He returns my stare, eyes flickering over my face and body. They widen when he realizes who I am. “The Lighting Girl.” But when he recognizes Cal at my shoulder, his shock quickly gives way to rage.
For an almost fifty-year-old man, Nix is surprisingly fast. In the shadows, I barely see him drop a shoulder and charge, catching Cal around the middle. Though he’s half the prince’s size, he takes him down like a bull, smashing them both into a sturdy tree trunk. It cracks loudly beneath the blow, shaking from roots to branches. After half a heartbeat, I realize that I should probably step in. Cal is Cal, but we have no idea who Nix is, or what he can do.
Nix gets in one bruising punch, hitting Cal’s jaw so hard I fear it might be broken, before I manage to get my arms around his neck. “Don’t make me, Nix,” I rumble in his ear. “Don’t make me.”
“Do your worst,” Nix spits back, trying to elbow me off. But I hold firm, squeezing his neck. The flesh feels rock hard beneath my touch. Very well.
I push enough power through me to stun Nix into submission. The jolt should set his hair on end. My purple sparks hit his skin, and I expect him to drop back, maybe shake a little, and come to his senses. But he doesn’t seem to feel my lightning at all. It only annoys him, like a fly would a horse. I shock him again, stronger this time, and again, nothing. In my surprise, he manages to throw me off and I land hard, my back against a tree.
Cal does better, dodging and catching as many punches as he can. But he hisses in pain at the contact, even the blows that glance off his arm. Finally the flame-maker bracelet at his wrist sparks, forming a fireball in his hand. It breaks against Nix’s shoulder like water on rock, burning the clothes but leaving the flesh unharmed.
Stoneskin echoes in my head, but this man is no such thing. His skin is still ruddy and smooth, not gray or stony. It is simply impenetrable.
“Stop this!” I growl, trying to keep my voice low. But the scuffle, or should I say butchery, continues on. Silver blood pours from Cal’s mouth, staining Nix’s knuckles black in the shadows.
Kilorn and Farley rush past me, their hurried footsteps pounding in time. I don’t know how much use they’ll be against this human wrecking ball, and I hold out a hand to stop them. But Shade reaches Nix before they do, jumping into position behind him. He grabs Nix by the neck, like I did, and then they’re both gone. They appear ten feet away a split second later, and Nix falls to the ground, his face vaguely green. He tries to get up, but Shade braces his crutch against his neck, pinning him.
“Move and I’ll do it again,” he says, his eyes alive and dangerous.
Nix raises one silver-stained hand in surrender. The other clutches his stomach, still flipping from the surprise and sensation of being squeezed through thin air. I know it all too well.
“Enough,” he pants. A sheen of sweat glints across his forehead, betraying the exhaustion setting in. Impenetrable, but not unstoppable.
Kilorn plops back down on his root, snatching up the remnants of his net. He smiles to himself, almost laughing at the sight of Cal beaten and bleeding. “I like this one,” he says. “I like him very much.”
I fight to my feet, ignoring the old aches setting off across my bones. “The prince is with us, Nix. He’s here to help, same as me.”
That does nothing to assuage him. Nix sits back on his heels, baring yellow teeth. His breath sounds ragged and visceral. “Help?” he scoffs. “That Silver bastard helped my daughters into an early grave.”
Cal does his best to look polite, despite the blood dripping down his chin. “Sir—”
“Dara Marsten. Jenny Marsten,” Nix hisses in reply. His glare goes right through me, a knife in the darkness. “The Hammer Legion. Battle of the Falls. They were nineteen years old.”
Died in the war. A tragedy, if not a crime, but how is it Cal’s fault?
Judging by the look of pure shame crossing his face, Cal agrees with Nix. When he speaks, his voice is thick, choked with emotion. “We won,” he murmurs, unable to look Nix in the eye. “We won.”
Nix clenches a single fist, but resists the urge to charge. “You won. They drowned in the river, and their bodies went over Maiden Falls. The grave diggers couldn’t even find their shoes. What was it the letter said?” he presses on, and Cal winces. “Ah yes, that my girls ‘died for victory.’ To ‘defend the kingdom.’ And there were some very nice signatures at the bottom. From the dead king, the general of the Hammer, and the tactical genius who decided an entire legion should march across the river.”
