فصل بیست و چهارم

TWENTY-FOUR

Strangely, I get more sleep in the next three days than I have in weeks. Tough drilling in the yard paired with long planning sessions run us all ragged. Our recruitment trips stop entirely. I do not miss them. Every single mission was a gasp of either relief or horror, and they were both a ruin on me. Too many bodies on the gallows, too many children choosing to leave their mothers, too many torn away from the life they knew. For better or worse, I did it to them all. But now that the jet is grounded, and my time spent poring over maps and floor plans, I feel another kind of shame. I’ve abandoned the ones still out there, just like Cameron said I abandoned the children of the Little Legion. How many more babies and children will die?

But I am only one person, one little girl who can no longer smile. I hide her from the rest, behind my mask of lightning. But she remains, frantic, wide-eyed, afraid. I push her away in every waking moment, but still she haunts me. She never leaves.

Everyone sleeps hard, even Cal, who makes sure everyone gets as much rest as they can after training. While Kilorn is talking again, allowing himself back into the fold, Cal pulls away more and more as the hours tick by. It’s like he has no room left in his head for conversation. Corros has already entrapped him. He wakes before I do, to jot down more ideas, more lists, scribbling over every scrap of paper we can scrounge together. Ada is his greatest asset, and she memorizes everything so intently I fear her eyes might burn holes in the maps. Cameron is never far away. Despite Cal’s orders, she looks more exhausted by the minute. Dark circles round her eyes, and she leans or sits whenever she can. But she doesn’t complain, at least in front of the others.

Today, our last day before the raid, she’s in a particularly foul mood. She takes it out on her training targets. Namely, Lory and me.

“Enough,” Lory hisses through gritted teeth. She falls to a knee, waving her hand in Cameron’s direction. The teenager clenches a fist but lets go, her ability falling away, pulling back the stifling curtain of silence. “You’re supposed to knock out my sense, not me,” Lory adds, fighting back to her feet. Though she’s from frigid Kentosport, a craggy, half-forgotten harbor town already assaulted by snow and sea storms, she pulls her coat closer around her. Cameron’s silence doesn’t only take away your blood-born weapons, it shuts you down entirely. Your pulse slows, your eyes darken, and your temperature drops. It unsettles something in your bones.

“Sorry.” Cameron has taken to speaking in as few words as possible. A welcome change from her blustering speeches. “No good at this.” Lory snaps back in kind. “Well, you better get good, and fast. We leave tonight, Cole, and you’re not just coming to play tour guide.” It’s not like me to end fights. Instigate them, yes, watch them, definitely, but stop them? Still, we have no time for arguing. “Lory, enough. Cameron, once more.” Mareena’s court voice does me well here, and both stop to listen. “Block her sense. Make her normal. Control what she is.” A muscle twitches in Cameron’s cheek, but she doesn’t voice her opposition. For all her complaining, she knows this is something she must do. If not for us, then for herself. Learning to control her ability is the best thing she can do, and it is our bargain. I train her, she takes us to Corros.

Lory is not so agreeable. “You’re next, Barrow,” she grumbles to me. Her far-north accent is sharp and unforgiving, just like Lory and the harsh place she came from. “Cole, if you make me sick again, I’ll gut you in your sleep.” Somehow, that gets a crinkle of a smile out of Cameron. “You can try,” she replies, stretching out her long, crooked fingers. “Let me know when you feel it.” I watch, waiting for some sign. But like Cameron, Lory’s abilities are a bit harder to see. Her so-called sense ability means everything she hears, sees, touches, smells, tastes is incredibly heightened. She can see as far as a hawk, hear twigs snapping a mile away, even track like a hound. If only she liked to hunt. But Lory is more inclined to guard the camp, watching the woods with her superior sight and hearing.

“Easy,” I coach. Cameron’s brow creases in concentration, and I understand. It’s one thing to let loose, to drop the walls of the dam inside and simply let everything spill out. That’s easier than keeping hold, reining yourself in, being steady and firm and controlled. “It’s yours, Cameron. You own it. It answers to you.” Something flickers in her eyes. Not her usual anger. Pride. I understand that too. For girls like us, who had nothing, expected nothing, it’s intoxicating to know there is something of our own, something no one else can claim or take away.

To my left, Lory blinks, squinting. “It’s going,” she says. “I can barely hear across the camp.” Still far. Her ability remains. “A bit more, Cameron.”

Cameron does as I tell her, throwing out her other hand. Her fingers twitch in time with what must be her pulse, shaping what she feels into what she wants it to be. “Now?” she bites out and Lory tips her head.

“What?” she calls, squinting harder. She can barely see or hear.

“This is your constant.” Without thinking, I reach over, putting my palms against Cameron’s shoulders. “This is what you aim for. Soon it’ll be as easy as flipping a switch, too familiar to forget. It’ll be instant.” “Soon?” she says, turning her head. “We fly tonight.”

Without thought, I force her to look back at Lory, my fingers pushing her jaw. “Forget about that. See how long you can hold without hurting her.” “Full blind!” Lory shouts, her voice too loud. Full deaf, too, I think.

