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Pulvis et umbra sumus “We are but dust and shadow”

—HOUSE RAA

CASSIUS IS LOST IN THOUGHT, staring up at a dragon carved into the stone of the antechareedy ht that faced down the Raa fa behind the torruesli pierced his face are swollen and red, but he’s shaved his beard and looks younger than he has in years Only his eyes are old

“What are you thinking?” I ask He does not seem to hear me The distant voices from a hundred throats whisper from behind two black doors down a set of stone stairs just beneath the dragon’s gaze Our Gray guards give us space, allowing us to speak “Cassius?”

“It was a flower,” he says quietly

“A flower?”

I realize he is far froave on He rarely speaks of his family “It was a proud day,” he says slowly He spares a look at the guards “You were too young then Mother kept you at Eagle Rest But the rest of us were in Agea on the Citadel steps, where Augustus used to give the Perennial Address The Sovereign suustus’s ships were two days froh in the sky; you could feel the energy of a stor I re judas trees fropoles of the Citadel, where all my life I’d only ever seen lions It was to be the end of a corrupt Mars and the beginning of our era

“We had the nuustus, ould have Mars—so Father never coveted, so I kneould treat her well But I was ashamed After I lost the duel to Darrow, my father told me he was disappointed Not that I had lost He was asharimaces “My petty pride The carvers mended me and I put ed the Sovereign to let ustus at the Dockyards of Gany to ensure I did not fail I didn’t I returned to Agea dragging Augustus behind us in chains I found redemption in her eyes But I didn’t have Father’s till we stood on those steps and he sa I’d changed

“He was to ustans in orbit with our cousins and sisters I was given the rest of our faea You’ve never known pride like it, Castor The shining faces The laughter The hair and pennants kicking in the wind as two full generations of Bellona strolled out from the summit in armor under the sun

“He turned to me at the foot of the stairs and told me he loved me He’d done it a thousand times before But it was different ‘The boy has fled,’ he said ‘In his place, I see a man’ It was the first time I felt I deserved his love, to be his son I realized how lucky I was, how blessed I was to have a father like him In a world of terrible men, he was patient, kind Noble in the way the stories told us to be as boys”

I glance to see if the guards are listening Their faces froe of the nose down are covered with duroplastic breathing units The flinty eyes that peer out fro away

“He took an edelweiss from a pouch in his armor and pressed it into my hands and told me to remember hoht Not for family or for pride, but for life

“The flower had grown near his favorite bench on a ridgeline there, just beyond the outbuildings of the Rest He’d clieline every day before the sun set, to find peace, from us children, from work” He smiles “From Mother Sometimes, if I was very lucky and quiet, he would let les visit their nests in t

he crags It was the only ti more

“Julian was ame” He smiles “I knoas not happy with the venal creature I became in the years before the Institute, or the bitter one thereafter, but there on the steps…when he pressed the flower into my hands, I knew I’d finally become the man he always hoped I would be”