Every eye turns to Cal, and he burns under our gaze. His face goes white, flushed with blood and disgrace. I remember his room back in the Hall of the Sun, the books and manuals filled to the brim with notes and tactics. They made me sick then and they make me sick now, with Cal and myself. Because I’ve forgotten who he truly is. Not just a prince, not just a soldier, but a murderer. In another life it could’ve been me he marched to death, or my brothers, or Kilorn.
“I’m sorry,” Cal breathes. He forces himself to look up, to meet the eyes of an angry, grieving father. I suppose he was trained to do it. “I know my words mean nothing. Your daughters—all the soldiers—deserved to live. And so do you, sir.”
Nix’s knees crack when he stands, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Is that a threat, boy?”
“A warning,” Cal replies, shaking his head. “You’re like Mare, like Shade.” He gestures to us in turn. “Different. What we call a newblood. Red and Silver.”
“Don’t you ever call me Silver,” Nix says through gritted teeth.
It doesn’t stop Cal from continuing, rising to his feet. “My brother will be hunting people like you. He plans to kill you all, and pretend you never existed. He plans to erase you from history.”
Something sticks in Nix’s throat and confusion clouds his eyes. He glances to me, looking for support. “There are . . . others?”
“Many others, Nix.” This time when I touch his skin, I have no intention of shocking him. “Girls, boys, old and young. All over the country, waiting to be found.”
“And when you find them . . . us? What then?”
I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. I haven’t thought that far ahead.
Farley steps forward when I can’t, extending a hand. She holds a red scarf, ragged but clean. “The Scarlet Guard will protect them, hide them. And train them if they want to be trained.”
I almost balk at her words, thinking back to the Colonel. The last thing he seems to want is newbloods around, but Farley sounds so sure, so convincing. Like always, I’m sure she has something else up her sleeve, something I shouldn’t question. Yet.
Slowly, Nix takes the scarf from her, turning it over in his stained hands. “And if I refuse?” he asks lightly, but I hear the steel beneath.
“Then Shade will put you right back in bed, and you’ll never hear from us again,” I tell him. “But Maven will come. If you don’t want to stick with us, you’re better off in the wild.”
His grip tightens on the scarlet fabric. “Not much of a choice.”
“But you do have a choice.” I hope he knows I mean it. I hope it for my own sake, for my own soul. “You can choose to stay, or come. You know better than anyone how much has been lost—but you can help us regain something too.”
Nix is quiet for a long while after that. He paces, scarf in hand, occasionally glancing through the branches at the watchtower beacon. It revolves three times before he speaks again.
“My girls are dead, my wife’s dead, and I’m sick of the marsh stink,” he says, stopping in front of me. “I’m with you.” Then he glares over my shoulder, and I don’t need to turn around to know he’s looking at Cal. “Just keep that one far away from me.”
TWELVE
We trudge back through the woods unscathed, chased by nothing except sea breeze and clouds. But I can’t shake the feeling of dread curling around my heart.
Even though Nix almost split Cal’s skull, recruiting him seemed easy. Too easy. And
if I’ve learned anything over the past seventeen years, over the past month, it’s that nothing is easy. Everything has a price. If Nix is not a trap, then he is certainly a danger. Anyone can betray anyone.
So even though he reminds me of Dad, even though he’s little more than a gray beard and grief, even though he’s like me, I close my heart to the man from Coraunt. I have saved him from Maven, told him what he was, and let him make his choice. Now I must carry on, to do the same for another and another and another. All that matters is the next name.
The starlight illuminates the woods enough for a quick glance, and I thumb through the now familiar pages of Julian’s list. There are few in the area, clustered around the city of Harbor Bay. Two are listed in the city proper, and one in the New Town slum. How we’ll get to any of them, I’m not sure. The city will surely be walled like Archeon and Summerton, while the restrictions on techie slums are even worse than the Measures. Then I remember; walls and restrictions don’t apply to Shade. Luckily, he’s walking better by the hour, and shouldn’t need the crutch after a few more days. Then we’ll be unstoppable. Then we might even win.
