Akos’s eyes swept over the row of women beside him. Isae, startled, and maybe a little bit grateful to Cyra for arguing on Ori’s behalf, her fingers loose around her mug. Cisi, wrapping a lock of hair around her finger, like she wasn’t even listening. And then Cyra, the low lights reflecting off the sheen on the side of her head, her voice rough.
Teka spoke up. “Ryzek will be in a huge crowd of people, many of whom are his most ardent supporters and fiercest soldiers. What kind of ‘move’ do you suggest we make?”
Cyra replied, “You said it yourself, didn’t you? Kill him.”
“Oh, right!” Teka smacked the table, obviously annoyed. “Why didn’t I think of killing him? How simple!”
Cyra rolled her eyes. “This time you won’t have to sneak into his house while he’s asleep. This time, I’ll challenge him to the arena.”
Everybody got quiet again. For different reasons, Akos was sure. Cyra was a good fighter, everybody knew that, but no one knew how good Ryzek was—they hadn’t seen him in action. And then there was the matter of getting to a place where Cyra could actually challenge him. And getting him to do it instead of just arresting her.
“Cyra,” Akos said.
“He declared nemhalzak—he erased your status, your citizenship,” Teka said, talking over him. “He has no reason to honor your challenge.”
“Of course he does.” Isae was frowning. “He could have gotten rid of her quietly when he learned she was a renegade, but he didn’t. He wanted her disgrace, and her death, to be public. That means he’s afraid of her, afraid she has power over Shotet. If she challenges him in front of everyone, he won’t be able to back down. He’ll look like a coward.”
“Cyra,” Akos said again, quiet this time.
“Akos,” Cyra answered, with just a touch of the gentleness he had seen in the stairwell. “He is no match for me.”
The first time Akos ever saw Cyra fight—really fight—was in the training room in Noavek manor. She had gotten frustrated with him—she wasn’t a patient teacher, after all—and she had let loose more than usual, knocking him flat. Only fifteen seasons old at the time, but she had moved like an adult. And she only got better from there. In all his time training with her, he had never bested her. Not once.
“I know,” he said. “But just in case, let’s distract him.”
“Distract him,” Cyra repeated.
“You’ll go into the amphitheater. You’ll challenge him,” Akos said. “And I’ll go to the prison. Badha and I, I mean. We’ll rescue Orieve Benesit—we’ll take away his triumph. And you’ll take away his life.”
It sounded almost poetic, which was why he’d put it that way. But it was hard to think of poetry when Cyra’s fingers crept to her covered arm, like she was imagining the mark Ryzek would make there. Not that she would hesitate. But Cyra knew what those marks cost; she knew as well as anybody.
“It’s settled, then,” Isae said, her voice cutting through the quiet. “Ryzek dies. Orieve lives. Justice is done.”
Justice, revenge. It was too late to figure out the difference.
CHAPTER 33: CYRA
AS SOON AS I offered myself to fight my brother in the arena, I tasted the dusty amphitheater air in my mouth. I could still smell it: the crowded bodies, sweating; the chemical odor of the disinfected prison beneath; the tang from the force field that hummed above. I had tried to push it away as I spoke to the renegades, playacting at self-assuredness, but it was there, lingering.
The blood splatter. The screaming.
Akos’s mother watched my armored arm, covered now by a blanket from one of the renegades. She was probably wondering how many scars there were beneath it.
What a match for her son I was. Him, aching with each life he had taken. Me, forgetting the number of marks on my arm.
When most of the burnstones in the stove had turned chalky, I slipped away, past the shadow of Sifa’s floater, up the stairwell to the broken place where I had washed the blood from my skin. Below, I could hear Jorek and Jyo singing in harmony—sometimes not well—and the others breaking into a chorus of laughter. In the dimly lit bathroom, I approached the mirror, first finding just a dark silhouette in the glass, and then . . .
This is not a crisis, I told myself. You are alive.
I probed the silverskin on my head and throat. It tingled where it had begun to grow into my nerves. My hair was piled on one side of my head, the silverskin flat against the other side, the skin around it red and swollen as it adjusted to the new material. A woman on one side and a machine on the other.
I braced myself against the sink, and sobbed. My ribs ached, but there was no stopping the tears now. They came, heedless of pain, and I stopped resisting them.
Ryzek had mutilated me. My own brother.
“Cyra,” Akos said, and it was the only time I had ever wished he wasn’t there. He touched my shoulders, lightly, sending the shadows away. He had cold hands. A light touch.
“I’m fine,” I said, running my fingers over my silver throat.
“You don’t have to be fine right now.”
The silverskin reflected the muted light that had crept into this half-destroyed place.
In a small, quiet voice, I asked the question that was buried deep inside me. “Am I ugly now?”
“What do you think?” he asked, and not like it was a rhetorical question. More like he knew I didn’t want him to placate me, so he was asking me to think about it. I lifted my eyes to the mirror again.