Morning Star Read online

  Morning Star is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Pierce Brown

  Illustration copyright © 2016 by Joel Daniel Phillips

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN 9780345539847

  eBook ISBN 9780345539854

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson and Faceout Studio

  Cover illustration: David G. Stevenson

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  The Story So Far...

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue

  Part I: Thorns

  Chapter 1: Only the Dark

  Chapter 2: Prisoner L17L6363

  Chapter 3: Snakebite

  Chapter 4: Cell 2187

  Chapter 5: Plan C

  Chapter 6: Victims

  Chapter 7: Bumblebees

  Chapter 8: Home

  Chapter 9: The City of Ares

  Chapter 10: The War

  Chapter 11: My People

  Chapter 12: The Julii

  Part II: Rage

  Chapter 13: Howlers

  Chapter 14: The Vampire Moon

  Chapter 15: The Hunt

  Chapter 16: Paramour

  Chapter 17: Killing Golds

  Chapter 18: Abyss

  Chapter 19: Pressure

  Chapter 20: Dissent

  Chapter 21: Quicksilver

  Chapter 22: The Weight of Ares

  Chapter 23: The Tide

  Chapter 24: Hic Sunt Leones

  Chapter 25: Exodus

  Chapter 26: The Ice

  Chapter 27: Bay of Laughter

  Chapter 28: Feast

  Chapter 29: Hunters

  Chapter 30: The Quiet

  Chapter 31: The Pale Queen

  Chapter 32: No Man’s Land

  Chapter 33: Gods and Men

  Chapter 34: Godkillers

  Part III: Glory

  Chapter 35: The Light

  Chapter 36: Swill

  Chapter 37: The Last Eagle

  Chapter 38: The Bill

  Chapter 39: The Heart

  Chapter 40: Yellow Sea

  Chapter 41: The Moon Lord

  Chapter 42: The Poet

  Chapter 43: Here Again

  Chapter 44: The Lucky Ones

  Chapter 45: The Battle of Ilium

  Chapter 46: Helldiver

  Chapter 47: Hell

  Chapter 48: Imperator

  Chapter 49: Colossus

  Part IV: Stars

  Chapter 50: Thunder and Lightning

  Chapter 51: Pandora

  Chapter 52: Teeth

  Chapter 53: Silence

  Chapter 54: The Goblin and the Gold

  Chapter 55: The Ignoble House Barca

  Chapter 56: In Time

  Chapter 57: Luna

  Chapter 58: Fading Light

  Chapter 59: The Lion of Mars

  Chapter 60: Dragon’s Maw

  Chapter 61: The Red

  Chapter 62: Omnis Vir Lupus

  Chapter 63: Silence

  Chapter 64: Hail

  Chapter 65: The Vale

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Pierce Brown

  About the Author

  Detail left

  Detail right

  THE STORY SO FAR…

  Red Rising

  Darrow is a Red, a lowly miner slaving away below the surface of Mars. He toils to make the surface of his planet habitable for future generations, but he and his kind have been betrayed: the surface is livable and ruled by the unscrupulous Golds. When they hang his wife for voicing rebellious ideas, Darrow joins a revolutionary group known as the Sons of Ares. With the help of the Sons, Darrow is physically transformed into a Gold and sent to take the Society down from the inside.

  He enters the Institute, a training school for the Gold elite that turns spoiled teenagers into the best warriors in Society. There Darrow learns the ways of warfare and how to navigate through the often treacherous—but sometimes genuine—friendships and complex political climate of the Golds. Only by changing the paradigm and relying on his new friends is Darrow able to best the Institute and all of its dangers.

  Golden Son

  From his victory at the Institute Darrow wins prestige and a position in the employ of the ArchGovernor of Mars, Nero au Augustus. However, he finds that it is difficult to live up to his own legend, as Darrow is unsuccessful at the Academy, where Golds train in ship-to-ship combat. Bested by a familial rival of his employer, Darrow’s worth quickly declines in the eyes of the ArchGovernor, until that is, Darrow gives the power-hungry Gold what he wants: civil war.

  Playing the Augustus clan against the Bellonas, Darrow throws Society into disarray, sowing the seeds of chaos everywhere he goes. After amassing an impressive army and some dubious allies, Darrow leads a successful assault on Mars, ousting the Bellonas from control of the planet. But at the Triumph held to honor his military victory, betrayal once again rears its ugly head and all that he has worked for is undone. His friends and allies killed or missing, Darrow is captured and his secret identity is discovered; the fate of the rebellion balances on a razor’s edge…

