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SEVEN

Kilorn grumbles all the way out of the infirmary and into the concrete yard. He even walks slowly, forcing me to slow down for him. I try to ignore him, for Cal’s sake, for the cause, but when I catch the word foolish for the third time, I have to stop short.

He collides with my back. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding at all apologetic.

“No, I’m sorry,” I spit back, spinning to face him. A little bit of the anger I felt toward the Colonel spills over and my cheeks flush with heat. “I’m sorry you can’t stop being an ass for two minutes so you can see exactly what’s going on here.” I expect him to shout at me, to match me blow for blow in the usual way. Instead, he sucks in a breath and steps back, working furiously to calm himself.

“You think I’m so stupid?” he says. “Please, Mare, educate me. Show me the light. What do you know that I don’t?” The words beg to fall out. But the yard is too open, filled with the Colonel’s soldiers, Guardsmen, and refugees hustling back and forth. And while there are no Silver whispers to read my mind, no cameras to watch my every move, I won’t go soft now. Kilorn follows my gaze, eyeing a troop of Guardsmen who jog within a few yards of us.

“You think they’re spying on you?” he all but sneers, dropping his voice to a mocking whisper. “C’mon, Mare. We’re all on the same side here.” “Are we?” I ask, letting the words sink in. “You heard what the Colonel called me. A thing. A freak.” Kilorn blushes. “He didn’t mean that.”

“Oh, and you know the man so well?”

Thankfully, he has no retort for that.

“He looks at me like I’m the enemy, like I’m some kind of bomb about to go off.”

“He’s—” Kilorn stumbles, unsure of the words even as they leave his lips. “He’s not entirely wrong though, is he?” I spin so fast the heel of my boot leaves black skid marks in the concrete. Would that I could leave a similar bruise on Kilorn’s stupid, sputtering face.

“Hey, c’mon,” he calls after me, closing the distance in a few quick steps. But I keep walking, and he keeps following. “Mare, stop. That came out wrong—” “You are stupid, Kilorn Warren,” I tell him over my shoulder. The safety of Barracks 3 beckons, rising up ahead of me. “Stupid and blind and cruel.” “Well, you’re no picnic either!” he thunders back, finally becoming the argumentative twit I know he is. When I don’t reply, nearly sprinting for the barracks door, his hand closes on my upper arm, stopping me cold.

I try to twist out of his grasp, but Kilorn knows all my tricks. He pulls, dragging me away from the door, and into the shaded alley between Barracks 3 and 4. “Let go of me,” I command, indignant. I hear a little bit of Mareena come back to life in the cold, royal tone of my voice.

“There it is,” he growls, pointing a finger in my face. “That. Her.”

With a mighty shove, I push him back, breaking his grip on me.

He sighs, exasperated, and runs a hand through his tawny hair. It sticks up on end. “You’ve been through a lot, I know that. We all know that. What you had to do to stay alive with them, all while helping us, finding out what you are, I don’t know how you came out on the other side. But it changed you.” So perceptive, Kilorn.

“Just because Maven betrayed you doesn’t mean you have to stop trusting people altogether.” He drops his eyes, fiddling with his hands. “Especially me. I’m not just something for you to hide behind, I’m your friend, and I’m going to help you with whatever you need, however I can. Please, trust me.” I wish I could.

“Kilorn, grow up” comes out instead, so sharp it makes him flinch. “You should’ve told me what they were planning. But you made me an accomplice, you made me watch when they marched him away at gunpoint, and now you tell me to trust you? When you’re in so deep with these people who are just waiting for an excuse to lock me up? How stupid do you think I am?” Something stirs in his eyes, the vulnerability hidden inside the relaxed persona he tries so hard to maintain. This is the boy who cried beneath my house. The boy he was, resisting the call to fight and die. I tried to save him from that and, in turn, pushed him closer to danger, the Scarlet Guard, and doom.

“I see,” he says finally. He takes a few quick steps back, until the alley yawns between us. “It makes sense,” he adds, shrugging. “Why would you trust me? I’m just the fish boy. I’m nothing compared to you, right? Compared to Shade. And him—” “Kilorn Warren.” I scold him like I would a child, like his mother did before she abandoned him. She would shriek when he skinned his knees or spoke out of turn. I don’t remember much else of her, but I remember her voice, and the withering, disappointed glares she saved for her only son. “You know that’s not true.” The words come out hard, a low, visceral growl. He squares his shoulders, fists balled at his sides. “Prove it.” To that, I have no answer. I have no idea what he wants from me. “I’m sorry,” I choke out, and this time I mean it. “I’m sorry for being—” “Mare.” A warm hand on my arm stops my stumbling. He stands above me, close enough to smell. Thankfully the scent of blood is gone, replaced by salt. He’s been swimming.

“You don’t need to apologize for what they did to you,” he mumbles. “You never have to do that.” “I—I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” He chuckles after a long moment. He pastes on a grin, ending the conversation. “I take it you’ve got a plan?” “Yes. Are you going to help?”

Shrugging, he spreads his arms wide, gesturing at the rest of the base. “Not much else for the fish boy to do.” I shove him again, drawing a genuine smile from him. But it doesn’t last.

Along with the key, Farley gave me detailed directions to Barracks 1. As on the mainland, the Scarlet Guard still favors their tunnels, and Cal’s prison is, of course, located underground.

Technically, underwater. The perfect prison for a burner like Cal. Built beneath the dock, hidden by the ocean, guarded by blue waves and the Colonel’s blue uniforms. It’s not only the island prison but also the armory, the Lakelander bunks, and the Colonel’s own headquarters. The main entrance is a tunnel leading from the beach hangars, but Farley assured me of another way. You might get wet, she warned with a wry smile. While the prospect of diving into the ocean unsettles me, even so close to the beach, Kilorn is annoyingly calm. In fact, he’s probably excited, happy to put his long years on the river to good use.

