I gaze around the gala. Hundreds mill about already. Those from Venus will be late, as is their way. We of Mars pride punctuality. Luneborns are enigmatic socially, and so may be first or last. And the families of the Gas Giants will come whenever they damn well like. How long should I wait? It is difficult to hold on to the rage that made me embrace this decision. They killed my wife, I tell myself. But no matter the anger I summon by remembering, I cannot burn away the fear that I steer the rebellion toward a cliff.

This will not be for Eo’s dream. It will be for the satisfaction of those living. To sate their lust for vengeance rather than honoring those who have already sacrificed everything. And it will be irreversible. But so is the course that has been set. Thousands of Reds wait for my signal to begin the uprising. I cannot abandon them now.

So many doubts. Am I being a coward? Does my mind play tricks to salvage my pride, using logic to pull me away from risk? I chase myself in circles.

I’m thinking too much. That makes a bad soldier. And that is what I am. A soldier for Ares. He gave me this body. I should trust him now. So I take the bomb shaped like my Pegasus pendant and slap it on the underside of Augustus’s table, just near the table’s end.

I wander away, willing more houses to fill the gala so that I may end this soon. A host of praetors, quaestors, judiciars, governors, senators, family heads, house leaders, traders, two Olympian Knights, and a thousand others come to bid my master a good evening. These older men and women talk of Outrider attacks on Uranus and Ariel, rumored Sons of Ares bases on Triton, and a new strain of plague on one of Earth’s dark continents. Light fare.

Many others take my master aside, as though a hundred eyes did not watch their every move, and with voices like syrup, tell him of whispers in the night, of shifting winds and dangerous tides. The metaphors mix. The point is the same. Augustus has fallen out of favor with the Sovereign the same way I have fallen out of favor with him.

The ships flitting above in the night sky are as distant from the conversation as I. My eyes fall upon the Sovereign herself. How strange a thing, to see the woman just there beyond the dance floor, at the raised podium speaking with other house lords and men who rule the lives of billions. So close, so human and frail.

For her part, Octavia au Lune is more handsome than beautiful, face impassive as a mountain’s. Her silence is her power. I see her speak little, but she listens; always, she listens to words as the mountain listens to the whispering and screaming of wind through its gulches, around its peaks.

I see a man standing alone near a tree. He’s near as thick around as its trunk. A hand dwarfs his small goblet, and he wears the mark of a sword with wings, a Praetor with a fleet. I approach him. He sees me coming and smiles.

“Darrow au Andromedus,” Karnus growls.

I snap my fingers at a passing Pink. Taking two of the wine goblets from his ice tray, I pass one to Karnus. “I thought that before you come to kill me, we might as well share a drink.”

“There’s a sport.” He downs his own drink and takes the one I offer him. He eyes me over the glass. “You’re not a poisoner, are you?”

“I’m not so subtle.”

“Equal company then. All these snakes about …,” he says, sly as a crocodile. His dark Gold eyes trace the men and women. The wine is gone in a moment.

“I hate this moon.” He takes a delicacy off a passing tray. “Food’s got too much butter. Not enough salt. Though I hear the sixth course will be something to die for.”

Noting his strange tone, I cross my arms and watch the party. It’s a strange comfort being around this hateful man. Neither one of us has to pretend to like the other. No masks here, at least not as much as usual.

“I hate butter,” I say. “Makes me feel like a pig.”

He chuckles deeply. “Julian liked butter. Ate it by the stick as a boy. He was a vile child, all whimpering and simpering.”

I turn to examine the killer. “Cassius only said pretty things about him.”

“Cassius.” He snorts out something like a laugh. “Cassius once wounded a bird with a slingshot. Came to me crying, because he knew he had to kill it to put it out of its misery, but he couldn’t. I dropped a rock on it for him. Just like you did.” He smirks. “I should thank you for sweeping away the genetic chaff.”

“Julian was your brother, man.”

“He pissed the bed as a boy. Pissed the bed. He was a boy who did not deserve his mother’s favor or his father’s name.” He grabs another glass of wine from a passing Pink. “They try to make it tragedy, but it isn’t. It’s natural law.”

“Julian was more a man than you are, Karnus.”

Karnus laughs in delight. “Oh, do explain that one.”

“In a world of killers, it takes more to be kind than to be wicked. But men like you and I, we’re just passing time before death reaches down for us.”

“Which will be soon for you.” He nods to my razor. “Pity you weren’t raised in our house. We learn the blade before we learn to read. My father had us make our blades, had us name them and sleep beside them. You might have stood a chance then.”

“Wonder what you would have been if he had taught you something else.”

“I am what I am,” Karnus says, taking another drink. “And they sent me after you, me of all the sons and daughters, because I am the best at what I am.”

I watch him for a moment. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“You have everything, Karnus. Wealth. Power. Seven brothers and sisters. How many cousins? Nieces? Nephews? A father and mother who love you, yet … here you are, killing my friends. Setting the purpose of your life to killing me. Why?”

“Because you wronged my family. No one wrongs the Bellona and lives.”

“So it’s pride.”

“It’s always pride.”

“Pride is a hollow thing.”

He shrugs, voice deepening. “I will die. You will die. We will all die. And the universe will carry on without care. All that matters is how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.” He leans forward. “So you see, pride is the only thing.” His eyes leave mine and look across the room. “Pride, and women.”

I follow his eyes and I see her then.

She wears black amid a sea of gold, white, and red. Like a dark specter, she glides in out of the lift near the edge of the fake forest. She rolls her flashing eyes, twists her smirking mouth at the heads that turn her direction to stare at her funeral gown. Black. A color to show disdain for all the merry Golds about. Black like the color of the military uniform I now wear. I’m reminded of the warmth of her flesh, the mischief in her voice, the smell at the nape of her neck, the kindness of her heart. I stare so hard I almost miss her escort.

I wish I had missed him.

It is Cassius.

He of the bloodydamn golden curls is with the girl who nursed me to health in the winter, who helped me remember Eo’s dream. His hand on her waist. His lips whispering into her ear. As surely Cassius au Bellona put a sword in my stomach, he now sticks a dagger in my heart.

His hair thick and lustrous. His chin cleft. His hands steady. Form powerful. Shoulders made for war. Face made for the women of court. And he wears a crown badge. The Sovereign has appointed him as one of the Olympic Knights. Despite the fact that I won at the Institute, he’s risen higher, tearing through the Dueling Circuit on Luna like an ancestor possessed. I’ve watched him on the HC, watched him stalk around the Bleeding Place as another Gold lies near death. He stalks like a famished beast as if one life cannot sate the hunger that roils inside him.

Here, now, he dazzles, charms. Face split with a white smile, he is the man fit for stories of romance, a Lancelot galloping from myth to steal a woman who could have been, but never was, my Guinevere. His is a charmed birth. He has all I have in his Golden body and more. He is faster on his feet than I. As tall. He is more handsome. Wealthier. A golden knight. He has a better laugh and people think him kinder. He does not have my burdens. Why does he deserve this girl, who makes all but Eo pale in comparison? Does she not know how petty he is? Is she blind to his hypocrisy? To how he cares only for fame and pride and all their stupid vanities?