I am your father.
The words echo in my mind, over and over, drowning everything else. A hard knot settles in my stomach. I struggle to find the right words to speak, but my thoughts are impossible to capture. The syllables fly on stilted wings, vanishing into the horizon.
I’m so unsettled by the revelation, I don’t see it happen. One moment, my mother is upright and whole, the next, she collapses.
By the time I understand what has occurred, she’s gone—a single wound to the head. Blood spreads across the white stone floor like rainwater dripping off a ledge.
Then the screaming starts. It takes me far too long to realize it’s coming from me.
chapter
one
Haven
Sweat slides down my neck, soaking the collar of my compression shirt as the morning’s drill reaches its peak. The lieutenant runs the foot soldiers hard every afternoon inside the stone walls of the High General’s estate.
My leg tightens around the red-faced soldier’s neck while his breath comes out in sharp, panicked gasps. His murky brown eyes bulge when he realizes I have no intention of loosening my hold.
“Forfeit, Parren,” I say. “You won’t last more than five seconds.”
He resists for a few more seconds before he taps out. Only then do I release him.
“You are getting worse,” he mumbles.
“Better,” I correct. “You’re just a sore loser.”
“I wasn’t talking about your skills,” Parren explains. “I meant your attitude.”
Mercy sits beneath the lemon tree at the edge of the yard. Ebony hair coiled into a thick, swinging braid. It drapes over her shoulder like a shawl. A few loose tendrils flutter across her heart-shaped face, sweeping across her eyes. Some days shecomes to watch me spar. Other days, she comes to drag me to the infirmary after I get my ass handed to me.
She gives the defeated soldier an encouraging smile, momentarily glancing up from her thick-bound book. The cover is wrapped in a false foil. Sullivan often brings her books that were published before the regime. Books that were now outlawed. He never expressly says where he got it from, but I assume it is from the black market. He puts himself at great risk to satisfy my sister’s unending curiosity.
Sullivan steps forward and extends a hand.
I ignore it.
The last time I accepted his help, he dropped me flat on my back with a warning about trust. Sullivan has been a lieutenant general for as long as I can remember. Between high-level briefings with Warrick and strategic assignments, he still finds time to run his new cadets ragged on the field during his frequent stops here en route to the capital.
Warrick’s estate sits on one of the bigger plots of land in Fort Canyon. Rolling green fields stretch out like a rubber band. In the distance sits a sandstone façade, its tall columns flanking the entrance. Windows line the wall in perfect symmetry, each pane reflecting the copses of trees in the distance.
It is different from the high-rise buildings that were constructed in the capital. Their tall, winking frames, dancing under the moonlight. Or the short, crowded apartment complexes built in the poorer divisions, packed so tightly that it resembles a row of crowded teeth. We lived in one of those in Oracle. The peeling plaster and mold stains had grown like a tumor each year. While the sun-blanched floorboards had lifted, revealing the nail-ridden mouth of the unit.
I feared that one day we’d wake up, and the ceiling would crumble over our heads.
“I need better soldiers,” I say, spitting blood onto the grass. “These ones aren’t worth my time.”
“What did I say about arrogance?” Sullivan asks calmly.
“That I need more of it?” I raise a brow, smiling cheekily at him.
“Less,” he corrects. “Way less.”
I dust my hands on my cargo pants, picking up my discarded holster and gun.
Sullivan exhales slowly, as if he is bracing himself for a particularly unpleasant conversation.
“Have you spoken to your father today?”
