Chapter 25. Before Luca
BEFORE: LUCA
My uncle would die during the month of the Fourth Feast, and there was a kind of poetic justice in that.
The feast day honored the goddess Calisto, keeper of fertility, and it seemed fitting since she was the one who had kept Kastor childless.
I’d held the customary vigil for the last three days, watching the sun rise and set through the atrium’s window.
Each time the stars came out, I hoped it would be the last time they would shine over Kastor Matius.
The Fourth Feast had begun with silence.
Isara had been quiet in the aftermath of the tribunal that amended the dole, the Citadel District overturned by what had happened.
For the first time in almost one hundred years, there was a unanimous vote in the Forum.
Seventeen Isarian citizens died in the hour after the judgment stones were turned, the legion taking up guard along the river.
The bridges to the Lower City were closed, and even the Philosopher had been forbidden to send messages from her chambers.
The horror on Maris’ face as her mother turned her judgment stone was enough to convince me that she hadn’t known what was about to happen. No one had predicted it, not even my uncle. But the victory that had shown in his eyes when he heard the news was enough to make me feel sick.
If Magistrate Casperia had some long-threaded strategy to win over the Forum, no one knew what it was.
Not even Kastor. She was a smart, clever woman.
One who’d managed to hold tight to the power her seat afforded her.
But she’d done something no one had ever achieved—she’d dissolved the line between factions.
Either she was brilliant, or she was mad.
The fields hadn’t borne enough grain for the city’s stores in three years, and while most in Isara were only just beginning to understand exactly what that would mean, my uncle and Magistrate Casperia had been arguing the problem for some time.
Now I could feel it bleeding through the city—the foreboding sense that the gods’ favor was slipping away.
Now, war was coming. That seemed to be the only thing everyone was sure of. Isara would take what it did not have. Just like it had in the Old War. That was what Rhea had been trying to tell me that day in the theater, after she gave the lecture on siege warfare. She’d seen this coming.
My uncle had not woken in two days, which meant that when his judgment stone was needed again, I would be the one to cast it.
The villa had been filled with the members of his faction from dawn to dusk, each intent on determining exactly where my allegiances lay.
The seat in the Forum that bore the name Matius would now fall to me.
It was the very reason Magistrate Casperia had invited me to her bed.
It was also the reason her daughter had stopped answering my messages.
It had been seventeen days since I last saw Maris, and it had taken every ounce of my will to keep myself from going to see her.
I stood in the entrance to the passageway that led to my uncle’s chambers, where a large bronze bowl filled with hot coals was smoking.
I’d been posted beside it to receive his guests and their offerings.
Every single Magistrate and Citadel official would come through to pay their respects and keep the incense burning.
Then the smoke would rise until Kastor was dead, taking his spirit to the next life.
It was a soulless custom, like everything else among the Magistrates. A ridiculous dance of appearances. There wasn’t a single person who held a seat in the Forum who hadn’t wished for this day, and yet here they were, heads bowed in mourning.
I stared into space, only half listening to the voices of the two women who stood before me in their Magistrate’s robes.
I nodded politely as they offered their condolences and gave vague answers to their half-veiled questions about the Matius legacy.
The attention of the Citadel had now turned to me, an adopted son tainted by a birth in the Lower City.
And now they were clamoring for my good graces. The whole thing made me violently sick.
A pair of legionnaires was let into the atrium, still clad in their armor from the training grounds, and I sighed when I saw that one of them was Vale. He stood tall over the Magistrates, his hair freshly shorn, and when he spotted me, he cut the pleasantries short and crossed the room.
“Excuse me.” I gave a small nod to the Magistrates and went to meet him, guiding us around the pillars until we were mostly hidden from sight.
“So, the bastard is finally dying,” Vale murmured.
“Let’s hope.”
“At least the gods have the decency to let him suffer.”
They had. Kastor had been choking on his own blood for days now, his chambers putrid with the smell of iron and rot.
There were times I wondered if I hated the man more than I should, but even Vale was filled with disgust when he talked about my uncle.
He was everything wrong with Isara and the Forum.
He was the incarnation of everything that stood between me and Maris and that day at the beach.
There wasn’t a Magistrate, including Vale’s own father, who hadn’t been betrayed or used by Kastor.
He’d seamlessly constructed a web in the Citadel that would depend on him even after death.
And now, with Magistrate Casperia’s decision to align the vote, he would go into death with more power than he’d ever had. He’d gotten everything he wanted.
