In A Burning Room

by TS Ward

  “I might say the same,” he breathed, and then his eyes fell to Fitz. “Sit with us.”

  The soldier obeyed and moved to the chair halfway between us, opposite another that I was sure James would fill when he made it here. He kept his eye trained on his own reflection in the glass window opposite him.

  “All too often we let our expectations get the better of us and that can only lead to two things—disappointment, or surprise, and I have to say, Soren. Of all the things I expected of you, I was more often surprised than disappointed. Rarely ever disappointed.” He had a flute of champagne sitting in front of him, the bottle translucent from the lights in the glass table and clearly almost empty. He held the drink to his lips. “I’m sure the opposite can be said of me.”

  I watched him tip the glass back, and the liquid ran down his throat as if it could turn his blood to the gold cut into the marble floor.

  He wasn’t a trick this time. He was here. He was real. He was in danger.

  My heart beat a little too hard now. “It would be a surprise if I ever saw you without champagne.”

  His eyebrow twitched up. “It’s a celebratory drink.”

  “And what are you celebrating, every day, all day?”

  A laugh bubbled up from him in a mirror of the champagne. “Life, of course. Living is such a tricky and delicate thing, something that is very hard to do sometimes, and I think that every second should at least be celebrated in some way. The life that I have lived has been worthwhile. I was the Emperor, I had a beautiful wife, I had a beautiful and intelligent daughter, I had a son with an incredible mind, I had an adorable and brave grandson. That was a surprise. I thought you and your mother left because you didn’t want to be turned into a Sceptre like Emma, but it was because of little Perseus. It was lovely to know him, even briefly.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, but the butterflies in my chest turned to needles and each rise and fall of my ribcage was a breath of pain.

  I knew he was. He hadn’t gotten the freckles from out of nowhere, and that smile—I knew he was. It was just that no one said a word about it and I was terrified to admit that I left him, that I kept him from a father and mother in the same breath.

  “He said you call him little bear,” he took up the champagne again. “I know you love your stars. There’s no Ursa Minor without Ursa Major.”

  “I took away my own memories to keep them safe,” I whispered.

  The lights in the table flickered for a moment and they both looked to me, three eyes settled on the girl who wore white static like frost.

  It waned, the longer that we sat here. It spread out into the air to join with the dark storm clouds that hung low and thick in the sky outside. We were so close to reaching our hands out the windows and to touch the black wool of them.

  The Emperor sat forward and picked up the bottle of champagne to pour another glass. “I know, sweetheart, that was expected. It was a path we tried to prevent, but you know how James is. Unreliable, when it comes to getting things done.”

  “Why James?” I wanted to tear that bottle and that glass from his hands. There was nothing to be celebrating.

  “That question will be answered momentarily when you ask a different question.” He checked his watch under his suit sleeve, glanced to the door, and then leaned back with his golden drink. “How are your memories coming along? Are they how you expected?”

  I left the Embassy thinking that my mother was dead, that the woman we were going to find was an imposter wearing her name like it was fashion, and I ended with a reminder that I had tried to keep her safe by telling him she was dead. He paid me back in due respect.

  I left with Mercury trying to hook himself around my finger and instead found a farmer who had made himself a soldier to be near me, who I shared a strange past with. A murder and a marriage.

  I left as a child, and now I was trying to save mine.

  “Just fine, thank you.”

  He narrowed his eyes at my answer, tucked his chin down, checking his watch again. “Hm. Well, that’s an expected response. Ask your next question, I’m sure we’re getting to the grand finale.”

  I leaned back in the chair and breathed deep.

  The grand finale.

  He was afraid of death, he was afraid to die, but he wouldn’t run from it. I watched him tap his watch just as a distant rumble sent a small vibration up through the thick glass that surrounded us. It was deep into the city, but enough to reach us here, and it formed a pit in my stomach.

  Nerves shook my voice. “What was that?”

  “It seems Moon and his army have arrived at the perimeter. They don’t have their secret ways in like you. They prefer explosives to take down the walls of our house. Quite violent, aren’t they? Not to mention they’ve arrived at precisely the same time as the Fox Council. We’ve tried to attract most of the civilians to the arts district, for a film and raffle of fruit baskets and ration cards, if you can imagine. It wasn’t the intent to alarm anyone, only to save as many as possible. The violence won’t be contained to just this room and just our small armies.”

  He checked his watch again, and turned his eyes to the stairwell door as it burst open and a wave of heat fell over us. Fire alarms blared outside of the room.

  “James, nice of you to join us. Please take your position.”

  He wore his fire suit. The ashes of black fabric drifted off him. He set fires with each step he took to reach us, but on the marble, he left only the scars of soot.

  I caught a glimpse of his bloodied knuckles as he sat, twitching with the remnants of the white starlight that had burst through him with every feeling I remembered him leaving on me.

  He collapsed into the chair opposite Fitz and stared him down from behind sweat soaked strands of hair.

  I had never seen him so exhausted and damaged. I never saw him struggle.

  “Speaking of armies and our strongest Sceptres and the threat of a small rebellion creeping closer to our doorstep, Soren—you have a question, don’t you?” He waved a hand and sipped his champagne.

