An Ember in the Ashes(117)

She picked up children like sacks of grain and carried a large stick wherever she went. And though she was young, she didn’t seem to have any children of her own.”
Mamie Rila.
“I waited until night. And left you in her tent, on her bed. Then I rode away. But after a few hours, I turned back. I had to find you and kill you. No one could know of you. You were a mistake, a symbol of my failure.
“By the time I got back, the caravan was gone. Worse, they’d split up. I was weak and exhausted and had no way to track you. So I let you go. I’d already made one mistake. Why not one more?
“And then six years later, the Augurs brought you to Blackcliff. My father ordered me back from the mission I was on. Ah, Elias—” I start. She’s never said my name before.
“You should have heard the things he said. Whore. Slut. Streetwalker. What will our enemies say? Our allies? As it turns out, they said nothing. He made sure of that.
“When you survived your first year at the school, when he saw his own strength in you, then you were all he could talk about. After years of disappointment, the great Quin Veturius had an heir he could be proud of. Did you know, son, that I was the best student this school had seen in a generation? The fastest? The strongest? After I left, I caught more Resistance scum alone than the rest of my class put together. I brought down the Lioness herself. None of that mattered to my father. Not before you were born. Even less so once you arrived. When it came time for him to name an heir, he didn’t even consider choosing me. Instead, he named you. A bastard. A mistake.
“I hated him for it. And you, of course. But more than both of you, I hated myself. For being so weak. For not killing you when I had the chance. I vowed I’d never again make such a mistake. I’d never again show weakness.”
She comes back to the bars and pins me with her eyes.
“I know what’s in your mind,” she says. “Remorse. Anger. You go back in your head and imagine yourself killing the Scholar girl, the way I imagined killing you. Your regret weighs you down like lead in your blood—if you’d only done it! If only you’d had the strength! One mistake and you’ve given up your life. Is it not so? Is it not torture?”
I feel an odd mix of disgust and sympathy for her as I realize that this is the closest she’ll ever come to relating to me. She takes my silence as assent.
For the first and probably the only time in my life, I see something a little like sadness in her eyes.
“It’s a hard truth, but there is no going back. Tomorrow, you’ll die. Nothing can stop it. Not me, not you, not even my indomitable father, though he’s tried. Take comfort in knowing that your death will give your mother peace. That the gnawing sense of wrong that has haunted me for twenty years will be set right. I’ll be free.”
For a few seconds, I can’t bring myself to say anything. That’s it? I’m going to my death, and all she’s willing to say is what I already know? That she hates me? That I’m the biggest mistake she ever made?
No, that’s not true. She’s told me that she’d been human once. That she’d had mercy in her. She hadn’t exposed me as I’d always been told. When she left me with Mamie Rila, she’d tried to give me life.
But when that brief mercy faded, when she regretted her humanity in favor of her own desires, she became what she is now. Unfeeling. Uncaring.
A monster.
“If I feel regret,” I say, “it’s that I wasn’t willing to die sooner. That I wasn’t willing to cut my own throat in the Third Trial instead of killing men I’d known for years.” I stand and go toward her. “I don’t regret not killing Laia. I’ll never regret that.”
I think of what Cain said to me that night we stood on the watchtower and looked out at the dunes. You’ll have a chance at true freedom—of body and of soul.
And suddenly, I don’t feel bewildered or defeated. This—this—was what Cain spoke of: the freedom to go to my death knowing it’s for the right reason.

The freedom to call my soul my own. The freedom to salvage some small goodness by refusing to become like my mother, by dying for something that is worth dying for.
“I don’t know what happened to you,” I say. “I don’t know who my father was or why you hate him so much. But I know my death won’t free you. It won’t give you peace. You’re not the one killing me. I chose to die. Because I’d rather die than become like you. I’d rather die than live with no mercy, no honor, no soul.”
I wrap my hands around the bars and look down into her eyes. For a second, confusion flashes there, an all-too-brief crack in her armor. Then her gaze turns to steel. It doesn’t matter. All I feel for her in this moment is pity.
“Tomorrow, I’m the one who will be set free. Not you.”
I release the bars and move to the back of the cell. Then I slide to the floor and close my eyes. I don’t see her face as she leaves. I don’t hear her. I don’t care.
The killing blow is my release.
Death is coming for me. Death is nearly here.
I am ready for him.
XLVII: Laia
I watch Teluman working from his open door for long minutes before I summon up the courage to enter his shop. He hammers a strip of heated metal with careful, measured strokes, his brightly tattooed arms sweating from the strain.
“Darin’s in Kauf.”
He stops midswing and turns. The alarm in his eyes at my words is strangely comforting. At least there is one other person who cares about my brother’s fate as much as I do.