“Whatever you’re doing, it’s working,” I tell Cameron. “You don’t need to say what it is, but just know, this is your trigger.” Months ago, Julian told me the same thing, to find the trigger that released my sparks in the Spiral Garden. I know now that letting go is what gives me strength, and it seems Cameron has found whatever enables hers. “Remember how this feels.” Despite the cold, a bead of sweat rolls down Cameron’s neck and disappears into her collar. She grits her teeth, jaw clenching to keep back a grunt of frustration.

“It will get easier,” I continue, dropping my hands back to her shoulders. Her muscles feel tense beneath my fingers, wiry and taut like cords drawn too tight. While her ability wreaks havoc on Lory’s senses, it weakens Cameron as well. If only we had more time. One more week, or even one more day.

At least Cameron doesn’t have to hold back once we get to Corros. Inside the prison, I want her to inflict as much pain as she can. With her temper and her history in the cells, silencing guards shouldn’t be too difficult, and she’ll carve us a clear path through rock and flesh. But what happens when the wrong person gets in her way? A newblood she doesn’t recognize? Cal? Me? Her ability might be the most powerful I’ve ever seen or felt, and I certainly don’t want to be her victim again. Just the thought makes my skin crawl. Deep in my bones, my sparks respond, bursting into my nerves. I have to push them back, using my own lessons to keep the lightning quiet and far away. Even though it obeys, fading into the dull hum I barely notice anymore, the sparks curl with power. Despite my constant worry and stress, my ability seems to have grown. It is stronger than before, healthy and alive. At least some part of me is, I think. Because beneath the lightning, another element lingers.

The cold never leaves. It never ends, and it feels worse than any burden. The cold is hollow, and it eats at my insides. It spreads like rot, like sickness, and one day I fear it will leave me empty, a shell of the lightning girl, the breathing corpse of Mare Barrow.

In her blindness, Lory’s eyes roll, searching vainly through Cameron’s blanket of darkness. “Starting to feel it again,” she says loudly. The hiss of her words betrays her pain. Though she’s tough as the salty rocks she was raised on, even Lory can’t keep quiet against Cameron’s weapons. “Getting worse.” “Release.”

After a moment too long for my liking, Cameron’s arms drop, and her body relaxes. She seems to shrink, and Lory falls to a knee again. Her hands massage her temples and she blinks rapidly, letting her senses return.

“Ow,” she mutters, angling a smirk at Cameron.

But the techie girl has no smile in return. She turns sharply on her heel, braids swaying with the motion, until she faces me fully. Or, I should say, she faces the top of my head. I see anger in her, the familiar kind. It will serve her well tonight.

“Yes?”

“I’m done for the day,” she snaps, teeth blinding white.

I can’t help but fold my arms, drawing my spine up as straight as I can. I feel very much like Lady Blonos when I glare at her. “You’re done in two hours, Cameron, and you should wish it was more. We need every second we can get—” “I said, I am done,” she repeats. For a girl of fifteen, she can be disarmingly stern. The muscles of her long neck gleam with sweat, and her breath comes hard. But she fights the urge to pant, trying to face me on even terms. Trying to seem like an equal. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m about to be marched to a battle I don’t want to fight, again. And I’ll be damned if I die with an empty stomach.” Behind her, Lory watches us with wide, unblinking eyes. I know what Cal would do. Insubordination, he calls this, and it cannot be tolerated. I should push Cameron harder, make her run a lap around the clearing, maybe see if she can bring down a bird with the pressure of her ability. Cal would make it clear—she is not in charge. Cal knows soldiers, but this girl is not one of his troops. She will not bend to my will, or his. She’s spent too long obeying the whistles of a shift change, the schedules handed down through generations of enslaved factory workers. She has tasted freedom, and will not submit to any order she doesn’t want to follow. And though she protests every moment of her time here, she stays. Even with her ability, she stays.

I will not thank her for that, but I will let her eat. Quietly, I step aside.

“Thirty minutes’ rest, then come back.”

Her eyes spark with anger, and the familiar sight almost makes me smile. I can’t help but admire the girl. One day, we might even be friends.

She doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t argue either, and stalks away from our corner of the clearing. The others in the yard watch her go, their eyes following her as she defies the lightning girl, but I don’t care a bit for what they might think. I’m not their captain, I’m not their queen. I’m not better or worse than any of them, and it’s time they started to see me as I am. Another newblood, another fighter, and nothing more.

“Kilorn’s got some rabbit,” Lory says, if only to break the silence. She sniffs at the air and licks her lips in a manner that would make Lady Blonos screech. “Juicy ones too.” “Go on, then,” I mutter, waving my hand to the cook fire on the other side of the clearing. She doesn’t need to be told twice.

“Cal’s in a mood, by the way,” she adds as she flounces past. “Or at least, he keeps cursing and kicking things.” One glance tells me Cal is not outside. For a second, I’m surprised, then I remember. Lory hears almost everything, if she stops to listen. “I’ll see to him,” I tell her, and set a quick pace. She tries to follow, then thinks better of it, and lets me rush on ahead. I don’t bother to hide my concern—Cal is not quick to anger, and planning calms him, makes him happy even. So whatever has him in a twist has me worried too, far more than I should be on the eve of our raid.

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.”