Mariana lifts her chin, but her voice is a whisper, and she has to force herself to meet my gaze. “Kill me. As you should.”

I nod to the child and the man who holds him. “I will kill your boy, there, first. I will kill your husband. I will find everyone you love or have ever loved and I will kill them too. I will insist you watch before I throw you in prison forever, that you might live with the horror of your actions. Do you understand?”

Mariana nods frantically but I hold her gaze. “Tell me in your own words.”

“I—I understand.”

Dex and I escort her and her family out, and once they are down the hallway, I turn to him. “Four guards when she nurses, not two.” I say. “Her husband and son remain in the palace and under watch. If she so much as looks at the Emperor wrong, you let me know.”

I make for Zacharias’s room, which now connects to mine on the second level of the palace. It faces the palace garden, though he cannot see it. His window is boarded up, and despite a number of colorful lamps hanging from the ceiling, it feels less like a nursery and more like a prison cell. Likely because of Silvio Rallius and Deci Veturius, each hulking in a corner. Would that I had stationed them in Zacharias’s room before this.

In addition to the Masks, Coralia sits in a rocking chair in deepest black, her eyes puffy as she watches Tas and Zacharias playing. She rises when I enter, but I wave her back to her seat.

Tas is on the floor with my nephew, making a small wooden horse dance along his arm. I watch for a moment before the boy notices me. He stands, but I give him space and bid him sit. I know his history. Harper told me of him and Bee and the other children of Kauf.

“Shrike,” he says after a few moments, and I can tell he has worked himself up to this. “I—I owe you an apology. If I hadn’t left Zakky that night, if I’d stayed with him—”

I go to Tas and kneel down. In a corner, Coralia sniffs quietly, attempting to muffle her sobs.

“Then you’d be dead too,” I say. “Don’t you take the blame, Tas. That belongs to me, and me alone. I do have a request for you, though.”

I’ve been considering this for days—since before Livia was assassinated.

“The Emperor needs a companion. Not a regent like me, or guards like Rallius.” I nod to the big man, who observes Tas soberly. “But a friend. A brother. Someone to laugh with him and play with him and read to him, but who will also guide him and keep him safe. Someone he trusts. Someone who understands him. But that person, Tas, must be trained in battle and combat. He must be educated. Will you undertake this task?”

Tas shifts uncomfortably. “I—I cannot read, Blood Shrike.”

“You’re a smart lad—you’ll pick it up quick. If you want it, of course—” I realize suddenly that the child might be afraid to say no. “Think on it,” I tell him. “When we see Laia again, maybe you can ask her. She’s wise about these sorts of things.”

Zacharias takes the horse from Tas and throws it a few feet away. He rolls onto his stomach, rocking toward the horse, perplexed that he does not appear to be getting closer to it.

I cannot help but smile. My first since Keris murdered Livvy. “He’s never done that before.”

Zacharias loses interest, rolls onto his back, and puts a foot in his mouth.

“He’ll be running before long,” Tas says. “For now, feet. Quite tasty, apparently.”

“Very tasty.” I pick up my nephew and tickle his toes. He flashes two teeth at me and giggles.

“Ah, little one.” I narrowly evade his fist as he lunges for my braid. “Determined to ruin Auntie Shrike’s hair, I see. Tas, why don’t you go get lunch and some air. You shouldn’t be cooped up in here all day, little one.”

The boy leaves and I walk Zacharias into my quarters, dismissing the Masks within. My nephew flops toward the window, toward the light. But I keep him well away and in the darkness, where it is safer. Where no errant assassin’s blade can touch him.

This is no way to live, Livia said. But it is all we have. I hear footsteps behind me, a familiar gait. I do not turn.

“Soon you’ll walk in the light again, nephew,” I tell Zacharias. “Auntie Shrike will make you safe. You’ll ride and run away from your tutors and have great adventures with good friends. Auntie Shrike will destroy all of your foes. I pro—”

The words die on my lips. Because I promised my sister I would keep her safe. I promised myself I would not let anything happen to her, not after what happened to my parents and Hannah.

