unchecked down her scarred cheeks, hand raised against the conflagration of those three blessed circles. She could see tendons corded in Scaeva’s arm, sweat glistening on his shaking fist, dripping onto the polished gravebone floor between them.
But still, he held on.
“M-May I put this away?” he asked. “Do you think … we have it in us to s-speak like civilized people? For a … m-moment at least?”
Fire inside her skull. Hatred like acid in her veins. But ever so slowly, pain-wracked and sickened, Mia nodded.
Scaeva stood at once, slipped the Trinity back out of sight in his robes. The relief was immediate, dizzying, a sob slipping up and over her lips. As Mia struggled to catch her breath, Scaeva walked away across the room, leather sandals whispering on the vast map carved into the floor. With shaking hands, he filled a small glass of water from a singing crystal carafe.
“May I offer you a drink?” he asked, his voice once more smooth and sweet as toffee. “Goldwine is your favorite poison, neh?”
Mia said nothing, glaring at Scaeva as her pulse slowed to a gallop. Watching him like a bloodhawk. Mercurio had always taught her to study her prey. And though she’d dreamed about Julius Scaeva almost every nevernight for the past eight years, this was the first time she’d seen him up close since she was ten.
The imperator was handsome, she had to admit—almost painfully so. Black curls dusted with the faintest hints of gray at his temples. Shoulders broad, bronze skin contrasting sharply with the snow-white of his robes. A wisdom earned from decades in the halls of power glittering in dark eyes.
Mercurio had taught her to sum folk up in a blinking, and Mia had ever been an apt pupil. But looking Scaeva over—this man who’d bent the Itreyan Senate to his will, who’d carved himself a kingdom in a Republic that murdered its kings centuries ago—she found herself blank. Almost all about him beyond the superficial was hidden. He was a killer. A cold-blooded bastard. But beyond that … he was an enigma.
With the Trinity gone, Eclipse retreated from the shelter of Mia’s shadow, rippling with indignity. Scaeva’s own passenger slipped free and slithered across the floor, watching the not-wolf with something close to hunger. Mia could see the imperator’s shadow was moving on the wall, its robes rippling, its hands reaching out toward hers, gentle as lambs.
“Well.” Scaeva turned to face her, sipping from his crystal glass. “Reunited at last. This is all rather exciting, neh?”
“Not as exciting as it’s g-going to be,” she said, chest still heaving.
“It is good to see you, Mia. You’ve grown into quite an astonishing young lady.”
“Go fuck yourself, you unspeakable cunt.”
Scaeva smiled faintly. “An astonishing young woman, then.”
He poured a splash of top-shelf goldwine into a singing crystal tumbler. Padding softly toward her, he placed the glass on the floor a good safe distance away, then retired to the other side of the study. She saw a square table there, low to the ground, flanked by two divan lounges. A chessboard was embossed into the table’s surface, a game in full swing. Even at a glance she could tell the white side was winning.
“Do you play?” Scaeva asked, eyebrow raised toward her. “My opponent was our good friend Cardinal Duomo. We sent runners back and forth with our moves—he didn’t trust me enough to meet face-to-face in the end.” The imperator motioned to the board, the golden rings on his fingers glinting. “He was close to winning this one. Poor Francesco was always better at chess than the true game.”
Scaeva chuckled to himself, which served only to inflame the rage in Mia’s breast. She had no knives, nothing to throw, but she still clutched her gravebone sword. Her mind was awash with all the ways she might bury it in his chest. Unperturbed, Scaeva took a seat near the chessboard, resting his glass upon the divan’s crushed-velvet arm. Reaching into his robe, he pulled out a familiar gravebone dagger, a crow carved on the hilt—the dagger she’d murdered his double with just hours before. It was still bloodstained, its amber eyes sparkling as he placed it upon the table.
“What can I do for you, Mia?”
“You can die for me,” she replied.
“You still wish me dead?” The imperator raised one dark eyebrow. “What in the Everseeing’s name for?”
“Is this a jest?” she scoffed. “You killed my father!”
Scaeva looked at her with pity. “My love, Darius Corvere was—”
“He raised me!” she snapped. “I may not have been daughter of his blood, but he loved me all the same! And you murdered him!”
“Of course I did,” Scaeva frowned. “He tried to destroy the Republic.”
“You hypocritical shitstain, what the ’byss did you just do in the forum?”
“I succeeded at destroying the Republic.”
Scaeva looked her in the eye with genuine amusement.
“Mia, if Darius Corvere’s rebellion had triumphed, his beloved General Antonius would now be king of Itreya. The Senate House would be a ruin and the constitution in ashes. And I don’t blame the man for trying. Darius gave his best. The only difference between he and I is that his best wasn’t good enough to win the game.”
Mia hauled herself to her feet, fingernails cutting into her palms. On the wall, her shadow seethed and flared, reaching toward Scaeva’s, hands twisting to claws.
“This isn’t a game, bastard.”
“Of course it is,” Scaeva scowled, glancing at the chessboard. “And the rules are simple: win the crown or lose your head. Darius understood the price of failure full well, and still he chose to play. So please, before you speak again of how much he loved you, consider he was willing to risk your life for the sake of his lover’s throne.”
“He was a good man,” she said. “He did what he thought was right.”
“As do I. As do most men, all things considered. But where Darius was set to take Antonius’s throne by marching an army on his own capital, I took it with simple words …” He gave a small shrug. “… Well, perhaps a murder or three. But you cannot seriously consider me a tyrant and Darius Corvere a paragon when he was prepared to slaughter thousands and I killed only a handful. I raised you better than that.”
Mia’s breath was trembling in her chest.
“You never raised me! You ordered me drowned in a fucking canal!”
“And witness what you became.” Scaeva breathed the words like a spell, looking her over with a kind of wonder. “When last we met, you were a snot-nosed marrowborn whelp. You had servants and pretty dresses and all you ever wanted handed to you on silver platters. Have you considered for a moment what your life would have been without me?”
Scaeva picked up the black king, moved it across the board, and knocked the white king on its side.
“Think on it a moment, Mia,” he said. “Pretend that Antonius claimed his throne. That Darius stood at his right hand. And watered with the blood of a thousand innocents, all their dreams flowered to reality instead of turning to ashes on the wind.”
Scaeva picked up a black pawn, held it out upon his palm.
“What would have become of you?”
The imperator let the question hang unanswered a moment. A maestro before the crescendo.
“You’d have been married off to some marrowborn fool for the sake of political alliance,” he finally said. “Squeezing out pups, tending the home fires, and feeling the fire inside your own breast slowly die. Naught but a cow in a silken dress.” He held the pawn up between his fingers, turned it this way and that. “Because of me, you are solid steel. A blade sharp enough to cut the sunslight