The thought thrills and confuses me in equal measure—what will a world like that look like? I can only imagine where I’ll be. At home maybe, certainly with my family, somewhere in the woods where I can hear a river. With Kilorn nearby, of course. But Cal? I don’t know where he’ll choose to be, in the end.
In the darkness of night, it’s easy to let your mind wander. I’m used to forests and don’t really need to focus to keep from tripping on roots and leaves. So I dream as I walk, thinking of what might be. An army of newbloods. Farley leading the Scarlet Guard. A proper Red uprising, from the Choke trenches to the alleys of Gray Town. Cal always said that all-out war was not worth the cost, that the loss of Red and Silver life would be too great. I hope he’s right. I hope Maven will see what we are, what we can do, and know he cannot win. Even he is not a fool. Even he knows when he is beaten. At least, I hope he does. Because as far as I can tell, Maven has never been defeated. Not when it really counts. Cal won their father, his soldiers, but Maven won the crown. Maven won every battle that truly mattered.
And given time . . . he would’ve won me too.
I see him in every shadow of every tree, a ghost standing tall against the rainstorm in the Bowl of Bones. Water streams between the points of his iron crown, into his eyes and mouth, into his collar, into the icy abyss that is his wasted heart. It goes red in color, turning from water to my blood. He opens his mouth to taste it, and the teeth within are sharp, gleaming razors of white bone.
I blink him away, blotting out the memory of the traitor prince.
Farley murmurs in the darkness, detailing the true purpose of the Guard. Nix is a smart man, but like everyone else beneath the rule of the Burning Crown, he has been fed lies. Terrorism, anarchy, bloodlust, those are the words the broadcasts use when describing the Guard. They show the children dead in the Sun Shooting, the flooded wreckage of the Archeon Bridge, everything to convince the country of our supposed evil. All the while, the real enemy sits on his throne and smiles.
“What about her?” Nix whispers, tossing a flint-eyed glance in my direction. “Is it true she seduced the prince into killing the king?”
Nix’s question cuts like a blade, so wounding I expect to see a knife sticking out of my chest. But my own pains can wait. Ahead of me, Cal stills, his broad shoulders rising and falling, an indication of deep, steadying breaths.
I put a hand to his arm, hoping to calm him as he calms me. His skin flames beneath my fingers, almost too hot to touch.
“No, it isn’t,” I tell Nix, pushing all the steel I can into my voice. “That’s not what happened at all.”
“So the king’s head rolled off on its own, then?” He chuckles, expecting a rise of laughter. But even Kilorn has the good sense to stay quiet. He doesn’t even smile. He understands the pain of dead fathers.
“It was Maven,” Kilorn growls, surprising us all. The look in his eyes is pure fire. “Maven and his mother, the queen. She can control your mind. And—” His voice falters, not wanting to continue. The king’s death was so horrible, even for a man we hated.
“And?” Nix prods, chancing a few steps toward Cal. I stop him with one daggered glare, and thankfully, he halts a few feet away. But his face pulls into a sneer, eager to see the prince in pain. I know he has his reasons to torture Cal, but that doesn’t mean I have to let him.
“Keep walking,” I murmur, so low only Cal can hear.
Instead, he turns, his muscles taut beneath my touch. They feel like hot waves rolling on a solid sea. “Elara made me do it, Marsten.” His bronze eyes meet Nix’s, daring him to take another step. “She twisted her way into my head, controlling my body. But she let my mind stay. She let me watch as my arms took his sword, as I separated his head from his shoulders. And then she told the world it’s what I wanted all along.” And then softer, as if reminding himself, “She made me kill my father.”
Some of Nix’s malice dies away, enough to reveal the man beneath. “I saw the pictures,” he mumbles, as if in apology. “They were everywhere, on every screen in town. I thought— It looked—”
Cal’s eyes flicker, out to the trees. But he’s not looking at the leaves. His gaze is in the past, to something more painful. “She killed my true mother as well. And she’ll kill all of us if we let her.”
