49. FORTY-NINE
FORTY-NINE
ATTILATIA
Location: Seraphinden
The suns grew higher, the rainstorms grew shorter, and three weeks passed in tropical Seraphinden without incident.
Neither dagger-bearing assassin nor foul-tempered patrician disturbed Attilatia at Aethertech Mechanics during her nightly shifts.
She took tea with Pinto on her off-days and listened to his gossip about the Groundling whispers of revolution, while the trade guilds and the oligarchy continued business as usual.
She made a bed for Toronoff which went unused, as he’d taken to curling behind her knees when she slept.
When the repercussions from Aetech’s total failure finally wore off, Hashod kept Attilatia busy with an expansion project: redirecting Seraphinden’s distortion locomotive around its current route through the lower districts.
The expanding slums had traipsed over it, and the guiderail was often defaced—strewn with trash and human excrement—or blocked by slumlings pulling stunts.
Hashod had determined it would be more cost-effective to reroute than continue to service it where it was. She dove into the project, grateful to set her mind to something that averted someone else’s disaster.
Attilatia finished the blueprints shortly after highmoon the night before Thedexemore’s anticipated return.
She slouched at her workstation on Aetech’s production floor, taking a rare moment to let her hands fall idle as she dragged through her thoughts.
So much had happened in the last few months, there were times she’d nearly forgotten how much she missed Thedexemore. Now, he was all she could think about.
She resolved to tell him everything: to come clean, to explain.
The Nelfinden legal system did not treat Azadonians kindly.
He’d narrowly helped them avoid internment—possibly execution.
Thedexemore had earned the truth. He was old enough, and the world was dangerous enough, and she’d learned there was more to be lost than gained in doing everything alone.
Moonlight ghosted through the skylights arcing overhead, but the corners of the lab were raven dark. Something moved in her peripheral vision and she startled, reaching for the dagger tucked into her jumpsuit.
Roskaad’s voice was warm to her ears. “I never pinned you as one to slack off on the job.”
Relief washed through her. She spun to find him at a shadowed workstation three down from her own. Only after she’d stood and dashed several paces toward him did her inner skeptic catch up to her irrational happiness.
Attilatia rooted her feet into the marble floor and forced her best glower. “You!”
Roskaad beamed, face so unfatedly handsome it made her want to rearrange it. “After long months of responding to titles, it is so refreshing to hear your snarl.”
“You have much explain to give.”
“Did you get my message?”
“Yes!”
“And?”
“You work for Limtush, no? You tell me why you send it and what you want with me.”
Thyatira puffed his cheeks and ran a hand through his hair. “That I ever doubted you for even a moment—”
He moved closer, but she stopped him with a prod to the chest. “You manipulate me. Withhold information. Toy with me and I no—”
“You’re so intent on being angry, you haven’t realized how happy I am to see you alive.”
“Alive? You tried to kill me!”
Roskaad raised a finger as though she’d suggested they eat date cakes before dinner. “Everyone else tried to kill you. I ensured it wouldn’t work out in their favor.”
She sucked in a breath and held it. She’d known she was on someone’s—and maybe multiple someones’—list for a long time. Roskaad had a hard-earned reputation to protect. It was possible that underhanded interactions were the only way to help her.
“How close was I…? To…”
Roskaad looked away.
It was as she’d suspected. He was the only thing keeping her and Thedexemore alive any more. Every other precaution, every ploy hidden up her sleeve, had all been for nothing.
“I had no idea how to tell you any of this,” he said, voice low, stepping closer to her again. “And I wasn’t sure you would believe me if I did. So I let you figure it out yourself.”
“Figure out how supremely fucked I am?” she managed through bared teeth.
“No, Atti, they won’t hurt you. Not anymore.”
“What about Limtush? You obviously work for—”
“Limtush is no longer a threat to you.”
His tone was not difficult to translate: Limtush was no longer a threat to anyone—permanently—and Roskaad had made it so.
She didn’t know whether to throw herself into his arms or run in the opposite direction.
Neither seemed proper, so she clutched at her elbows instead.
She couldn't really trust him. Could she?
“You do something to my technology. I know. Make me look like criminal.”
“And I prepared an alibi for you—not that you needed it.”
“I no under—why?”
Through the darkness of the moonlit floor, something broke in Roskaad’s expression, like a chink in otherwise flawless glass. He was holding himself back—like he didn’t want to scare her away. Nothing could have further glued her to the spot. She didn’t want him to hold back. She wanted him to—
“Everything that I am is because of you,” he said.
Not that.
She had thought melodramatic romantic advances beneath him. Her arms crossed. “Really? You are a lot more than a trivial distortion shield which failed to function when you needed it most.”
“Atti… you’ve uncovered Limtush’s crimes but still haven’t caught on? You’ve influenced me for far longer than my involvement with Aetech.”
The air seemed suddenly cold. She hadn’t known him before Aetech. Her eyes darted between his, perfect and earnest, if not a little weary.
“I never expected you to remember me. But I never forgot about you.”
