An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(99)

And now one of them will die. No matter what I do.

Tristas comes for me, tears streaking his mask. His black hair is covered in mud, and his eyes burn with the panic of a cornered animal as he looks between Faris and me.

“I’m sorry, Elias.”

He takes a step toward me, and suddenly, his body stiffens. The scim in his hand tips into the mud as he peers down at the blade emerging from his chest. Then he slides to the wet ground, his gaze fixed on me.

Dex stands behind him, revulsion bursting from his eyes as he watches one of his best friends die by his hand.

No. Not Tristas. Tristas, who’s been engaged to his childhood sweetheart since he was seventeen, who helped me understand Helene, who has four sisters who adore him. I stare at his body, at the tattoo on his arm. Aelia.

Tristas, dead. Dead.

Faris stops struggling. He coughs and stands shakily, then looks down at Tristas’s body with dawning shock. But he has as little time to grieve as I do. One of Helene’s men sends a mace whistling toward his head, and he is soon locked in another battle, jabbing and lunging as if he hadn’t been perched on the edge of the abyss a minute before.

Dex is in my face then, his eyes wild. “We have to kill them! Give the order!”

My mind won’t think the words. My lips won’t speak them. I know these men. And Helene—I can’t let them kill Helene. I think of the nightmare battlefield—Demetrius and Leander and Ennis. No. No. No.

Around me, my men drop, suffocating as they refuse to kill their friends, or falling beneath the merciless blades of Blue Platoon.

“Darien’s dead, Elias!” Dex shakes me again. “Cyril too. Aquilla gave the order already. You have to give it too, or we’re done for.”

“Elias.” He forces me to meet his eyes. “Please.”

Unable to speak, I raise my hands and give the signal, my skin crawling as word passes down the battlefield from soldier to soldier.

Red Commander’s orders. Fight to kill. No quarter.

???

There is no cursing, no yelling, no bluffing. We are, all of us, trapped in a pocket of unending violence. Swords grinding and friends dying and the sleet knifing down on us.

I’ve given the order, and so I take the lead. I show no hesitation, because if I do, my men will falter. And if they falter, we all die.

So I kill. Blood taints everything. My armor, my skin, my mask, my hair. The hilt of my scim drips with it, making it slippery beneath my hand. I’m Death himself, presiding over this butchery. Some of my victims die with merciful swiftness, gone before their bodies touch the ground.

Others take longer.

A wretched part of me wants to do it stealthily. Just slip up behind them and slide my scim in so I don’t have to see their eyes. But the battle is uglier than that. Harder. Crueler. I stare into the faces of the men I kill, and though the storm muffles the groans, every death carves its way into my memory, each one a wound that will never heal.

Death supplants everything. Friendship, love, loyalty. The good memories I have of these men—of helpless laughter, of bets won and pranks hatched—they are stolen away. All I can remember are the worst things, the darkest things.

Ennis, sobbing like a child in Helene’s arms when his mother died six months back. His neck snaps in my hands like a twig.

Leander and his never-to-be-requited love for Helene. My scim slides into his neck like a bird through a clear sky. Easily. Effortlessly.

Demetrius, who screamed in futile rage after he watched his ten-year-old brother whipped to death by the Commandant for desertion. He smiles when he sees me coming, drops his weapon and waits as if the edge of my blade is a gift. What does Demetrius see as the light leaves his eyes? His little brother waiting for him? An infinity of darkness?

On goes the slaughter, and all the while, lurking in the back of my head is Cain’s ultimatum. The battle will end when you, Aspirant Veturius, defeat—or are defeated by—the leader of the enemy.

I’ve tried to seek out Helene and end this quickly, but she’s elusive. When she finally finds me, I feel as if I’ve been battling for days, though in truth, it has been no more than half an hour.

“Elias.” She shouts my name, but her voice is weak with reluctance. The battle slows to a halt as our men stop attacking each other, as the mist clears enough for them to turn and watch Helene and me. Slowly, they gather around us, forming a half circle pocked by empty spaces where living men should stand.

Hel and I face each other, and I wish for the Augurs’ power to know her mind. Her blonde hair is a tangle of blood, mud, and ice, her braid unpinned and hanging limply down her back. Her chest rises and falls heavily.

I wonder how many of my men she’s killed.

Her fist tightens around the hilt of her scim—a warning she knows I won’t miss.

Then she attacks. Though I pivot and bring up my scim to parry, my insides are paralyzed. I am staggered at her vehemence. Another part of me understands. She wants this madness done.

At first, I try to deflect her, unwilling to go on the offensive. But a decade of ruthlessly honed instinct rebels at such passivity. Soon, I’m fighting in earnest, using every trick I know to survive her onslaught.

My mind flickers to the attack poses Grandfather taught me, the ones the Blackcliff Centurions don’t know. The ones Helene won’t be able to defend against.

You can’t kill Hel. You can’t.