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Golds

  OCTAVIA AU LUNE Reigning Sovereign of the Society

  LYSANDER AU LUNE Grandson of Octavia, heir to House Lune

  ADRIUS AU AUGUSTUS/JACKAL ArchGovernor of Mars, twin brother to Virginia

  VIRGINIA AU AUGUSTUS/MUSTANG Twin sister to Adrius

  MAGNUS AU GRIMMUS/THE ASH LORD The Sovereign’s Arch Imperator, father to Aja

  AJA AU GRIMMUS The Protean Knight, chief bodyguard to the Sovereign

  CASSIUS AU BELLONA The Morning Knight, the Sovereign’s bodyguard

  ROQUE AU FABII Imperator of the Sword Armada

  ANTONIA AU SEVERUS-JULII Half sister to Victra, daughter of Agrippina

  VICTRA AU JULII Half sister to Antonia, daughter of Agrippina

  KAVAX AU TELEMANUS Head of House Telemanus, father to Daxo

  DAXO AU TELEMANUS Heir and son of Kavax, brother to Pax

  ROMULUS AU RAA Head of House Raa, ArchGovernor of Io

  LILATH AU FARAN Companion of the Jackal, leader of the Boneriders

  CYRIANA AU TANUS/THISTLE A former Howler, now a lieutenant of the Boneriders

  VIXUS AU SARNA Former House Mars, lieutenant of the Boneriders

  Mid and LowColors

  TRIGG TI NAKAMURA Legionnaire, brother to Holiday, a Gray

  HOLIDAY TI NAKAMURA Legionnaire, sister to Trigg, a Gray

  REGULUS AG SUN/QUICKSILVER Richest man in the Society, a Silver

  ALIA SNOWSPARROW Queen of the Valkyrie, mother to Ragnar and Sefi, an Obsidian

  SEFI THE QUIET Warlord of the Valkyrie, daughter to Alia, sister to Ragnar

  ORION XE AQUARII Ship captain, a Blue

  Sons of Ares

  DARROW OF LYKOS/REAPER Former lancer of House Augustus, a Red

  SEVRO AU BARCA/GOBLIN Howler, a Gold

  RAGNAR VOLARUS New Howler, an Obsidian

  DANCER Ares lieutenant, a Red

  MICKEY Carver, a Violet

  I rise into
darkness, away from the garden they watered with the blood of my friends. The Golden man who killed my wife lies dead beside me on the cold metal deck, life snuffed out by his own son’s hand.

  Autumn wind whips my hair. The ship rumbles beneath. In the distance, friction flames shred the night with brilliant orange. The Telemanuses descending from orbit to rescue me. Better that they do not. Better to let the darkness have me and allow the vultures to squabble over my paralyzed body.

  My enemy’s voices echo behind me. Towering demons with the faces of angels. The smallest of them bends. Stroking my head as he looks down at his dead father.

  “This is always how the story would end,” he says to me. “Not with your screams. Not with your rage. But with your silence.”

  Roque, my betrayer, sits in the corner. He was my friend. Heart too kind for his Color. Now he turns his head and I see his tears. But they are not for me. They are for what he has lost. For the ones I have taken from him.

  “No Ares to save you. No Mustang to love you. You are alone, Darrow.” The Jackal’s eyes are distant and quiet. “Like me.” He lifts up a black eyeless mask with a muzzle on it and straps it to my face. Darkening my sight. “This is how it ends.”

  To break me, he has slain those I love.

  But there is hope in those still living. In Sevro. In Ragnar and Dancer. I think of all my people bound in darkness. Of all the Colors on all the worlds, shackled and chained so that Gold might rule, and I feel the rage burn across the dark hollow he has carved in my soul. I am not alone. I am not his victim.

  So let him do his worst. I am the Reaper.

  I know how to suffer.

  I know the darkness.

  This is not how it ends.

  Deep in darkness, far from warmth and sun and moons, I lie, quiet as the stone that surrounds me, imprisoning my hunched body in a dreadful womb. I cannot stand. Cannot stretch. I can only curl in a ball, a withered fossil of the man that was. Hands cuffed behind my back. Naked on cold rock.

  All alone with the dark.

  It seems months, years, millennia since my knees have unbent, since my spine has straightened from its crooked pose. The ache is madness. My joints fuse like rusted iron. How much time has passed since I saw my Golden friends bleeding out into the grass? Since I felt gentle Roque kiss my cheek as he broke my heart?

  Time is no river.

  Not here.

  In this tomb, time is the stone. It is the darkness, permanent and unyielding, its only measure the twin pendulums of life—breath and the beating of my heart.

  In. Buh…bump. Buh…bump.

  Out. Buh…bump. Buh…bump.

  In. Buh…bump. Buh…bump.

  And forever it repeats. Until…Until when? Until I die of old age? Until I crush my skull against the stone? Until I gnaw out the tubes the Yellows threaded into my lower gut to force nutrients in and wastes out?

  Or until you go mad?

  “No.” I grind my teeth.

  Yessssss.

  “It’s only the dark.” I breathe in. Calm myself. Touch the walls in my soothing pattern. Back, fingers, tailbone, heels, toes, knees, head. Repeat. A dozen times. A hundred. Why not be sure? Make it a thousand.

  Yes. I’m alone.

  I would have thought there to be worse fates than this, but now I know there are none. Man is no island. We need those who love us. We need those who hate us. We need others to tether us to life, to give us a reason to live, to feel. All I have is the darkness. Sometimes I scream. Sometimes I laugh during the night, during the day. Who knows now? I laugh to pass the time, to exhaust the calories the Jackal gives me and make my body shiver into sleep.

  I weep too. I hum. I whistle.