Roskaad Thyatira had written her an encryption in Tera’thian. Because he knew she spoke Tera’thian.
Because he’d spoken it to her before.
She took a step backward again. And another.
“You…”
Attilatia gasped as Roskaad caught her hand, his voice low and beautiful and desperate.
“Thinking of you—of what you told me—is the only thing that has gotten me here.”
“You is Tera’thian.”
He shook his head. “I’m a Nelfinden. And the Tera’thians ripped my life away from me like they did from you.”
She let him pull her closer. She couldn’t help it. She had to know what it meant that the boy she’d thought dead twenty years ago stood before her.
“I don’t know if you do or don’t care about this country, but I side with the Nelfinden people.
But I know what the Tera’thians have planned.
There are certain inevitabilities in this world, and only I can ensure that, when they come to pass, they come with as little damage as possible. That innocent people still survive.”
The Groundling propaganda wasn’t just hear-tell. He really was planning a revolution. Just not the kind they were expecting. “Roskaad—”
“Please.” He still clung to her fingertips. “It is a Fate-given gift that I found you again. It has to be. I need you to believe me.”
She tried to retract, but his grip firmed. “Why? Will you kill me if I don’t?”
He looked at her like he’d never heard anything more impossible.
“I thought there was nothing I wanted more than freedom, until you came back into my life. For months, I’ve dreamed of you.
I haven’t been able to think about anything else.
I disposed of Limtush for you. I made a bargain to have the powers I answer to call off the Kovathian attempts against you.
I would give”—his throat caught as his eyes traced her—“anything for you.”
No one had ever wanted her like this—not for her body, not for her mind, but for her exactly as she was. Attilatia gravitated toward him, unconsciously, irresistibly, and with reckless abandon. "I missed you. I no want to. But I did."
His arms fell about her. They held one another, fingers digging in deep, cheeks pressed into the fabric of each other’s clothing, exchanging a strange unity of desire and disbelief. He was horrifying. He was infuriating. He was absolutely intoxicating.
“I’m in trouble, Atti,” he whispered into her hair, voice cracking. “Things fell apart. And I-I messed up. I should have watched him closer. I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Your brother has been swayed against me.”
“This I know. Explain why I no gut you while I have chance,” she muttered into his chest.
“I will. I’ll tell you everything. But, Atti, if there’s any one thing you need to know, it’s this: he’s working with a Destruction conduit.
Not just any. The rogue right hand of the Tera’thian Tohatu.
Not only is he the most dangerous man in Kath—worse than Thacklore, worse than Limtush—but he has it out for me.
There's a history there. He doesn’t understand: why I’m doing what I’m doing.
No one will understand it the way you will. ”
“Is Dex safe?”
“He’s perfectly fine, no thanks to me." Attilatia had never imagined Roskaad could be so distressed. He'd always seemed so impervious. "I just wanted to give him autonomy. But I would have fallen under scrutiny if I kept him too close. I should have done more. I never imagined…”
She wanted to give him comfort. To tell him everything would be alright. Thedexemore was reasonable. He would see the right in things. Roskaad was the General Prime. He could grant them immunity from the Kovathians. From Aetech’s meddling.
Her hand inadvertently found Roskaad’s cheek. “What’s happened?”
His brow creased. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things a person should never have to do. But if I hadn’t the consequences would be far, far worse.”
“What consequences?”
He swallowed, his throat seeming to get stuck. “Total annihilation.”
“Ani is preparing a move on Nelfindar?”
“It’s already begun. I had an opportunity at postponing it. It was thwarted.”
She understood what he meant, having lived through it: a Tera’thian orchestrated coup—if not a scourge. Even Nelfindar, Kath’s greatest nation since the cataclysm, could not withstand them. Especially not through the current political disarray.
“You know me, Atti. You’re the only one. You know the chains I’ve tried to escape my whole life. I’ve escaped them because of you, and I’ve been fighting to prevent them from ensnaring my homeland. I need your help to extend that miracle to the rest of Nelfindar.”
Roskaad had single-handedly taken it on himself to save the entire nation… And she was the one who had inspired him to do it? Pinto had told her she was capable of great goodness. Was this how she finally made up for years of misanthropy? Was Roskaad her chance to finally do the right thing?
“Do you trust me?”
With everything that he’d done, how could she not?
“Yes.” She hardly registered the word leaving her mouth.
This was insanity.
“There is so much I have to tell you—to come clean to you about. But I promise it will be true. There are dark times ahead, and I don’t want to go through them alone anymore.”
His voice was urgent and hypnotic and she wanted nothing more than to be close to him. Shrouded in shadow, she lifted her chin to meet him. “You are not afraid of dark, are you, General Prime?”
Roskaad’s eyes searched hers. His hands cupped her face, fingers lacing into her hair, lips seizing her own. He smelled of ocean and sweat and spring, and this time he didn’t dare pull away.
Attilatia knew in that moment that this kiss was the beginning. And it was also the end. This kiss was everything.