  Small armies. Strongest Sceptres.

  He was hinting at something, and I hadn’t prepared myself enough to have any question other than the one that drove that rebellion.

  I took a breath and asked what I needed to ask. “I’m going to get Percy back, and all of the children that have been ripped from their families. I know Astra has them, but I don’t know where, and I don’t know why. Tell me.”

  He rested his lips against the edge of the glass, breathed in, and closed his eyes.

  He was silent, but a smile worked at the corners of his mouth until he spoke, and then it flickered away and his glacial blue eyes pierced mine from across the table. “I’ve told you that you’re the Genesis, but it’s more complicated than that. You yourself aren’t it, but you are in command of it. You are an Empress, Soren, whether I am breathing or not, whether you are on this Earth or another, it is you who commands the marching ants and those marching ants are Sceptres.

  “Your aunt, my sister, we both know that she’s an incredibly talented woman despite our grievances with her. She is Vulta. Vulta is a chapter of the Fox Council. They make the weapons for our armies, and the Lumen that serve us, and the Sceptres who you will march across the stars as is your destiny.” He paused and pressed his palms against the glass of the table, clearing his throat. “What can you tell me about how Sceptres are made and what it has to do with children?”

  I blinked, but his eyes held mine in a tighter grip than Rabbit’s ever did. Ice spiked through, nailed me in place and chained me down as if I was Prometheus and the thoughts that ran through my head were the eagle that ate away at my guts.

  My voice was a whisper of fear. “It’s easier to mold wet clay than an already baked vase.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Fitz threw a look at me down the table, and then froze.

  “Why—why hurt them and turn them into things they aren’t when it’s easier and m
ore efficient to make Sceptres under a microscope?” I shook my head. My little bear’s face flashed through my mind, and then my voice was a frantic shout. “Why cut off his arm? Why?”

  The Emperor swallowed another mouthful of champagne slowly, and sighed before he continued. “Babies don’t make very good marching ants, do they? And if there are more people in this world than this world can feed, why make more? So she takes the ones that she can, and she makes them stronger and more resilient and the ones that show the most aptitude in certain areas are specially trained in order to serve their Empress when the time comes, and it will come.

  “The leading cause of death for the majority of the world is starvation, famine, and we’re doing all we can, but the numbers are not looking any better. So, you will guide the Genesis and the young ones across the stars, as she wants you to. I tried to keep you on the ground. I tried to make it so that it was this world you made anew but… Well. It’s up to you, now.”

  “I don’t want that,” I hissed, “I don’t want that.”

  He nodded. “I know. But I’ve tried to give you as many gifts as Pilot and I could discover, and you discovered one all on your own. Perseus. Imagine what Astra will do when she receives the information I’ve sent her—half her plan has gone to the wind because of that boy.”

  “Her plan?”

  “Yes, that’s… You will find yourself responsible for carrying out that plan.” He offered a sad smile and then turned his eyes down to the flickering lights in the table as a rumble of thunder shook the room. “It was very carefully constructed and highly detailed. Part of survival with the Genesis is continuation of life through reproduction, and with a project like what she’s created, it isn’t through romance that that will happen. It will be through a microscope, with pre-selected genetic pairings, almost all of which have already been collected and stored. She has chosen matches to keep certain strengths and to build new ones, and for you—for you that match has been James Carson. Mercury.”

  I looked to him and caught the smirk that twitched onto his face before he couldn’t maintain it anymore.

  “But under continuing circumstances and my own studies I have another, stronger, more fit Sceptre named Earth who is a far better match for my Ganymede than anyone this world could have dreamed up. Seeing as there is no longer a need and nothing but cruelties have occurred, Fitz, as we discussed, please,” he waved a hand toward James, whose face fell before it swelled with a shuddering anger, and—

  The gunshot was louder than the other two had been, and I jumped from my chair.

  The sound rang in my ears and made a crystal glass of the room. I felt like my blood was made of champagne. Cold bubbled up into my brain to make me dizzy, tingled my skin with the fizz.

  James slumped in the chair, dressed in a dark red that certainly wasn’t champagne.

  Fitz didn’t miss this time.

  He set the pistol against the glass with a clink that seemed louder than it should have with the song of a bullet still circling my head. His hand stayed resting on it, his finger still on the trigger.

  He didn’t flinch. He didn’t hesitate to obey the Emperor’s command. He didn’t look anywhere but at James.

  I choked on a noise, slumped to my knees as tears sprang to my eyes, arms hooked over the edge of the table.

  “Sweetheart, you can’t be that upset about it. I know what he did, to you, to Arden, what you had to do to help them—it was a mistake to let Astra convince me to permit it. Go on, call me a monster for it. I know that’s what’s stuck in your throat.” Disgust filled his voice. Contempt. For himself, rather than me or James.

  He stood and walked away from us, to stand at the window and stare out into the darkness, the side of the room that looked out over the Manor and the green lawn and the rectangle of a pond that stretched between the tower and our home.

  His voice was a sudden shout that was as startling as the gunshot. “Come on, then! It will be easier if you scream at me like I know you want to. I’m a horrible monster! Let me hear it!”

