The rage coursing through me stretches tight against my efforts to tamp it down. On the floor, one of the noblemen tries sinking his teeth into a Ghost’s neck as the creature picks him up. But then a second Ghost is upon him, and he disappears from sight as its jaws clamp down on his shoulder. Eres stays where he is until a Ghost tears through his neck. And the rebel leader who had spoken her defiance stares down the Ghost that finally hurls her off her feet.
The restraint in me snaps. I can hold back no longer. I feel the rush of rage spill from my heart into the cavity of my chest, into my limbs and mind. The wings on my back click, metal scraping against metal, as they unfurl. All I have to do is launch into the air and hurtle into them. I could cut them all to pieces right now, and no one—not even the Premier—could stop me.
“Talin,” Constantine says in a low voice, this time out loud.
But I don’t care. I grit my teeth and feel the strength in my veins. Down in the arena, Sana has already begun her transformation, shivering uncontrollably on the floor, her body contorting in agony, her silence finally giving way to an anguished, inhuman moan.
My wings shift down once. My feet leave the ground, and I feel myself lift into the air. Although I can’t see it, I know my eyes have begun to glow with a faint light, the same way I’d once seen Red on the battlefield, ablaze with blinding fury.
“Talin,” Constantine says again, his voice cutting through me like a blade. When I glance down at him, he is staring at me with a chilling look of patience.
He knows he’s gotten under my skin. He has forced me to unleash my emotions. The bond between us sings with the flow of feeling, and through it, I feel his triumph over me.
Think of your mother, he tells me through our link.
Think of your mother. Think of your mother.
And it’s all it takes to control me. I think of my mother then, of where she might be. I see her hands working diligently to sew up a gash on my leg I’d gotten from climbing a tree. I see her figure haloed by lantern light as she makes her own thread from sweetgrass leaves, sewing deep into the night to mend my Striker uniform. The memories cut through my rage like shears through stems.
My feet touch the ground again. My wings slide into place along my back. The tide of my fury continues to hum through my veins, leaving me in anguish. All this anger and no way to unleash it.
Constantine casts me a satisfied, sidelong glance.Good girl, he tells me.
I hate him. I hate him with every ounce of my strength, even as I force that hatred into a sheet of ice over my heart.
Down in the arena, the Ghosts have reached Jeran’s father. He’s sobbing loudly now, and his cries echo through the space. Some of the Karensan soldiers snicker at his display.
“I’m sorry,” he wails, all nerve gone in the face of the Ghosts. He looks not like a former Maran Senator, but a weak old man. “Forgive me. Forgive me.”
I want to look at him and feel satisfaction as the jaws of one of the Ghosts sink into his chest, as he dissolves into shrieks of pain. To savor the end of someone who had tormented one of my closest friends. But there is no joy to be found here.
Forgive me. Forgive me.Is that desperate cry meant for the son he had so mistreated? For Jeran? I will never know. Instead I watch the display and am grateful that Jeran, if he’s still alive, is not here to see it. He doesn’t deserve to have an image like this haunt him.
This must be why Constantine had bothered coming to this execution at all, when he could be anywhere else in his territory, dealing with his endless responsibilities. It’s because he wants me to see this. He wants to be the one toying with my emotions, watching me break down. He’s brought me here to see me turn my back on Mara.
Everything in me screams to tear it all apart. But instead, I stand idly by. I think of my mother and do not allow myself to feel.
The horror of facing Ghosts has forever changed for me. I will no longer have to fear being hunted down by them in the woods along the old warfront. The gnashing of their teeth and the shriek of their voices no longer threaten me. Now I have to bear a different fear, the fear of watching them turn that same viciousness against the country I’d fought so long to defend.
Once, I stood on the opposite side, facing them down. Now they are my allies, and I will watch them destroy everything.
As the scene finally comes to its awful end, General Caitoman turns and speaks quietly to Constantine. This time, his voice is not full of cold humor. He is annoyed.
“I will have that woman’s words investigated,” he murmurs. He means the rebel, I realize, who’d dared to speak. “They will not amass their army.”
Army. I feel Constantine’s emotions surge again, then settle into a careful tension.
And suddenly, with a start, I know the real reason why Constantine had come to witness these punishments. It isn’t because he is bored. It isn’t because he’s trying to discipline me—although I know he relishes that.
It’s because he needs to see these rebels’ lives ended before his eyes. It’s because he sees them as real threats. Because he isafraid. And that means he knows there must be some truth to the woman’s words.
I am just one of many, she had said.Your Federationwillfall. It is only a matter of time.
And I realize that maybe, just maybe, the reports of unrest inside the Federation are more serious than I thought. That the cracks might run deep enough to shatter it.
2
RED
