Red Rising(31)

I look at Evey’s white wings and know how ugly she must think them to be on her back, how she must hate them. I want to say something kind to her. I want to make her smile, if she can. I would tell her that she is beautiful, but she’s lived a life of men saying that for some gain or another. She wouldn’t believe a boy like me. And I don’t believe her words to me. Eo was beautiful. I still remember the flush of blood in her cheeks as she danced. She had all the raw colors of life, the crude beauty of nature. I am the human concept of beauty. Gold made soft and supple into man’s form.

Evey kisses the top of my head before darting away and leaving me alone to watch the HC in the mirror’s reflection. I did not notice her slip a feather from her wings into my breast pocket.

I’m tired of watching the HC. I know their history now and I’m learning more every day. But I’m tired of being inside, tired of listening to Mickey’s club thump its music and smelling the minty leaves he smokes. Tired of seeing the girls he brings into his family only to sell away when someone bids high enough. Tired of seeing all the full eyes go hollow. This is not Lykos. There is no love, no family or trust. This place is sick.

“My boy, you look fit to captain a fleet of torchShips,” Mickey says from the door. He slides in, smelling like his burners. His spindly fingers take Evey’s feather from my breast pocket and roll it back and forth over his knuckles. He taps the feather to each of my golden Sigils. “Wings are my favorite. Aren’t they yours? They go to mankind’s better aspirations.”

He comes up behind me as I sit staring into the mirror. His hands go to my shoulders and he speaks down at my head, resting his chin upon it as though I am his property. It’s easy to see he thinks I am. My left hand goes to the Sigil on my right, lingering there.

“I told you you were brilliant. Now it’s your time to fly.”

“You give the girls wings, but you don’t let them fly. Do you?” I ask.

“It’s impossible to make them fly. They are simpler things than you. And I can’t afford to buy a license to have gravBoots. So they dance for me. Their bones aren’t hollow like birdies’, you see,” Mickey explains. “There was one I made hollow, Navia. But you know what’s what? Didn’t fly. Don’t have the physics for it. But you, you’ll fly, won’t you, my brilliant boy?”

I stare at him but say nothing. His lips slice into a smile because I unnerve him. I always have. “You’re frightened of me,” I tell him.

He laughs. “Am I? Oho! Am I now, my boy?”

“Yes. You’re used to knowing what’s what. You think like the rest of them.” I nod to the HC’s reflection. “Things are set in stone. Things are well ordered. Reds at the bottom, everyone else standing on our backs. Now you’re looking at me and you’re realizing that we don’t bloodydamn like it down there. Red is rising, Mickey.”

“Oh, you’ve got far to go …”

I reach up and grab his wrists so that he cannot move. He stares at me in the mirror’s reflection, struggling against my hold. Nothing is stronger than a Helldiver’s grip. I smile into the mirror, locking my golden eyes with his violet ones. He smells like fear. Primal terror. Like a mouse cornered by a lion.

“Be kind to Evey, Mickey. Don’t make her dance. Give her a plush life or I’ll come back to pull your hands off your body.”





13


Bad Things



Matteo is tall wisp of a Pink with long limbs and a lean, beautiful face. He is a slave. Or was a slave for carnal pleasures. Yet he walks like a water lord. Beauty in his step. Manners and grace in the wave of his hand. He has a penchant for wearing gloves and sniffing at even the smallest bit of dirt. Body maintenance has been his life’s purpose.. So he doesn’t find it strange when he helps me apply a hair follicle killer to my arms, legs, torso, and privates. But I do. When we’re done, we’re both cursing—me from the sting, him from the punch I threw at his shoulder. I accidentally dislocated it just by punching it. I still don’t know my own strength. And they do make their Pinks fragile. If he is the rose, I am the thorns.

“Bald as a toddler, you frenetic little baby,” Matteo sighs as properly as one can say such a thing. “Just as the newest Luna fashion requires. Now, with a bit of eyebrow sculpting—oh, how your brows are like fungus-nibbling caterpillars—and nose-hair eradication, cuticle readjustment, teeth whitening on those slick new chompers—which, if I may say, are yellow as mustard dappled with dandelions … tell me, have you ever brushed your new teeth?—and blackhead removal (which shall be like probing for helium-3), toner adjustment, and melatonin injections, and you’ll be prim and rose proper–ish.”

I snort at the foolishness of it all. “I already look like a Gold.”

“You look like a Bronze! A fool’s Gold! One of the lowbred bastards who looks more khaki than Gold. You must be perfect.”

“You’re a bloodydamn odd lark, Matteo.”

He smacks me. “Mind yourself! A Golden would rather die than use that slithering mineslang. ‘Gorydamn’ or ‘gory’; and ‘slag’ instead of ‘squab.’ Every time you say ‘bloody’ or ‘bloodydamn,’ I will smack not your gob, but your mouth. And if you say ‘squab’ or ‘gob,’ I will kick you in the scrotum—which I do know my way around—as I will do if you do not get rid of that horrible accent. You sound like you were born in a gorydamn dumpster.”