The Notch is all but empty, with everyone outside training. Even the children have gone to watch their elders learn to brawl, shoot, and control their abilities. I’m glad they’re not underfoot, pulling at my hands, pestering me with silly questions about their hero, the exiled prince. I don’t have the patience for children like Cal does.
As I round a corner, I almost run headfirst into my brother, coming from the direction of the bedchambers. Farley follows him, smirking to herself, but it disappears the second she spots me.
Oh.
“Mare,” she mutters in greeting. She doesn’t stop and marches past.
Shade tries to do the same, but I put out an arm to stop him cold.
“Can I help you with something?” he asks. His lips twitch, fighting a losing battle against a wretched, playful grin.
I try to look cross with him, if only to keep up appearances. “You’re supposed to be training.”
“Worried I’m not getting enough exercise? I assure you, Mare,” he says, winking, “we are.”
It makes sense. Farley and Shade have been inseparable for a long while. Still, I gasp aloud, and swat his arm. “Shade Barrow!”
“Oh, come on, everyone knows. Not my fault you didn’t figure it out.”
“You could’ve told me,” I sputter, grasping for something to scold him over.
He only shrugs, still grinning. “Like you tell me all about Cal?”
“That’s—” Different, I want to say. We’re not sneaking off in the middle of the day, or even doing much of anything at night. But Shade holds up a hand, stopping me.
“If it’s all the same to you, I really don’t want to know,” he says. “And if you’ll excuse me, I think I have some training to do, as you so kindly pointed out.”
He retreats, palms outward, like a man surrendering a battle. I let him go, dismissing him with a wave while I fight a smile of my own. A tiny blossom of happiness sparks in my chest, a foreign feeling in so many days of despair. I protect it as I would a candle flame, trying to keep it alive and alight. But the sight of Cal quickly snuffs it out.
He’s in our room, seated on an upturned crate, with a familiar paper spread across his knees. It’s the back of one of the Colonel’s maps, now covered in painstakingly drawn lines. A map of Corros Prison, or at least as much of it as Cameron could remember. I expect to see the edges of the paper smoking, but he keeps his fire contained to the charred dip in the floor. It casts a dancing red light that must be hard to read by, but Cal squints through it. In the corner of the room, my pack lies undisturbed, full of Maven’s haunting notes.
Slowly, I pull up another crate, and sink down beside him. He doesn’t seem to notice, but I know he must. Nothing escapes his soldier’s sense. When my shoulder bumps his, he doesn’t raise his eyes from the map, but his hand slips to my leg, drawing me into his warmth. He doesn’t loosen his grip, and I don’t push him away. I never truly can.
“What’s wrong now?” I ask, laying my head on his shoulder. So I can see the map better, I tell myself.
“Besides Maven, his mother, the fact that I hate rabbit, and the layout of this hellhole of a prison? Nothing at all, thanks for asking.”
I want to laugh, but I can barely muster a smile. It’s not like him to joke, not at times like this. I leave poor taste like that to Kilorn.
“Cameron’s doing better, if that helps any.”
“Really?” His voice reverberates in his chest, thrumming into me. “Is that why you’re here and not training her anymore?”
“She needs to eat, Cal. She’s not a block of Silent Stone.”
He hisses, still glaring at the outline of Corros. “Don’t remind me.”
“It’s in the cells alone, Cal, not the rest of the prison,” I remind him. Hopefully he hears me, and pulls himself together long enough to get out of this strange mood. “We’ll be fine as long as no one locks us in.”
“Let Kilorn know.” To my chagrin, he chuckles at his own joke, sounding very much like a schoolboy instead of the soldier we need. What’s more, he tightens his grip on my knee. Not enough to hurt, but enough to make his thoughts clear.
“Cal?” I push at his hand, swiping it away like a spider. “What’s the matter with you?”
Finally, he snaps his head up and looks at me. He’s still smiling, but there isn’t a shred of laughter in his eyes. Something dark draws across them, turning him into someone I don’t recognize at all. Even in the Bowl of Bones, before his own brother sentenced him to death, Cal did not look like this. He was afraid, distraught, a wretch instead of a prince, but he was still Cal. I could trust that frightened person. But this? This laughing boy with wandering hands and hopeless eyes? Who is he?
