Page 127 of The Song Rising

The document was a death warrant, signed by the Grand Judge. My gaze skimmed over it, picking out words likecondemnationandabomination. Jaxon’s hand tightened on the top of his cane.

“Your spirit will remain with me,” Nashira said, “as my fallen angel. Perhaps you will learn, then, to obey.”

My ears were ringing now. Somehow, after months of defying Scion, I had never really expected to see this document. My father must have been presented with the same.

“Shall I escort the prisoner to her cell, blood-sovereign?” Alsafi said. I tensed.

“Soon. I would speak to her alone.”

There was a pause before the other three stood and left, along with 22, who was marched out by Vigiles. His small defiance, unnoticed by everyone but me, was over. As he followed them, Jaxon gave me a pointed stare that urged me to reconsider.

When the doors closed, and it was just the two of us, there was silence for a long time.

“Do you think human beings are good?”

The question rang, cool and clear, in the vastness of the gallery.

This had to be a trap. Nashira Sargas would never ask for a human’s opinion without an ulterior motive.

“Answer me,” she said.

“Are Rephaim good, Nashira?”

Outside, the moon was waning. Her stance was almost placid, fingers interlocked.

“You were reared, from the age of eight, in the empire I created,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “You see it as captivity—internment—but it has sheltered you from crueler truths.”

My flesh flinched from that cut-glass voice, the poisonous spill of her aura in the æther.

She went on: “I wonder if you have ever heard of a witch trial. In the past they were common; a matter of English law. Anyone could be accused of being a witch, and put on trial for sorcery. The guilty would be burned alive or drowned, and their accusers would consider themselves morally and spiritually cleansed. That justice had been done.

‘During those same times, executions were particularly . . . imaginative. For the crime of high treason, such as yours, a criminal would be hanged until almost dead, then taken down. His abdomen would be laid open, his entrails torn out, his privy parts cut off before his eyes. His body would then be quartered, and his head set upon a spike to rot. The spectators would cheer.”

I had thought myself inured to violence.

“No Rephaite,” she said, “has ever committed such a brutal act against another. And never would—not even now.”

I swallowed. “I seem to recall you threatening to skin another Rephaite.”

“Words,” she said dismissively. “I have hurt Arcturus for his own good, but I would never be so grotesque.”

“Just grotesque enough to mutilate him.”

She didn’t seem to think this worthy of comment. His scars, his pain, meant nothing to her.

“Before I was blood-sovereign, I dwelled in the great observatory in the swathe of the Sargas. As centuries passed in your world, I learned everything about the human race,” she said. “I learned that humans have a mechanism inside them: a mechanism calledhatred, which can be activated with the lightest pull of a string. I saw war and cruelty. I saw slaughter and slavery. I learned how humans control one another.

“When we arrived in your realm, I used the stores of knowledge I had saved from the observatory—specifically, knowledge of how intensely humans can hate. It was easy to turn the tide of public odium toward ‘unnaturals,’ and to promise control. That was how Scion was born.” She looked through a window, into the citadel. “An empire founded on human hatred.”

There was so little feeling left in my body that I was almost unaware of it.

“I have done nothing to you that you have not done to yourselves. I have only used humankind’s own methods to bring it to heel. And I mean to continue.” Nashira rose elegantly and walked past the windows, toward the other end of the room. “You may think I am your enemy. The Ranthen may have told you so. They are blind.”

Her shadow moved across the floor. I couldn’t take my eyes from her silhouette.

“When he endeavored to help humans before, Arcturus was betrayed by your mentor. He should have learned then. I punished him, with the spirit of a certain human, to remind him of your true nature.”

Hearing his name gave me strength. “He doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson,” I said.

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