Golden Son (63 page)
Authors: Pierce Brown
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Fantasy, #Action & Adventure, #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #United States, #Adventure, #Dystopian
I loose a long moan. It’s all I can manage. Drool slithers down my throat. Victra crawls toward me, blood leaking from her. Amid all this, Roque stands, a statue, apart.
Pulse weapons warble in the distance. Thunder rips the sky as dark shapes descend, cracking the sound barrier. They come from a stealthed ship. Something snuck in. Where are the patrols?
Obsidians and Praetorians land in the midst of the clearing, thumping down on the stone. They pursue those who fled the killing ground for the gardens, hunting them down with quiet economy.
Antonia directs the slaughter, finishing heirs, clipping bloodlines half a millennium old. Taking hostages. Lilath is laughing with Vixus. They peel away electronic fleshMasks and shake free their golden hair. Behind them, Aja lands in splendor, her armor flashing in the lantern light. She surveys the carnage, face dark and content. I hardly notice her, because an old friend lands at her side. Cassius.
“Virginia?” he asks.
“Missing, I fear,” the Jackal says.
“Warned?”
“Angered. Lover ’s spat.”
Victra manages to crawl to my ankle. A slick of blood shadows her path from where she was shot
to the place where she now curls. Red on her lips. I can’t feel her touch.
“I didn’t know,” she whispers. “Darrow, I didn’t know.”
Aja bends over Lorn’s body, taking his razor from his waist and closing her mentor ’s eyes forever.
He never even drew the weapon. Cassius comes close, stopping at my feet, where he goes to a knee and watches me.
“Can he move, poet?” he asks Roque.
“No. But he can hear.”
“You killed my family, Darrow. All of them. Me, Julian, that’s one thing. But the children? How could you?” I don’t know what he’s talking about. “I’ll find Sevro. I’ll find Mustang. There will be no mercy.” He touches the enameled hilt of his razor with his new arm.
“You can’t kill him,” Roque says from behind him. “You know what he is.” Roque puts a hand on
Cassius’s shoulder. “Cassius, the Sovereign’s orders were clear.”
“Dissection,” Cassius murmurs. He watches me, and it seems that there was never a time when this man called me brother. Never a hope we could ever have been what we are now. Roughly, he takes my hand. I think, for a moment, he is shaking it. But instead, he steals the ring I earned. The iron wolf I killed his brother to possess. My finger is naked without it.
He rises from his bent knee to tower over me, more a beautiful vulture than an eagle. “Julian. Lea.
Pax. Quinn. Weed. Harpy. Rotback. Tactus. Lorn. Victra. They deserved better than to die for a slave.”
With that, he leaves me with Roque.
The world is silent except for sobbing and the sound of sirens. At my side, Victra watches Cassius leave, her life leaking from her. Those clever eyes of hers look up at me, lost.
“We must hurry,” Aja drawls in the center of the massacre. “They know we’re here. Bring your father and let us go.”
The Jackal nods. “A moment, if you please.”
Several meters away, Augustus lies pinned to the ground by three waiters. They hoist him up as the Jackal approaches, stepping over Lorn’s desecrated body.
“Is the Mask not as you like, Darrow?” he calls to me. “I made it just for you after you revealed your true self to me in Attica.”
The Jackal turns to his father. “What do you think, Father? Was this a ploy worthy of your name?”
“You monster.” Augustus spits in his face. “What have you done?”
“So you’re not proud?” The Jackal wipes the spit away and looks at it. “Damn.”
“Stop this. My son, you’ve ruined us.”
“Adrius …,” Aja says impatiently. “We must go.”
The Jackal steps forward. “So
now
you call me son?” He clucks his tongue scoldingly and straightens his father ’s jacket. “Was I your son when you put me on a rock for the elements to claim me? Three days. I was a baby. The Board didn’t even want an Exposure. But you thought I was so weak, and Claudius so strong. Was he strong when I had Karnus put him in the ground?”
His father ’s lips tremble. “What?”
“I paid Karnus au Bellona seven million credits and six Pinks to sully Claudius’s girl. I knew Claudius’s honor would lead him into the ring. Funny thing is … it was your money. I asked you for it so I could
invest in my future
. And I did.” He frowns. “Father, did you really think a ten-year-old cares about the Silver market? You should have paid better attention.”
“You killed Claudius.” Augustus’s voice breaks under the strain and he sags into the arms of those holding him, shaking from sadness. “You killed my boy.”
This would break Mustang’s heart.
“
I
am your boy,” the Jackal sneers. “I was a
good
son. I
worshipped
you. I feared you. I obeyed you.
I learned what you wished me to learn. I went where you wished me to go. I did only as your will commanded. Yet I was not enough.”
Augustus shakes his head, drawing back his rage as the Praetorians cuff his hands together with magnetic shackles. His eyes rise to look at the monster he created. “I should have strangled you in your crib.”
“Come now, Father …”
“You are not my son.”
Adrius flinches. With those few words, Augustus releases something. And the small part of Adrius that held out hope to be loved disappears. He shakes off his humanity, leaving only the Jackal.
“Then farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear. Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost.”
He whispers to some distant, fading part of himself as he lazily lifts the scorcher to his father ’s forehead.
“Evil, be thou my good.”
“Stop!” Aja steps forward. “Adrius! In the name of the Sovereign—”
The Jackal shoots his father in the head.