“Do you want a list?” he replies, grinning wider, and something in me snaps. I hit him hard, one balled fist to his shoulder. He’s huge, but he doesn’t fight the momentum of my blow, and lets it knock him backward, catching me off guard. I fall with him, and we land on the earthen floor. His head thumps back, a hollow noise, and he grumbles in pain. When he tries to get up, I push, holding him firmly beneath me.
“You’re not getting up until you pull yourself together.”
To my surprise, he only shrugs. He even winks. “Not much of an incentive.”
“Ugh.” Once, the noble ladies of Norta would have fainted if Prince Tiberias winked at them. It only turns my stomach, and I punch him again, this time in the gut. At least he has the good sense to keep his mouth shut, and his eyes blissfully wink-free. “Now tell me what your problem is.”
What began as a smile twists into a frown, and he lays his head back. His brow furrows. He contemplates the ceiling. Better than acting like a fool.
“Cal, there are eleven people coming with us to Corros. Eleven.”
His jaw clenches. He knows what I’m getting at. Eleven who will die if we don’t pull this off, and countless more in Corros if we leave them alone.
“I’m scared too.” My voice quivers more than I want it to. “I don’t want to let them down, or get them hurt.”
Again, his hand finds my leg. But his touch is not urgent, not pressing. It’s simply a reminder. I am here.
“But most of all”—my breath catches, hanging on a sharp edge of truth—“I’m afraid for me. I’m afraid of the sounder, of feeling like that again. I’m afraid of what Elara will do if she gets to me. I know I’m more valuable than most, because of what I’ve done and what I can do. My name and face have as much power as my lightning, and that makes me important. It makes me a better prize.” It makes me alone. “And I hate thinking this way, but I still do.”
What began as Cal’s breakdown has become mine. One dark night I spilled my secrets to him, on a road thick with summer heat. I was the girl who tried to steal his money then. Now, winter looms, and I’m the girl who stole his life.
The worst of my confessions lingers, rattling my brain like a bird in a cage. It knocks against my teeth, begging to be free. “I miss him,” I whisper, unable to hold Cal’s gaze. “I miss who I thought he was.”
The hand on my leg balls into a fist, and heat spreads from it. Anger. Cal’s easy to read, and it’s a welcome respite after so long in a den of lying wolves.
“I miss him too.”
My eyes snap back to his, startled beyond belief.
“I don’t know what will make it easier to forget him. To think that he wasn’t always this way, that his mother poisoned him. Or that he was simply born a monster.”
“No one is born a monster.” But I wish some people were. It would make it easier to hate them, to kill them, to forget their dead faces. “Even Maven.”
Without thinking, I lay down, my heart against his. They beat in time, mirroring our joined memories of a boy with a quick tongue and blue eyes. Clever, forgotten, compassionate. We will never see that boy again. “We have to let him go,” I murmur against his neck. “Even if it means killing him.”
“If he’s at Corros—”
“I can do it, Cal.
If you can’t.”
He’s quiet for what feels like an eternity, but can’t be more than a minute. Still, I almost fall asleep. His warmth is more inviting than the finest bed in any palace. “If he’s at Corros, I’m going to lose control,” he finally says. “I’m going to go after him with everything I have, him and Elara both. She’ll use my anger, and she’ll turn it on you. She’ll make me kill you, like she made me—”
My fingers find his lips, stopping him from saying the words. They cause him so much pain. In that instant, I glimpse a man with no drive but vengeance, and no heart but the one I broke for him. Another monster, waiting to take true form.
“I won’t let that happen,” I tell him, pushing away our deepest fears.
He doesn’t believe me. I see it in the darkness of his eyes. The emptiness, the one I saw in Ocean Hill, threatens to return.
“We are not going to die, Cal. We’ve come too far for that.”
His laugh is hollow, aching. He pushes my hands away gently, but never lets go of my wrist. “Do you know how many people I love are dead?”
