“As long as you promise not to bring up the gala,” he says and touches his arm.
“Only if you don’t mention again how you don’t have a scratch on you.” Somehow he wasn’t injured at all in our fighting.
“I swear,” he says, and we walk together toward the keep.
The waves have not yet claimed the wandering island of Harmonia or the castle upon it that Lorn once called home. They will soon enough. The Discordia Sea is violent here in the north, and without its caretakers Harmonia cannot help but lose its war against the elements. Breakers thunder against its seawalls. Lichen grows on the castle’s towers. Coral and barnacles creep on ramparts that once sheltered the hills and forests that comprised the heart of the estate.
Maybe because Cassius is with me, I find its dereliction less tragicthan I expected. Time marches on. Nothing we build lasts forever, not without others to keep it. That was one of the many reasons I did not take the throne of the Volk for myself. Fá’s words haunt me. Ouroboros. It reminded me of what Lorn once told me:Death begets death begets death.
Crabs skitter from our boots as we walk along the bridge from the landing pads to the keep. I am sore, and not just from my fight with Fá. Even with Diomedes and the Daughters, Sevro needed help taking thePandoraback from the Ascomanni who wanted to keep it. This time Cassius and I guarded Sevro’s flank as he led the fight to free his wife’s ship wearing his father’s helmet.
I have broken ribs, three punctures in my right thigh, a wound on my upper chest from a spear that went through me, and countless bruises, sprains, and superficial lacerations. Not to mention, Fá’s poison lingers in my system, still giving me boughts of nausea. Lorn would laugh and say I walk like him now.
The fight on thePandoraturned when we freed the enslaved crew—many of Julii’s old sailors, techs, janitors even. They helped us use the ship’s systems against the holdouts and flushed them into the sea to feed the gathering leviathans. The lowColors cried and kissed Sevro afterward, and he fell to his knees with them when they heard they were going home. Not yet, though. There’s still more to do.
Cassius pauses before we enter the keep between the stone hippogriffs that guard the doors. He looks out to sea. “You’d almost think the moon is sleeping,” he says.
“It does seem eerie,” I say. “Not a ship in the sky.”
The surface of Europa is quiet. Its cities dim. But its people are not gone. They are safe in the Deep with Athena protecting them, waiting to hear if they will get their moon back and can emerge like spring flowers from the winter snow. The Ascomanni may have fled the stronger Volk ships in droves—streaming back to the Garter to seek strength in numbers with their own people—so the Volk remain the only power on Europa.
“If the wrong person wins your election, will the Europans get their moon back?” Cassius asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I really don’t.”
So much rests on the Volk vote that I had to leave to resist the temptation to interfere any more than I already have. Athena begged andDiomedes demanded for me to pick a ruler, but I can’t just think about their moons, their people. I have to think of us all.
“You promised Diomedes we’d help free the Garter,” Cassius says, watching a gull coast past. “If the wrong person wins, how are we doing that without the Volk? If Atlas didn’t go back to the Core, then—”
“Cassius.”
“Sorry. Anxiety spiral. Yes, yes. But also, what if Athena does actually take your head, or doesn’t take you to the ships once Europa is free of the Volk like she promised?”
I leave him to worry without me.
“Darrow!” He rushes after me through the doors. “No need to be rude.”
“Can we just walk?” I ask and put an arm over his shoulders. “Please?” He smiles grandly and wraps his arm back behind my waist, ready to saunter. “Stop it.”
“Fine. A dour trudge down memory lane it is.”
The keep is as cold inside as it is outside. The place was abandoned when Lorn’s household followed him into the war I sparked between House Augustus and House Bellona almost a decade and a half ago. Its hundreds of lamps lie dark. Its halls, once filled with summer midnight dances and the laughter of his many grandchildren, lie mute. I pass room after room, each as unfamiliar as the next. I have no memories of this place except for the ones I made on that day I brought Lorn out of his retirement and into my war. He fell before he could return.
We descend the stairs to where Tactus died on the edge of Lorn’s knife, and stand in that room to honor my dead friend. Tactus hinted he might have lived for more than himself just before he died. I remember it as one of the sadder moments of my life.
Cassius lets me go into Lorn’s room alone. It is emptier than I imagined it would be. There are no trophies, no razors, no mementos from his wars. Only pictures of his family, books, and rings by the bedside. One for each of his sons, and one for his wife. He left them here. He did not bring them to war. The Kalibar said they kept the place exactly as he left it, and protected it from looters.
I believe them now.
I catch myself in one of the room’s mirrors. I look like his ghost. But I’m not. In his bathroom I search for a razor. Then I laugh, because I remember one of the old stories about him. When he was a lancer, hisPraetor told him to go shave becausePeerless are beardless, boy. Lorn pulled out his razor and did it right there. I shave my beard with Bad Lass in his bathroom mirror. In this way I say goodbye to him and Ragnar both. I do a sloppy job and cut myself a few times.
“Wait. Who are you and what did you do with the ancient mariner?” Cassius says when I exit without a beard.
I scratch my bare chin. “Remembered an old story.”
“Oh yes. The ‘Peerless Beardless.’ Love that one. Think it’s true?” he asks.
“Definitely. Why do we even buy laser trimmers anyway?”
