like the Kingmaker did?” Jonnen spat.
Mia swallowed hard, feeling the boy’s words like a punch to the stomach. Though she tried to keep a grip on it, she could feel herself growing angry again. As if Jonnen’s rage were somehow stoking her own.
“You’re just a boy. You’re too young to understand.”
“You’re a liar!” The boy climbed to his feet, his temper and volume rising along with him. “My father beat yours, and you’re just mad about it!”
“Of course I’m mad about it!”
“You tricked him!” the boy shouted. “On the victor’s stage! You hid that knife in your armor and you never would have touched him otherwise!”
“I did what needed to be done,” she snapped. “Julius Scaeva deserved to die!”
“You don’t fight fair!”
“Fair?” she cried. “He killed our mother!”
“You have no honor, no…”
The boy’s voice died, the twisted snarl on his face slackening into silent wonder. Mia followed his eyeline to the floor, that tableau of wailing faces and open hands, lit by the spectral glow of their single lantern. There, on the graven stone, she could see their shadows, dark and tenebrous in the ghostly light. And they were moving.
Jonnen’s shadow was slithering back, like a viper coiling to strike. Her own shadow was reaching toward his, hair flowing as if in a gentle breeze. In a blinking, Jonnen’s shade lashed out at hers, wrapping its hands around its opponent’s throat. Mia’s shadow surged and rippled as the smaller shadow slipped hands about its neck. The shades lashed and slashed at each other, sudden violence painted in rippling black, though Mia and Jonnen both stood still and unharmed.
Mia could see the perfect fury in her brother’s eyes, reflecting the war in the dark between them. It seemed as if their shadows were playing out their innermost feelings: his hatred, her affection scorned. And she knew it then, sure as she knew her own name—this boy would kill her if he could. Cut her throat and leave her for the rats. She