I know he feels the thrum of my pulse, and I’m too close to mask the pain I feel for him. He almost sneers at my pity.
“All gone. All murdered. By her.” Queen Elara. “She kills them, and then she erases them.”
Another would assume he’s thinking about his father, or even the brother he thought Maven was. But I know better. “Coriane,” I murmur, speaking the name of his mother. Julian’s sister. The Singer Queen. Cal doesn’t remember her, but he can certainly mourn her.
“That’s why Ocean Hill was my favorite. It was hers. Father gave it to her.”
I blink, trying to remember past the nightmare that was the Harbor Bay palace. Trying to remember what it looked like while we were fighting for our lives. Dimly, slowly, I remember the colors that dominated the insides. Gold. Yellow. Like old paper, like Julian’s robes. The color of House Jacos.
It’s why he looked so sad, why he couldn’t burn the banners. Her banners.
I don’t know what it’s like to be an orphan. I’ve always had a mother and father. It’s a blessing I never understood until they were taken away from me. It feels wrong to miss them in this moment, knowing they are safe while Cal’s parents are dead and gone. And now, more than ever, I hate the cold inside me, and my selfish fear at being left alone. Of the two of us, Cal is lonelier than I’ll ever be.
But we cannot stay in our thoughts and memories. We cannot linger in this moment.
“Tell me about the prison,” I press on, forcing a new topic. I will pull Cal out of this slump even if it kills me.
The strength of his sigh heaves his whole body, but he’s grateful for the distraction. “It’s a pit. A fortress protected by ingenious design. The gates are on the top level, with the cells beneath, and magnetron catwalks connecting everything. A flick of the wrist will drop us forty feet, and put us at the bottom of a barrel. They’ll massacre us and anyone we let out.”
“What about the Silver prisoners? You don’t think they’ll put up much of a fight?”
“Not after weeks in silent cells. They’ll be an obstacle, but not much. And it’ll make their escape slow.”
“You’re . . . going to let them escape?”
His silence is answer enough.
“They might turn on us down there, or come after us later.”
“I’m no politician, but I think a prison break will give my brother more than a few headaches, especially if the runaway prisoners happen to be his political enemies.”
I shake my head.
“You don’t like it?”
“I don’t trust it.”
“There’s a surprise,” he says dryly. One of his fingers loops at my neck, tracing the scars his brother’s device gave me. “Brute force is not going to win this for you, Mare. No matter how many newbloods you collect. Silvers still outnumber you, and they still have the advantage.”
The soldier advocating for a different kind of fight. How ironic.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
He shrugs beneath me. “Political intricacies aren’t exactly my strong suit,” he says. “But I’ll give it a shot.”
“Even if it means civil war?”
Months ago, Cal told me what rebellion would be. A war on both sides, in each color of blood. Red against Red, Silver against Silver, and everything in between. He told me he would not risk his father’s legacy for a war like that, even if the war was just. Silence falls again, and Cal refuses to answer. I suppose he doesn’t know where he stands anymore. Not a rebel, not a prince, not sure of anything except the fire in his bones.
“We might be outnumbered, but that doesn’t stack the odds against us,” I say. Stronger than both. That’s what Julian wrote to me, when he discovered what I was. Julian, who I may, to my great surprise, very well see again. “Newbloods have abilities no Silver can plan for, not even you.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You’re going into to this like you’re leading your troops, with abilities you understand and have trained with.”
“And?”
“And I’d like to see what happens when a guard tries to shoot Nix or a magnetron drops Gareth.”
It takes Cal a second to realize what I’m saying. Nix is invulnerable, stronger than a stoneskin. And Gareth, who can manipulate gravity, will not be falling anywhere anytime soon. We don’t have an army, but we certainly have soldiers, and abilities the Silver guards don’t know how to fight. When it dawns on him, Cal grips the sides of my face, pulling me upward. He plants a firm, fiery kiss that is far too short for my liking.