“Make that promise, Shrike.”

Harper stands beside me, greeting the Emperor with a rare quirk of the lips and a kiss to his head. Zacharias offers him a tentative smile.

“Look your nephew in the eyes,” Harper says, “and make a vow.”

I shake my head. “What if I can’t keep it?” I whisper because the alternative is to scream, and if I kept silent as my sister died, then I can keep silent now.

“You will keep it,” Harper says.

I shake my head and call out to Coralia, who takes Zacharias from me. Harper follows me as I leave. It has been easy enough to avoid him this past fortnight—I’ve had months of practice. Before he says something that makes me come apart, I speak.

“Bring Quin Veturius to the small chambers off the throne room,” I say. “I want his thoughts on what to do about Pontilius—what are you—”

Harper takes my hand and brushes a finger across my lips—sh. He pulls me in the opposite direction of the throne room and down a set of stone stairs. Near the bottom, beside a pile of rubble and just before an enormous, recently restored tapestry, he touches part of the wall and the stone moves away.

I know this passageway, and it leads to a dead end, with a few storage closets in between. Rallius has the palace guard check it twice a day.

But of course, Harper would know that. I understand why he’s brought me here, and I am so grateful I want to grab him and kiss him right here with the hallway door hanging open.

Oblivion is what I need right now. A way to escape this feeling in my chest, like if I say Livia’s name aloud, my heart will wither and die. Harper is a distraction. One I am desperate for.

He releases my hand once we’re in the hallway and lights a torch. When it flares, we are moving again, past a storage room filled with rubble and wood and into another, which is larger than I realized. It is big enough for a rope pallet and a small table with a lamp. In one corner sits a club and a pile of large stones.

“Is this where you sleep?” I ask him, eyeing the cot, but he shakes his head.

“Only ghosts down here, Shrike.”

The room is cold, though I hardly feel it. I unhook my cloak, but Harper shakes his head and hands me the club.

“Ah.” I glance down at it uneasily. “What am I doing with this?”

“I found this place when we first came to Antium, after you told me how my father died.” He looks me level in the eye.

“I don’t understand.”

“I came here to shout into the darkness,” he says. “To scream and break things.”

“But you’re always so calm.”

“Always, Shrike?” He arches a silver brow, and a flush creeps up my face. He is not always calm—that was clear enough in the baths.

“I don’t need to—to shout or cry or . . . break stones.” I drop the club. “I need to—I need—”

“To scream,” he says quietly, and hands me the club again. “And break things.”

It is as if his words have breathed life into something twisted and aching that has lived within, unacknowledged, for too long. Lurking ever since I watched Marcus slit my father’s throat. Since I heard Hannah cry out, Helly! Since I watched Antium burn. Since Cook and Faris and Livvy all died.

I only know I hit the floor when my knees slam into it. The scream breaks out of me like a prisoner who hasn’t seen light in a century. My body feels alive, but in the worst way, a betrayal of all those who are gone. All those who I didn’t save. I scream over and over. And the scream dissolves into something primal, so I howl then, and weep. I snatch the club from Harper and break every stone in the room.

When there are no stones left, I drop the club and curl into a ball on the cot. Choked sobs leak out of me, and I have not wailed like this since I was a child safe in the arms of my parents. Then even the sobs fade away.

“I am unmade.” I whisper to Harper the words the Augur uttered to me so long ago. “I am b-broken.”

Harper kneels and wipes my tears away with his thumbs. Then he lifts my face to his, his own eyes wet, his gaze fierce in a way I’ve rarely seen.

“You are broken. But it is the broken things that are the sharpest. The deadliest. It is the broken things that are the most unexpected, and the most underestimated.”

I sniff and wipe my face. “Thank you,” I say. “For—” For being here. For telling me to scream. For loving me. For knowing me.

I say none of it. I am glad now that we did not make love here, in this place. I am glad I pushed him away for so long, for it will make doing it again easier.

I return the club to its corner and stand. Then I walk away. He says nothing. But I hope he understands.

I have seen what happens to those I love.

* * *