The words come out hard and harsh, a rusty blade to saw flesh. They taste wonderful in my mouth. “Not if I kill her first.”
For all his talents, Cal is not a violent person. He can kill you in a thousand different ways, lead an army, burn down a village, but he will not enjoy it. So his next words take me by surprise.
“When the time comes,” he says, staring at me, “we’ll flip a coin.”
His bright flame has grown dark indeed.
When we emerge from the forest, a brief shudder of fear runs through me. What if the Blackrun’s gone? What if we were tracked? What if, what if, what if. But the airjet is exactly where we left it. It’s nearly invisible in the darkness, blending into the gray-black runway. I resist the urge to sprint into its safety, and force myself to keep pace next to Cal. Not too close, though. No distractions.
“Keep your eyes open,” Cal mutters, a small but firm warning as we approach. He doesn’t take his eyes off the jet, watching for any indication of a trap.
I do the same, glaring at the back ramp still lowered against the runway, open to the night air. It looks clear to me, but shadows gather in the belly of the Blackrun, pitch-dark and impossible to see through from this distance.
It took a great amount of energy and focus to power on the entire jet, but the lightbulbs within are another story. Even from ten yards away, it’s easy to reach out to their wiring, spark up their charges, and illuminate the inside of the jet with a bright and sudden glow. Nothing moves inside, but the others react, surprised by the burst of light. Farley even frees her pistol from the holster strapped to her leg.
“It’s just me,” I tell her with a wave of my hand. “The jet’s empty.”
My pace quickens. I’m eager to be inside, cocooned by the growing charge of electricity that strengthens with my every step. When I set foot on the ramp, climbing up into the craft, it feels like entering a warm embrace. I run a hand along the wall, tracing the outline of a metal panel as I pass by. More of my power flows, bleeding out from the lightbulbs, running along electrical pathways into the massive cell batteries beneath my feet and fixed under each wing. They hum in perfect unison, sending out their own energy, switching on what I haven’t. The Blackrun comes to life.
Nix gasps behind me, in awe of the massive, metal jet. He’s probably never seen one this close, let alone stepped inside one. I turn around, expecting to find him staring at the seats or the cockpit, but his eyes are firmly fixed on me. He flushes and ducks his head in what could be a shaky bow. Before I can tell him exactly how much that annoys me, he shuffles to a seat, puzzli
ng over the safety belts.
“Do I get a helmet?” he asks the silence. “If we’re going to be crashing through the air, I want a helmet.”
Laughing, Kilorn takes a seat next to Nix and buckles them both in with quick, agile fingers. “Nix, I think you’re the only one here who doesn’t need one.”
They chuckle together, sharing crooked smiles. If not for me, for the Scarlet Guard, Kilorn would’ve probably turned out just like Nix. A battered old man, with nothing left to give but his bones. Now I hope he gets the chance to grow old, to have aching knees and a gray beard of his own. If only Kilorn would let me protect him. If only he didn’t insist on throwing himself in front of every bullet that comes his way.
“So she really is the lightning girl. And this one’s a . . .” He gestures across the jet, to Shade, searching for a word to describe his ability.
“Jumper,” Shade offers with a respectful nod. He fastens his belts as tightly as he can, already paling at the prospect of another flight. Farley doesn’t look so affected, and resolutely stares from her seat, eyes on the windows of the cockpit.
“Jumper. Okay. What about you, boy?” He nudges Kilorn with his elbow, blind to the boy’s fading smile. “What can you do?”
I sink into the cockpit seat, not wanting to see any pain in Kilorn’s face. But I’m not quick enough. I catch a glimpse of his embarrassed flush, his rigid shoulders, his narrowing eyes and piercing scowl. The reason is shockingly clear. Jealousy twists through every inch of him, spreading as quickly as an infection. The intensity of it surprises me. Not once did I ever think Kilorn wanted to be like me, like a Silver. He’s proud of his blood, he always has been. He even raged at me, back when he first saw what I had become. Are you one of them? he growled, his voice harsh and unfamiliar. He was so angry. But then, why is he angry now?
“I catch fish,” he says, forcing a hollow smile. There’s a bitterness in his voice, and we let it fester in our silence.