“You’re a genius,” he mutters, and springs to his feet. “Get back to Cameron, get everyone ready.” He grabs the map in one hand, almost mad with intensity. The same crooked smile returns, but this time I don’t hate it. “This might actually work.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The Notch flickers behind me, and I watch in awe as my home of the last few months disappears with a single sweep of Harrick’s hand. The hill remains, as does the clearing, but any sign of our camp wipes away like sand from a flat stone. We can’t even hear the children who were standing there a moment ago, waving good-bye, their voices echoing in the night. Farrah muffles them all and, together with Harrick, drops a curtain of protection around the youngest newbloods. No one has ever come close to finding us, but the added defense gives me more comfort than I care to admit. Most of the others let out victorious whoops, as if the act of disguising the Notch alone is cause for celebration. To my annoyance, Kilorn leads the cheer, whistling hard. But I don’t scold him, not now when we’re finally back on speaking terms. Instead, I offer a forced smile, my teeth gritted painfully together. It keeps back the words I wish I could say—Save your energy.
Shade is just as quiet as I am, and falls in next to me. He doesn’t look back at the now empty clearing, and keeps his eyes forward, to the dark, cold woods and the task ahead of us. His limp is almost entirely gone and he sets a quick pace that I eagerly follow, drawing the rest along with us. The hike to the airjet is not long. I try to take in every second of it. The cold night air bites at my exposed face, but the sky is blissfully clear. No snow, no storms—yet. For a storm is certainly coming, whether by my hand or someone else’s. And I have no idea who will survive to see the dawn.
Shade murmurs something I don’t hear, putting one hand on my shoulder. Two of his fingers are crooked, still healing from when we recruited Nanny in Cancorda. A strongarm managed to get a grip on Shade, and crushed the first fingers on his left hand before he could jump away. Farley patched him up, of course, but the sight still makes me cringe. It reminds me of Gisa, another Barrow broken to pay for my deeds.
“This is worth the cost,” he says again, his voice louder than before. “We’re doing the right thing.”
I know that. As afraid as I am for myself and those closest to me, I know that Corros is the right choice. Even without Jon’s assurance, I believ
e in our path. How could we not? Newbloods cannot be left to Elara’s whispering, to be killed or made into hollow, soulless shells to follow her orders. This is what we must do to stop a more horrible world than the one we live in now.
Still, Shade’s assurance is a warm blanket of comfort. “Thank you,” I mutter back, putting a hand over his.
He smiles in reply, a crescent of white to reflect the waning moon. In the darkness, he looks so much like our father. Without age, without the wheelchair, without the burdens of a life come undone. But they share the same intelligence, the same slanting suspicion that kept them both alive on the war front, and now keeps Shade alive on a very different battlefield. He pats me on the cheek, a familiar gesture that makes me feel like a child, but I don’t dislike it. It’s a reminder of the blood we share. Not in mutation, but birth. Something deeper and stronger than any ability.
On my right, Cal marches on, and I pretend not to feel his gaze. I know he’s thinking about his own brother and his own bonds of blood now torn apart. And behind him is Kilorn, clutching his hunting rifle, scanning the woods for any and all shadows. For all their differences, the two boys share a startling connection. They are both orphans, both abandoned, with no one but me to anchor them.
Time passes too quickly for my taste. It seems like we’re on the Blackrun and soaring through the air in moments. Every second moves faster than the last as we hurtle toward the dark cliff before us all. This is worth the cost, I tell myself, repeating Shade’s words over and over. I must keep calm, for the jet. I must not look afraid, for the others. But my heart thrums in my chest, so loud I fear everyone can hear it.
To combat the harried beat, I press myself against the flight helmet in my lap, curling my arms around the smooth, cool shape. I stare at the polished metal, examining my reflection. The girl I see is both familiar and foreign, Mare, Mareena, the lightning girl, the Red Queen, and no one at all. She does not look afraid. She looks carved of stone, with severe features, hair braided tight to her head, and a tangle of scars on her neck. She is not seventeen, but ageless, Silver but not, Red but not, human—but not. A banner of the Scarlet Guard, a face on a wanted poster, a prince’s downfall, a thief . . . a killer. A doll who can take any form but her own.