Golden Son

The cinnamon-and-orange-flavored snow still falls. It settles in his curly hair. On his broad shoulders. It was in the snow that he last fought me. Buried rusty steel into my lower gut and left me dying in my own filth. I have not forgotten how he twisted that blade to make sure the wound did not close.

His blade is ebony now.

It curls in front of him, over a meter of narrow sword when solid. More than two meters of lashing razor whip when loosed with the toggle on the handle, which sends a chemical impulse through the blade’s molecular structure. Golden marks line the blade, telling the lineage of his family. Their conquests. The Triumphs thrown in their honor. Old, arrogant, powerful. My blade is naked, absent of embellishment.

“So, I’ve taken what’s yours,” he says, walking closer and nodding to Mustang.

I laugh, “She was never mine. And she’s certainly not yours.”

The White arrives, hustling forward in his robes. Head bald. Back crooked.

“But I’ve had her in ways you haven’t.” His voice lowers so only we might hear, “I wonder, do you lie alone at night, thinking of the pleasures I give her? Does it vex you that I know how she kisses? How she sighs when you touch her neck just so?”

I don’t answer.

“That she moans my name instead of yours?” He doesn’t laugh. He may loathe what he says, but he’d say anything to hurt me. In most ways, he’s not a bad man. He’s just my bad man. “In fact, she moaned as I went inside her this morning.”

“What would Julian say if he could see you now?” I ask.

“He’d echo mother and beg me to kill you.”

“Or would he weep at the devil you’ve become?”

He uncoils his razor and ignites his aegis. My own aegis hums as I activate it—an ion-blue transparent energy shield that bows slightly outward from my left glove, one foot long by two feet wide. Snow melts when I sweep the aegis near the ground. A corona of haze forms around the blue light.

“We’re all devils.” His sudden laugh floats up like a silk ribbon carried away with the breeze. “This was always your problem, Darrow. You have an inflated view of yourself. You think you have some sort of morality tucked away. You think you are better than us, when really you are less. Forever playing games you cannot master against people you cannot match.”

“I matched Julian well enough.”

“Bastard.” His face contorts, and he lashes forward, bellowing wordlessly, knocking me back before the White can give the benediction. They shout for us to stop, but as the razors scream, the shouts fade away and all eyes widen as man-killing metal wails through slow-falling snow. He uses the tenets of

kravat. Four seconds of precise, kinetic violence, retreat. Assess. Engage.

We are the only sound in this strange place. The odd, high-pitched keen of an arching whip. The thrum of the solid blade. The crack as aegises on left arms spark white when blades slash into them. The crunch of snow and the creaking of leather.

Despite his anger, Cassius is perfect in his form. His feet shuffle, never crossing; his hips swivel as he lunges in the compact salvos. His breath comes measured, paced. He lashes his whip forward in a sweep, then hardens the blade and swings it up, aiming for my groin. His movements flicker fast. Trained. Honed by masters and Swords of the Society. It’s easy to see why he has devastated his opponents since childhood, why he gutted me at the Institute. Because his enemies fight like him, but slower. I don’t fight like them. I learned that lesson.

Now he will learn his.

“You’ve been practicing. You can match six moves a set,” he says, drawing back. He darts forward, feinting high and sweeping low to claim my ankles. “But you’re still a novice.” He sends a flurry of seven blows at me, almost skewering me through the right shoulder. I recognize the engagement pattern, but am still a fraction off his speed. I barely escape, throwing myself out of the way of a thrust at the last moment. Two more sets of seven come in quick succession. I barely escape the last, falling to a knee, panting, looking around at the gathered guests.

“Do you hear that?” he asks. I hear nothing but the wind and the throbbing of my heart. “That is the sound of dying alone. No one to weep. No one to care.”

“Arcos will care,” I whisper.

He stiffens. “What did you say?”

“Lorn au Arcos will care if his last student dies,” I say, dropping the falsely ragged breath, straightening proudly. Cassius stares at me as if he’s seen a ghost. He hesitates. So too do those who hear what I say. “While you ate, I trained. While you drank, I trained. While you sought pleasure, I trained from the weeks after the Institute to the days before the Academy.”

“Lorn au Arcos doesn’t accept students,” Cassius hisses. “Not for thirty years.”

“He made an exception.”

“Liar.”

“Oh?” I laugh. “Did you think I came here to be killed? Did you think yourself entitled to my life? No, Cassius. I came here to cut you down before your parents.”