  He was right. I wanted to scream.

  Horror kept that word lodged sharp against my throat, and fear at the rage that sent lightning flashing across the sky, followed by the immediate roaring growl of Sceptre thunder.

  I felt it deep in my bones, but my own raging fire was dwindled and paled.

  I walked up to him, slowly, steadied myself with a hand against the glass. Below us, the marching ants of soldiers cut across the green lawn, rushing to the tower and into the city.

  Heavy smoke mixed with the dark clouds in the distance, illuminated by the faint glow of fire and small flashes between the roofs of buildings.

  The Manor’s top floor wasn’t too far in height—my bedroom window was pushed open, and with a flash of lightning I caught the glint of something familiar.

  “Dad, I…”

  I turned to look at him and froze.

  I was a marble statue then, paled and perfectly still and cold.

  The black barrel of a handgun was held out between us. His hand shook and his face contorted with a grimace.

  I had no air in my lungs because it didn’t make sense, after everything he told me, it didn’t make sense and I couldn’t make it make sense.

  I croaked a weak noise that didn’t compare to what I saw before me. “But you didn’t… you didn’t tell me where.”

  His chin quivered and my heart shattered as tears spilled from his Beckett blue eyes. “I did.”

  “But—”

  I leapt at the noise that cracked against the glass then.

  For a moment, I had to remind myself what being alive was—I was still breathing, I was still standing, there wasn’t a bullet through my head and there wasn’t one in my father and the only dead thing in the room was James.

  The noise happened again, and we both startled.

  A crack formed from a point in the window next to the Emperor, on the outside.

  “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t, dad, please, I don’t know what to do. I’m not ready, I’m not.” I shook my head like a tornado spinning.

  My hands reached for the gun without fear for it because I understood then. I understood why he held it between us and that point was driven home with each bullet that ate away at the thick glass from the outside.

  We had until it shattered.

  “Get away from the window, please.”

  “You’ve surprised me, Soren,” he whispered, leaning into the hands I had wrapped around his and the gun to kiss my knuckles. His voice broke as the glass did, the wind and the storm roaring loud against us. “I’m proud of you, but now it’s time for me to step down and hand you the crown.”

  The wind outside threatened to drag us both out, but I held firm and tried to tug him back.

  My heart was a rapid-fire machine gun to outdo his and Fitz’s and Jack’s and all those soldiers and rebels scattered through the city.

  I squeezed his hands tight and felt my heart stop with the burst of noise that left silence in the room.

  Fitz, not Jack and his rifle. Fitz’s pistol.

  My father, the Emperor, collapsed to his knees at my feet. I ripped the gun from his hands and sank down with him, threw it into the room, and tried to catch him before he fell with the wind.

  Before the ground below took him away so that I could never see my dad again.

  Blood blossomed on his white shirt, at the center of his chest. I gripped his forearm and slipped on the shattered glass as he fell.

  I tried to pull him back, and that scream that was stuck in my throat finally escaped with a rush of thunder through the sky—but it was all I had. It was all the strength I had left, to hold him there as the ice in his eyes melted to a dull blue puddle, as the rain bore down and soaked him through and endangered my grip.

  “No, please,” I begged, but his hand went limp.

  Lightning cracked across the sky and connected with the tower, arcing in a bright shower around the metal frame. It cut through me
like a knife and I breathed it in, screaming as the rain soaked my hair and the floor under me.

  The shock strengthened my bones like steel and I pulled him against the sharp frame of the window. I forced the static into him, tried to keep him alive long enough for help, to keep his brain healthy and well—

  Another shot startled me enough that I lost my grip, screaming as darkness took him over and he disappeared before I fully saw the damage the second shot had done.

  I curled over the edge of the shattered window as I watched my world collapse and felt my heart struggle to keep me awake from the shock of it.

  A shadow fell over me.

  Fitz’s gruff voice broke the silence. “You know, princess, I tried to give you a chance, because I could see what you were doing to Jack. Do you know how difficult that makes this? It’s going to hurt him, and he’s never going to speak to me again, and I doubt I’ll see that dumbass grin on his face again. But I did what I had to do. That man you call a father, he told me that Sammy was alive. He told me I could see her if I worked for him during this mess of a mission, but I know she’s dead. I know she’s gone. Still, I told him the things he needed to know, and I’m sorry that the kid was a casualty of that, but I believed him until I remembered that I watched the life leave her eyes.”

  I rolled onto my back and looked up at him.

  The smell of smoke filled the room as the sound of shattering glass echoed up from the floors below us. The tower was burning.

  He shrugged, and lifted the gun. He pulled the trigger. “No going back now, huh?”

  “Fitz—”

  I tried to plead with him, but a fire drilled through my body and my mouth opened with a silent scream. Pain stole every sound from me.

  Still, a growl tore up my throat as I tried to push myself up.

  “I’m a Talon, and that name will never follow yours. Not as long as we stand for what is right and what is ours. You Becketts—you Becketts are thieves and vandals of what was once an honourable thing.” He stepped closer and pointed the gun at me the same way my father had—to my head, so that I would die just like he did. “For the Fox Council. For the real Apotelesma.”