Golden Son (Red Rising Trilogy, #2)(26)

And I thought the Golds were broken. We’re all just wounded souls stumbling about in the dark, desperately trying to stitch ourselves together, hoping to fill the holes they ripped in us. Eo kept me from this end. Without her, I’d be like them. Lost.

“It’s not about hurting them, Evey,” I say. “It’s about beating them, Eo taught me that, Dancer too. We’re swinging at the apples when we should be digging at the roots. What will bombing them do? What will assassination accomplish? We need to undermine their Society as a whole, erode their way of life, not this.”

“You’ve lost sight of your mission, Darrow,” Harmony says.

“You say that to me?” I ask. “How could you possibly understand what I’ve seen?”

“Exactly. What you’ve seen. You dine with the masters, so you can afford to live a life of theories. What about what I’ve seen? We’re down in the shit. We’re dying. And what are you doing? Philosophizing. Living the plush life. Bedding Pinks. I had to listen as Dancer died. I had to hear the bloodydamn screams rattle over the coms as the lurchers came to kill. And I could do nothing to save them. If you had lived through that, you would know fire can only be fought with fire.”

I know where these words lead. They gave me a hole in my gut. Put me weeping in the mud, Cassius standing over me. That is how this will end.

“You may have lost all you love, Harmony. I’m sorry for that. But my family is still in a mine. They will not suffer because you are angry. My wife’s dream was about a better world. Not a bloodier one.” I stand. “Now, I want to talk to Ares.”

Silence lies heavy upon the room.

“Give us a moment.” Harmony looks at Mickey and Evey. She watches Mickey stand reluctantly. He pauses, as if to say something to me, but, feeling Harmony’s eyes on him, thinks better of it.

“Good luck, my darling,” he says simply, patting my shoulder.

“Let me stay,” Evey says, drawing close to Harmony. “I can help with him.”

Harmony touches her hip. “Ares wouldn’t allow it.”

“After what I did today … don’t you trust me? I’m not like the rest.”

“I trust you, as much as any Red. But this is something I can’t share with you.” She kisses Evey softly on the lips. “Go.”

Evey pauses at the door, looking back at me. “We’re not your enemies, Darrow. You have to know that.”

The door clicks shut behind her and we’re left alone in Mickey’s office.

“Does she know?” I ask.

“Know what?”

“That you sent her on a suicide mission.”

“No. She’s not like us. She trusts.”

“And you’d sacrifice her?”

“I’d sacrifice any of us to kill a Peerless Scarred. All we get are worthless Pixies and Bronzies. I want the real tyrants.”

“You’re using her worse than Mickey ever did.”

“She has a choice,” Harmony mutters.

“Does she?”

“Enough.” Harmony sits and gestures for me to do the same. “Dancer may be dead, but Ares has a plan for you.”

“No. No. I’m done listening to his plans through others. I’ve sacrificed three years of my life for him. I want to see his face.”

“Impossible.”

“Then I’m done.”

“How can you be done, eh? You’re trapped. You bloodywell can’t go home to Lykos, can you? One way out. Buckle tight and stay the course.”

Her words strike hard. I can’t go back. The loneliness in that is inexpressible. Where is my home? Where will I go even if this all ends with Gold falling to ashes?

“You won’t meet Ares. Even I’ve never even seen his face, Helldiver.”

“You haven’t? You’ve worked for him almost as long as Dancer. Years. How can you of all people trust him?”

“Because he put the first gun in my hand. He wore his helmet and pushed a mark IV scorcher with a full ion clip into my palm.”

“Is Ares a man?” I ask.

“Who cares?” She pulls up a holoDisplay. The electrons swirl in the air, coalescing into a series of maps. I recognize the topography. Mars. Venus. Luna, I think. Dozens of red dots blink throughout blueprints of cities, dockyards, and a dozen other vital organs. Bombs, I realize. Harmony looks tiredly at the map. “This is Ares’s plan. Four hundred bombings. Six hundred assaults on weapons depots, government facilities, electric companies, communications grids. It is the sum of the Sons of Ares. Years of planning. Years of scraping up resources.”

I had no idea we could carry out such action. I stare at the map in awe.

“The bombings today were meant to provoke a response. Get them all hot and bothered. We want them mobilizing. If they mobilize, they condense. Easiest to burn pitvipers when they are packed tight.”

“When will this take place?”

“Three nights from now.”

“Three nights,” I repeat. “At the conclusion of the Summit. He can’t want me to do th—”

“He does. Three nights from now, the Summit finishes up nice with a gala. Wine, Pinks, silks, whatever the hell you Goldbrows do. All the bloodydamn Governors, all the Senators, Praetors, Imperators, Judiciars from across the Society will be here. A Solar System of monsters brought by the power of the Sovereign to one place. It’ll be ten more years before we see this. There’s no way for the Sons to get in, but you can go where we can’t. You can strike the blow that we cannot.”