Vale turned his back to the atrium. “It’s only a matter of time now.”
That was what we’d always said. Kastor’s days had been numbered for some time, and Vale’s father, who held the highest title of Consul, was getting on in years.
Vale and I both stood to inherit legacies we were ashamed of, consoling ourselves that we would be different.
I’d said the same to Maris. But I didn’t believe it anymore.
I’d made a decision only a few moments after the words left my mouth.
As I held her, the mob in the Citadel rushing around us like an angry river.
Her hands had curled into my tunic and I could feel an ending breaking open between us, even though there was no space for it.
There I was, holding her in the middle of the Citadel, and realizing that it was something I’d never do again.
Because she was right. In the end, it was all so pointless.
The Forum ran on the structure of the two factions, but that was not how it had been built.
The architecture of the body had been permanently altered, like a badly set break, and the only one who stood to benefit was the Consul.
There was a time when I thought our greatest act of rebellion could be tearing that structure down once we sat in those seats.
But now I could see that none of it mattered.
Whether I took Kastor’s place as Magistrate or not, this city would devour itself.
“What is it?” Vale studied me.
I’d warred over whether to tell Vale about my plans, and until now I’d decided that it wasn’t worth the argument. But with Kastor only hours from death, soon the entire city would know.
The doors to the street opened and closed again, briefly filling the corridor with light. There were more voices in the atrium now.
“Luca?” Vale pressed, gaze tightening on me. He’d picked up on the shift in the air around me, a talent he’d had since the day I’d met him.
“Casperia.” A man’s voice spoke the name as a flicker of shadow drew my gaze to the pool of light down the corridor. When I saw who stood in its circle, I drew in a breath and held it.
Maris Casperia was framed in the light, her ice-gray stola like melted silver and a stem of braided laurel in her arms. The silk fell over her curves softly, painting her outline against the mosaic wall.
Vale took a step forward, following my gaze to the atrium. When I moved in Maris’ direction, he caught hold of my arm.
“Careful, Luca,” he whispered.
His expression was as serious as the tone of his voice, which was a contrast to his usual humor. There was a genuine worry in the way he looked at me now.
I pulled free of his grip and crossed the room as Maris placed the laurel on the glowing coals in the basin. Instantly, a fresh stream of fragrant smoke diffused into the air, making the light hazy.
She stepped into it when I reached her, putting her only inches away from me.
In an instant, I was back in the cove, kissing her for the first time with that crystal-blue water glittering like diamonds around us.
But the memory was quickly replaced by the last time I’d touched her.
Holding on so tightly to her in the Citadel that I worried she might break.
I didn’t know what the name of that feeling was—the magnetic pull that tugged at my hands, compelling me to reach for her. It felt like a curse.
“I’m sorry about your uncle,” she said, dark eyes gleaming.
“I’m not.”
Her gaze dropped to my mouth, and that impulse to touch her intensified, spreading through me like fire.
“I meant I’m sorry for you.” She glanced behind me, to the entrance of the chamber where Kastor lay dying. “This will be your life now. Protecting the seat of the family Matius.”
It almost sounded as if she were trying to reassure herself that the break between us was destined somehow. Like there was no possible outcome other than that moment in the Citadel.
“That’s what we were born for, isn’t it?” I said, giving her the confirmation she needed.
“Isn’t it?” she echoed.
She looked at me for a long moment before she discreetly reached into the folds of her silver stola.
When she drew out her hand again, the glint of something gold shone between us, and she pressed it into my palm.
For more than a few seconds, she was holding my hand.
That simple touch unwound the knot in my throat, making me lean in closer to her.
But before I could say another word, her fingers slipped from mine, and then she was disappearing into the chamber, swallowed by the smoke.
I waited until I made it back across the room before I looked to see what it was.
The Casperia crest was engraved into the metal, centered between the ridges of a wide, flat coin.
I recognized it because Kastor had one just like it with our own family crest. It was the token used for entrance to her family’s private chambers in the Citadel District’s baths.
I turned the coin over, running a thumb along its edge before slipping it into my pocket. It was still warm from where it had been pressed against Maris’ skin.
I took my place at the entrance to Kastor’s chambers as another offering was set onto the coals.
The smoke billowed into the atrium, the sound of mournful prayers rising with it.
But I wasn’t thinking about Kastor or his wasting body in the next room.
I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I was only hours away from being free of him.
The only thought I had as I stood there, staring into the smoke, was that maybe Maris hadn’t made up her mind after all.