An Ember in the Ashes(116)

The knowledge is a demon gnawing insatiably at my mind. How did this happen? How could Marcus—mad, depraved Marcus—be overlord of the Empire? I see Cain naming him Emperor, see Helene kneeling before him, swearing to honor him as her master, and I bang my head against the bars in a futile and painful attempt to get the images out of my mind.
He succeeded where you failed. He showed strength where you showed weakness.
Should I have killed Laia? I’d be Emperor if I had. She died anyway, in the end. I pace my prison cell. Five steps one way, six another. I wish I’d never carried Laia up the cliffs after my mother marked her. I wish I’d never danced with her or spoken with her or seen her. I wish I had never allowed my accursedly single-minded male brain to linger over every detail about her.
That is what brought her to the Augurs’ attention, what made them choose her as the prize for the Third Trial and the victim for the Fourth. She’s dead, and it’s because I singled her out.
So much for keeping my soul.
I laugh, and it echoes in the dungeon like shattered glass. What did I think was going to happen? Cain was clear enough: Whoever killed the girl won the Trial. I just didn’t want to believe that rulership of the Empire could come down to something so brutal. You’re na?ve, Elias. You’re a fool. Helene’s words from a few hours before come back to me.
I couldn’t agree more, Hel.
I try to rest but instead fall into the dream of the killing field. Leander, Ennis, Demetrius, Laia—bodies everywhere, death everywhere. My victims’ eyes are open and staring, and the dream is so real I can smell the blood. I think for a long time that I must be dead, that this is some ring of hell I’m walking.
Hours, or minutes later, I jerk awake. I know immediately that I’m not alone.
“Nightmare?”
My mother stands outside my cell, and I wonder how long she’s been watching me.
“I have them too.” Her hand strays to the tattoo at her neck.
“Your tattoo.” I’ve been wanting to ask about those blue whorls for years, and, as I’m going to die anyway, I figure I have nothing to lose. “What is it?”
I don’t expect her to answer, but to my surprise, she unbuttons her uniform jacket and pulls up the shirt beneath to reveal a stretch of pallid skin. The markings that I mistook as designs are actually letters that twine around her torso like a coil of nightshade: ALWAYS VICTO
I raise an eyebrow—I wouldn’t expect Keris Veturia to wear her house’s motto so proudly, especially considering her history with Grandfather. Some of the letters are newer than others. The first A is faded, as if it was inked years ago. The T, meanwhile, looks just days old.
“Run out of ink?” I ask her.
“Something like that.”
I don’t ask her anything else about it—she’s said all she’s going to. She states at me in silence. I wonder what she’s thinking. Masks are supposed to be able to read people, to understand them by observing them. I can tell if a stranger is nervous or fearful, honest or insincere, just by watching them for a few seconds. But my own mother is a mystery to me, her face as dead and remote as a star.
Questions spring free in my mind, questions I thought I no longer cared about. Who is my father? Why did you leave me to die? Why didn’t you love me? Too late to ask them now. Too late for the answers to mean anything.
“The moment I knew you existed,” her voice is soft, “I hated you.”
Despite myself, I look up at her. I know nothing about my conception or birth. Mamie Rila only told me that if the Tribe Saif hadn’t found me exposed in the desert, I’d have died. My mother wraps her fingers around the bars of my cell. Her hands are so small.

“I tried to get you out of me,” she says. “I used lifesbane and nightswood and a dozen other herbs. Nothing worked. You thrived, eating away at my health. I was sick for months. But I managed to get my commander to send me on a solo mission hunting Tribal rebels. So no one knew. No one suspected.
“You grew and grew. Got so big I couldn’t ride a horse, swing a sword. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything but wait until you were born so I could kill you and be done with it.”
She leans her forehead against the bars, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “I found a Tribal midwife. After I’d attended a few dozen births with her and learned what I needed, I poisoned her.
“Then one winter morning, I felt the pains. Everything was prepared. A cave. A fire. Hot water and towels and cloths. I wasn’t afraid. Suffering and blood I knew well. The loneliness was an old friend. The anger—I used it to carry me through.
“Hours later, when you emerged, I didn’t want to touch you.” She releases the bars and paces outside my cell. “I needed to tend to myself, to make sure there was no infection, no danger. I wasn’t about to let the son kill me after the father had failed.
“But some weakness took me, some ancient, beast’s inclination. I found myself cleaning your face and mouth. I saw that your eyes were open. And they were my eyes.
“You didn’t cry. If you had, it would have been easier. I’d have broken your neck the way I’d break a chicken’s neck, or a Scholar’s. Instead, I wrapped you, held you, fed you. I laid you in the crook of my arm and watched as you slept. It was deep night then, the time of night that doesn’t feel quite real. The time of night that’s like a dream.
“One dawn later, when I could walk, I got on my horse and carried you to the nearest Tribal camp. I watched them for a time and saw a woman I liked.