–3. Luctus

luctus ~ūs, m.

1. grief, sorrow

2. mourning

On the side of a dilapidated barbershop, Rain watches the Supernova Cup.

The gutters beneath his shoes run with iodine and blood, copper and iron. The crack of someone’s jaw as the barber pulls out their tooth and the moan that comes after is too much like Yavn. It’s only a matter of time before Green-One finds out Rain spared the noble, and then he will lose the last of his family forever. The recluses will find him. He will die alone, without anyone beside him.

The holoscreen flickers. Laser-etched graffiti shouts on both sides of it, but Rain’s eyes focus only on the center, on the silver-blue steed and the girl within it. She’s grown so much, so different from the waif he first spared that night—more flesh, more hardness, more determination than ever. An old woman selling fried molerat toddles by, a clay jar of crispy paws in her arms, but she stops. They watch together.

The old woman croaks, “Will she win, you think?”

Rain watches the girl’s eyes—his eyes, like family, like the family he lost, the family who hunts him now; both of them, girl and boy, hunted in a web they cannot escape but she is trying and it makes him want to try harder—and he nods, smiling.

“Yes.”