56. Threads

Threads

Luella

Cassius brings me their heads. Not all of them, of course, but the three men who wore masks and watched. I am his wife, after all, and he is allowed to do with the men as he wishes.

He could kill me, too. A good Divusian woman cannot be raped, because if I was where I should have been, if I behaved appropriately, what man would take me? If anyone finds out, I had it coming. Cassius could divorce me and shame me. He can kill me, just like he can kill the men who saw me.

He just can’t kill the Emperor.

The Emperor’s will is divine, so Cassius can do anything but retaliate. Any challenge to the Emperor’s position would doom his own future.

Tristan really is quite clever.

“What am I supposed to do with them?” I ask, not masking my irritation. The heads don’t bother me, but the valiant gesture does. They were mine to seek vengeance on. Tisiphone doesn’t need a lover to exact revenge and a black vidua doesn’t need a husband to help her hold the knife.

“Whatever you wish, Domina.” Cassius eyes me warily. It’s been two days since I’ve agreed to see him, and I’ve only allowed it now because I fear the Emperor will take me again soon. I have questions for Cassius.

“I would have wished to do it myself,” I snap.

Cassius looks down. “ Cor meum , I did mean to bring them alive…” His voice fades into the tapestries and I understand his meaning. He lost his temper.

“Are you even sure it's them? They wore masks.”

“I’m sure.” His jaw clenches and he withdraws the masks from a bag at his waist. I look away, hiding my flinch with movement. Bacchus is such a bastard.

I study the tapestries a moment before speaking, gathering courage for a conversation I am not sure I’m ready to have. “Cassius, what is your history with your brother?”

“What do you mean?”

“This is more than rivalry. More than jealousy. You hate him.”

“What’s not to hate?” A line appears between his eyes and he takes a step closer, his fist clenching at his side as if he is fighting the urge to reach for me.

I turn to him and I drop my own mask to reveal not my actual face, but my true emotion. I let him see the rage and the hurt, the fear and fury. “There. Is. More.” I know it, but I need to hear it from him.

Cassius gestures to the bench at the end of the bed and sits. I don’t join him, instead crossing my arms over my chest. He sighs in resignation but begins.

“When we were boys, I met a young woman. She was…” his voice cracks. “She was beautiful. Kind. Brave... but she was from a lower familia. I asked my pater if I could court her, officially.”

It’s not what I expected and I sit next to him on the bench, silent.

“My brother knew my intentions. He argued with Pater that she wasn’t right for me. That if anyone should marry a plebeian, it should be him to show he was an Emperor of the people. My pater… he agreed. He said I should marry politically. Unite the republic with Nocia or another country someday.”

“I don’t see—” I start to say, but Cassius interrupts me.

“Our mater was ill, but she didn’t agree. She told Tristan that he wasn’t ready to marry. I said we should just wait. Everyone should wait, because I knew I could change Pater’s mind with some time. We were young. It didn’t have to happen then.”

Something inside my heart cracks wide, blood rushing into the spaces, pressuring the entire thing to fracture. Oblivious, Cassius continues. “Tristan hated me. He hated me so much...”

“What do you mean?” I ask, even though a part of me knows. I’ve already heard this story, just not like this.

“He married her. Her .” His voice is cold, like he can’t think about what he’s saying. “He wanted to upset our mater. He wanted to take from me. And part of him must have known what he would do… because he married her quietly. They signed the paperwork. No fanfare. The next day she was gone. I didn’t find out until later what happened… He…”

He takes a deep breath and tries again. “He… killed her.” He says it so simply. Like dead girls aren’t fractured bones and sinew and salt, salt, salt.

“Then…” his voice breaks. “Then he went to her Pater and …” He can’t continue, his tears silently trailing down his cheeks, like the streams in his paintings around the room. It feels cruel to make him continue when I know the rest. I know it like I know the men of this republic. The way I know their depravities and the way they hurt and the way they take their dying breaths.

I know it, but I wish I didn’t.

“Oh.” It’s all I can think to say, all I can gather as the pieces of me grate against one another.

“He said he didn’t know I actually cared about her. Like that made it better that he … I almost killed him then. We fought and when they finally separated us I swore I’d destroy him, but he moved the twins into his care the next day.”

“What did your parents think?”

“Mater was furious. She was always hard on him. Cruel, even. She didn’t see how she fueled his hate for me by being… her.” He looks down at his hands. “My mater died a few clipses later, and then Pater not long after.”

“How?”

“Poisoned. I think he’d been poisoning Mater for years, but he didn’t move slow with Pater. Not that I could ever prove it was him.”

“Oh,” I say again. Eloquent as always.

“Luella, I’m so sorry. I’m the reason… I thought we were safe.”

It tempers me to hear the guilt in his voice. I almost tell him it’s not his fault, but that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. It’s Tristan’s fault, but that feels too easy and too hard at the same time because I can’t hold him accountable yet. I’m here with Cassius, though, and he could be that. Accountable. He could be many things, I think, if I let him.

“Does he ever talk about his dead betrothed?” I ask, tugging a thread I’d toyed with dangerously before.

“Flavia says he calls some of the floras her name at times…” He shakes his head in disgust. “And I do think he regretted it to some extent. He wanted what I think he’s always wanted.”

“What’s that?”

“Love,” he says simply. My breath whooshes out of me at that, but he goes on. “Or I guess, for her to love him, and not me.”

“Did she love you?” I don’t know why I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, but maybe she could have. If I had the chance to… to love her. And that was enough to doom her.”

My breath sticks to my ribs, heart trying to drown out anything more Cassius might tell me. The dual suns mock us, giving shape to the twin shadows that we are in that moment: rage and grief, loss and sorrow. So much darkness and pain in our pasts and our sticky, tangled threads keeping us from our future.