  I listen to voices above. Coming to me from the endless sea of darkness. And attending them is the maddening clatter of chains and bones, vibrating through my prison walls. All so close, yet a thousand kilometers away, as if a whole world existed just beyond the darkness and I cannot see it, cannot touch it, taste it, feel it, or pierce that veil to belong to the world once again. I am imprisoned in solitude.

  I hear the voices now. The chains and bones trickling through my prison.

  Are the voices mine?

  I laugh at the idea.

  I curse.

  I plot. Kill.

  Slaughter. Gouge. Rip. Burn.

  I beg. I hallucinate. I bargain.

  I whimper prayers to Eo, happy she was spared a fate like this.

  She’s not listening.

  I sing childhood ballads and recite Dying Earth, The Lamplighter, the Ramayana, The Odyssey in Greek and Latin, then in the lost languages of Arabic, English, Chinese, and German, pulling from memories of dataDrops Matteo gave me when I was barely more than a boy. Seeking strength from the wayward Argive who only wished to find his way home.

  You forget what he did.

  Odysseus was a hero. He broke the walls of Troy with his wooden horse. Like I broke the Bellona armies in the Iron Rain over Mars.

  And then…

  “No,” I snap. “Quiet.”

  …men entered Troy. Found mothers. Found children. Guess what they did?

  “Shut up!”

  You know what they did. Bone. Sweat. Flesh. Ash. Weeping. Blood.

  The darkness cackles with glee.

  Reaper, Reaper, Reaper…All deeds that last are painted in blood.

  Am I asleep? Am I awake? I’ve lost my way. Everything bleeding together, drowning me in visions and whispers and sounds. Again and again I jerk Eo’s fragile little ankles. Break Julian’s face. Hear Pax and Quinn and Tactus and Lorn and Victra sigh their last. So much pain. And for what? To fail my wife. To fail my people.

  And fail Ares. Fail your friends.

  How many are even left?

  Sevro? Ragnar?

  Mustang?

  Mustang. What if she knows you’re here…What if she doesn’t care…And why would she? You who betrayed. You who lied. You who used her mind. Her body. Her blood. You showed her your true face and she ran. What if it was her? What if she betrayed you? Could you love her then?

  “Shut up!” I scream at myself, at the darkness.

  Don’t think of her. Don’t think of her.

  Why ever not? You miss her.

  A vision of her is spawned in the darkness like so many before it—a girl riding away from me across a field of green, twisting in her saddle and laughing for me to follow. Hair rippling as would summer hay fluttering from a farmer’s wagon.

  You crave her. You love her. The Golden girl. Forget that Red bitch.

  “No.” I slam my head against the wall. “It’s only the dark,” I whisper. Only the dark playing tricks on my mind. But still I try to forget Mustang, Eo. There is no world beyond this place. I cannot miss what does not exist.

  Warm blood trickles down my forehead from old scabs, now freshly broken. It drips off my nose. I extend my tongue, probing the cold stone till I find the drops. Savor the salt, the Martian iron. Slowly. Slowly. Let the novelty of sensation last. Let the flavor linger and remind me I am a man. A Red of Lykos. A Helldiver.

  No. You are not. You are nothing. Your wife abandoned you and stole your child. Your whore turned from you. You were not good enough. You were too proud. Too stupid. Too wicked. Now, you are forgotten.

  Am I?

  When last I saw the Golden girl, I was on my knees beside Ragnar in the tunnels of Lykos, asking Mustang to betray her own people and live for more. I knew that if she chose to join us, Eo’s dream would blossom. A better world was at our fingertips. Instead, she left. Could she forget me? Has her love for me left her?

  She only loved your mask.

  “It’s only the dark. Only the dark. Only the dark,” I mumble faster and faster.

  I should not be here.

  I should be dead. After the death of Lorn, I was to be given to Octavia so her Carvers could dissect me to discover the secrets of how I became Gold. To see if there could be others like me. But the Jackal made a bargain. Kept me for hi
s own. He tortured me in his Attica estate, asking about the Sons of Ares, about Lykos and my family. Never telling me how he discovered my secret. I begged him to end my life.

  In the end, he gave me stone.

  “When all is lost, honor demands death,” Roque once told me. “It is a noble end.” But what would a rich poet know of death? The poor know death. Slaves know death. But even as I yearn for it, I fear it. Because the more I see of this cruel world, the less I believe it ends in some pleasant fiction.

  The Vale is not real.

  It’s a lie told by mothers and fathers to give their starving children a reason for the horror. There is no reason. Eo is gone. She never watched me fight for her dream. She did not care what fate I made at the Institute or if I loved Mustang, because the day she died, she became nothing. There is nothing but this world. It is our beginning and our end. Our one chance at joy before the dark.

  Yes. But you don’t have to end. You can escape this place, the darkness whispers to me. Say the words. Say them. You know the way.

  It is right. I do.

  “All you must say is ‘I am broken,’ and this will all end,” the Jackal said long ago, before he lowered me into this hell. “I will put you in a lovely estate for the rest of your days and send you warm, beautiful Pinks and food enough to make you fatter than the Ash Lord. But the words carry a price.”