and the delicate laughter?
“They all think I’m stupid, you know,” Stephania said. She stood straighter now, looking a lot more dangerous to Ceres than she had. “I take great care to ensure that they think I’m stupid. Oh, don’t look so worried, I’m not going to poison you.”
“Why not?” Ceres asked. She knew there had to be a reason.
She saw Stephania’s expression harden in the candlelight, a frown creasing the otherwise smooth skin of her brow.
“Because that would be too easy,” Stephania said. “After the way you and Thanos humiliated me, I would rather see you suffer. You both deserve it.”
“There’s nothing else you can do to me,” Ceres said, although in that moment, it didn’t feel like it. Stephania could have walked over to the bed and hurt her a hundred different ways, and Ceres knew she would have been powerless to stop it. Ceres knew the noble would have no idea how to fight, but she could have bested Ceres easily right then.
“Of course there is,” Stephania said. “There are weapons in the world even better than poison. The right words, for instance. Let’s see now. Which of these will hurt most? Your beloved Rexus is dead, of course. Let’s start with that.”
Ceres tried not to let any of the shock she felt show on her face. She tried not to let the grief rise up enough that the noble girl could see it. Yet she knew from the look of satisfaction on Stephania’s face that there must have been some flicker.
“He died fighting for you,” Stephania said. “I thought you would want to know that part. It does make it so much more… romantic.”
“You’re lying,” Ceres insisted, but somewhere inside she knew that Stephania wouldn’t be. She would only say something like this if it was a truth Ceres could check, something that would hurt and go on hurting as she found out the reality of it.
“I don’t need to lie. Not when the truth is so much better,” Stephania said. “Thanos is dead too. He died in the fighting for Haylon, right there on the beaches.”
A fresh wave of grief hit Ceres, sweeping over her and threatening to wash away all sense of herself. She’d fought with Thanos before he’d left, about the death of her brother, and about what he was planning to do, fighting the rebellion. She had never thought they could be the last words she would say to him. She’d left a message with Cosmas specifically so that they wouldn’t be.
“There’s one more,” Stephania said. “Your younger brother? Sartes? He has been taken for the army. I made sure that the draft takers didn’t overlook him just because he was the brother of Thanos’s weapon keeper.”
Ceres did try to lunge at her this time, the anger that filled her fueling her leap for the noble girl. As weak as she was, though, there was no chance of success. She felt her legs tangling in the bed sheets, sending her tumbling to the floor, looking up at Stephania.
“How long do you think your brother will last in the army?” Stephania asked. Ceres saw her expression turn into something like a mockery of pity. “The poor boy. They are so cruel to the conscripts. They’re all practically traitors, after all.”
“Why?” Ceres managed.
Stephania spread her hands. “You took Thanos from me, and that was everything I had planned for my future. Now, I’m going to take everything from you.”
“I’ll kill you,” Ceres promised.
Stephania laughed. “You won’t have a chance. This” – she reached down to touch Ceres’s back, and Ceres had to bite her lip to keep from screaming – “is nothing. That little fight in the Stade was nothing. The worst fights imaginable will be there waiting for you, again and again, until you die.”
“You think people won’t notice?” Ceres said. “You think they won’t guess what you’re doing? You threw me in there because you thought they’d rise up. What will they do if they think you’re cheating them?”
She saw Stephania shake her head.
“People see what they want to see. With you, it seems as though they want to see their princess combatlord, the girl who can fight as well as any man. They’ll believe it, and they’ll love you, right up to the point where you’re turned into a laughing stock out on the sands. They’ll watch you torn to shreds, but before that, they’ll cheer for it to happen.”
Ceres could only watch as Stephania started for the door. The noble girl stopped, turning back toward her, and for a moment, she looked as sweet and innocent as ever.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I tried to give you your medicine, but I didn’t think you’d knock it from my hand before I could give you enough.”
She took out the vial she’d had before, and Ceres watched it tumble to the ground as she dropped it. It shattered, the pieces spinning across the floor of Ceres’s room in splinters that would make it both painful and dangerous for her to try to find her way back into her bed. Ceres had no doubt that Stephania intended it that way.
She saw the noble girl reach out for the candle that lit the room, and briefly, in the instant before she snuffed it out, Stephania’s sweet smile faded again, to be replaced by something cruel.
“I will be there to dance at your funeral, Ceres. I promise you that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I still say that we should gut him and throw his body out for the other Empire soldiers to find.”
“That’s because you’re an idiot, Nico. Even if they noticed one more body among the rest, who’s to say they’d care? And then we’d have the trouble of bringing him down somewhere they’d see him. No. We should ransom him.”
Thanos sat in the cave where the rebels had holed up for the moment, listening to them argue about his fate. His hands were tied in front of him, but at least they’d done their best to patch and bandage his wounds, leaving him in front of a small fire so he wouldn’t freeze while they decided whether to kill him in cold blood or not.
The rebels sat at other fires, huddling around them, discussing what they could do to keep the island from falling to the Empire. They spoke quietly, so that Thanos couldn’t overhear the details, but he already knew the gist of it: they were losing, and losing badly. They were in the caves because there was nowhere else for them to go.
After a while, the one who was obviously their leader came and sat down opposite Thanos, crossing his legs on the hard stone of the cave floor. He pushed across a hunk of bread that Thanos devoured hungrily. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d last eaten.
“I am Akila,” the other man said. “I command this rebellion.”
“Thanos.”
“Just Thanos?”
Thanos could hear the curiosity there, and the impatience. He wondered if the other man had guessed who he was. Either way, the truth seemed like the best option right then.
“Prince Thanos,” he admitted.
Akila sat there opposite him for several seconds, and Thanos found himself wondering if he was going to die then. It had been close enough when the rebels had thought he was just some noble without a name. Now that they knew he was one of the royal family, close to the king who had oppressed