Eo’s killer drops to the ground, and I feel hollowness spread over my heart. Death begets death begets death. This is what Dancer warned me about. This is why Mustang said not to trust her brother.
This is why my friends will die. Why I will die. Because I cannot match this evil.
Who can?
“You dumb little snake!” Aja shouts. “The Sovereign needed him to talk down the Outer Rim!
Gorydammit.” She looks to the sky as flame trails blaze across the dark. Someone’s coming in hard from the upper atmosphere. Pulse weapon fire flashes across Citadel grounds as Praetorians encounter Augustus’s and Lorn’s first responders.
“I gave you this prize,” the Jackal says, nodding to me. “Do not whine now.” He references his datapad and points at the flame trails. “The Telemanuses are coming. Unless you want to play with them, I suggest we leave.”
Cassius agrees. “Lorn and Augustus are dead. This army will wither.”
Aja orders her Praetorians to their shuttle. They come to pick me from the ground. Victra’s hand on my leg slackens. Her eyes have closed.
“Roque,”
I murmur through the thickness of the poison.
“Brother …”
“No.
No
,” he says, not a monster, still himself, still quiet and tranquil, if dreadful in his sadness.
“You are a son of Red. I a son of Gold. That world where we are brothers is lost.” But he comes close, bending, reaching with delicate hands to angle the ivory box in my lap toward my face. “And in this world, the power of Gold will never wane.”
I look into the box and my heart shatters.
All that has been, all that was to be, crashes down. Eo’s dream falls into darkness. Wherever you are, Sevro, Mustang, Ragnar, do not come back to this world. There’s too much pain. Too much sorrow to ever mend it.
I look into the box and see Fitchner ’s head staring back at me, eyeless, mouth stuffed with grapes.
Ares, the one hope we had, the one man who picked me up when I was broken and gave me a chance
for something better than revenge, has been butchered. And I know we are undone.
Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Trilogy will conclude with
Morning Star
. For important
news and information, and a chance to read an exclusive excerpt from the book,
To mother,
who taught me to speak
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My favorite line from
Lord of the Rings
comes when Frodo has all but given up his quest, and Samwise says to him, “Come, Mr. Frodo … I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”
Writing is a lonely quest at times. You lose the path. You take the mountain pass only to realize you’ve made a mistake and must double back through a more treacherous route. Often there’s no wizard to guide you. No signposts except those you conjure. Everything is up to you, and that can be daunting, at least to me. But though my friends and family may not be able to guide the story, they carry me with their love and friendship, and I’m lucky for it.
I’m also lucky to have found such a fine publishing home as Del Rey. Never once have I felt creatively constrained. Never once have I suspected they’ve desired anything but the best damn story we can put on paper. David Moench, Joe Scalora, Keith Clayton, Tricia Narwani, Scott Shannon, Dave Stevenson, you’re all bloodydamn saints as far as I’m concerned.
Now, as for my editor, Mike Braff. Never was there a greater bullshit detector/Obsidian fanatic in all the worlds. You can thank him for the story’s ravaging pace, unabashed killcount, and Kavax’s fox, Sophocles. Thank you as well to Hannah Bowman who—along with Liza Dawson and Havis Dawson
—took a chance on representing me, and to Jon Cassir for his patience and brilliant shepherding of the film rights.
Thank you also to Joel Phillips for beautiful maps and whiskey nights, Nathan Phillips for being the little brother I never had, Tamara Fernandez for the wisdom far beyond her years, Jarrett Price for making Los Angeles feel like home, Terry Brooks for taking the time to read a young author ’s first work, Scott Sigler for his generous praise, and Josh Crook for all the plans of mischief over breakfast.
To my parents, I owe you everything. You put a shovel in my hands instead of a video game controller. Digging in the woods was the best education I ever received. I’ve never met truer, kinder souls. You are the people I wish to be. And to my sister, Blair, thank you for making me wiser by teaching me the unique dangers of landing on a patient woman’s bad side, oh, and also for being my ninja assassin.
In the end, I must always credit Aaron Phillips. Without him, there would be no
Red Rising
, no
Golden Son
. A true friend since we met studying abroad in Germany, he has watched me start fifteen books, finish six, and face rejection from agents more than a hundred times over seven years. When things grew dark, he lifted me up and urged me to continue on my quest. It’s been a blessing seeing him grow, marry, and become as deep and true a man as Samwise Gamgee ever was.
It’s strange thinking I wrote
Red Rising
four years ago above my parents’ garage in Seattle.
Stranger thinking I suspected only my friends would ever read it. So thank you, readers. Thank you for going on this journey with me. Thank you for letting me live a life as a dreammaker, the only thing I’ve wanted to do since my father read
The Hobbit
to me as a boy and I realized that the magic of man is in words, in tales, in legends lost and in those still yet to come.
BY PIERCE BROWN
Red Rising
Golden Son
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PIERCE BROWN is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Red Rising
and
Golden Son
. While trying to make it as a writer, Brown worked as a manager of social media at a start-up tech company, toiled as a peon on the Disney lot at ABC Studios, did his time as an NBC page, and gave sleep deprivation a new meaning during his stint as an aide on a U.S. Senate campaign. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is at work on his next novel.
Instagram:
PierceBrownie
PIERCE BROWN is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please
contact
the
Penguin
Random
House
Speakers
Bureau
at
212-572-2013
or