The protection of the ocean dulls the usually alert Guard, and even the Lakelanders soften as the day wears on. Soldiers focus more on the cargo loads and storage hangars rather than patrolling. The few who keep their posts, pacing the length of the concrete yard with guns against their shoulders, walk slowly, easily, often stopping to talk to each other.

I watch them for a long while, pretending to listen to Mom or Gisa as they chatter over their work. Both sort blankets and clothing into separate piles, unloading a collection of unmarked crates along with several other refugees. I’m supposed to help, but my focus is clearly elsewhere. Bree and Tramy are gone, back with Shade in the infirmary, while Dad sits by. He can’t unload, but still grumbles orders all the same. He’s never folded clothes in his life.

He catches my eye once or twice, noting my twitching fingers and darting glances. He always seems to know what I’m up to, and now is no different. He even rolls his chair back, allowing me a better view of the yard. I nod at him, quietly thankful.

The guards remind me of the Silvers back in the Stilts, before the Measures, before Queenstrial. They were lazy, content in my quiet village, where insurrection was rare. How wrong they were. Those men and women were blind to my thieving, to the black market, to Will Whistle and the slow creep of the Scarlet Guard. And these Guardsmen are blind too, this time to my advantage.

They don’t notice me watching, or Kilorn when he approaches with a tray of fish stew. My family eats gratefully, Gisa most of all. She twists her hair when Kilorn isn’t looking, letting it curl over one shoulder in a ruby fall of red.

“Fresh catch?” she says, indicating the bowl of stew.

He wrinkles his nose and pretends to grimace at the gray glops of fish meat. “Not from me, Gee. My old master, Cully, would never sell this. Except to the rats, maybe.” We laugh together, me out of habit, following a half second later. For once, Gisa is less ladylike than I am and she giggles openly, happily. I used to envy her practiced, perfect ways. Now I wish I wasn’t so trained and could shed my forced politeness as easily as she has.

While we force down the lunch, Dad pours out his bowl when he thinks I’m not looking. No wonder he’s getting thin. Before I—or, worse, Mom—can scold him he runs a hand over a blanket, feeling the fabric.

“These are Piedmont made. Fresh cotton. Expensive,” he mutters when he realizes I’m standing next to him. Even in the Silver court, Piedmont cotton was considered very fine, a common alternative to silk, reserved for high-ranking Security, Sentinel, and military uniforms. I remember Lucas wore it, up until the moment he died. I realize now I never saw him out of uniform. I can’t even picture it. And his face is already fading. A few days and I’m forgetting him, a man I sent to his death.

“Stolen?” I wonder aloud, running a hand over the blanket, if only for distraction.

Dad continues his investigation and runs a hand down the side of a crate. Sturdy, wide planks of wood, freshly painted white. The only distinguishing mark is a dark green triangle, smaller than my hand, stamped in the corner. What it means, I don’t know.

“Or given,” Dad says.

He doesn’t need to speak for me to know we’re thinking about the same thing. If there are Lakelanders with us here, on this very island, then the Scarlet Guard could easily have friends elsewhere, in different nations and kingdoms. We seem weak because we want to.

With a stealth I didn’t know he possessed, Dad takes my hand quickly and quietly. “Be careful, my girl.” But while he is afraid, I feel hope. The Scarlet Guard has deeper roots than I knew, than any Silver could imagine. And the Colonel is only one of a hundred heads, just like Farley. An opposition definitely, but one I can overcome. After all, he’s not a king. Of those, I’ve had my fair share.

Like Dad, I pour my stew into a crack in the concrete. “I’m finished,” I say, and Kilorn jumps up. He knows his cues.

We’re going to visit Shade, or at least that’s what we say out loud, for the benefit of the others close by. My family knows better, even Mom. She blows me a kiss as I walk away, and I tuck it close to my heart.

When I pull up my collar, I become just another refugee, and Kilorn is no one at all. The soldiers pay us no mind. It’s easy to walk the length of the concrete yard, away from the docks and the beach, following the thick white line.

In the light of midday, I see the concrete extends toward gentle, sloping hills, looking very much like a wide road to nowhere. The painted line continues ahead, but a thinner, more worn line branches off at a right angle. It connects the central line to another structure, located at the end of the barracks, towering over everything else on the island. It looks like a larger version of the hangars on the beach, tall and wide enough to fit six transports stacked on top of one another. I wonder what it holds, knowing the Guard does their own share of thieving. But the doors are shut fast, and a few Lakelander men idle in the shade. They chat among themselves, keeping their guns close. So my curiosity will have to wait, perhaps forever.

Kilorn and I turn right, toward the gap between Barracks 8 and 9. The high windows of both are dark, abandoned—the buildings are empty. Waiting for more soldiers, more refugees, or worse, more orphans. I shiver as we pass through their shadows.

The beach isn’t hard to get to. After all, this is an island. And while the main base is well developed, the rest of Tuck is empty, covered only in dunes, hills swathed in tall grass, and a few pockets of ancient trees. There aren’t even paths through the grass, with no animals large enough to make them. We disappear nicely, winding through the swaying plants until we reach the beach. The dock stands a few hundred yards away, a wide knife jutting out into the waves. From this distance, the patrolling Lakelanders are only smudges of dark blue pacing back and forth. Most focus on the cargo ship approaching from the far side of the dock. My jaw drops at the sight of such a large vessel obviously controlled by Reds. Kilorn is more focused.

“Perfect cover,” he says, and starts to take off his shoes. I follow suit, kicking off my laceless boots and worn socks. But when he pulls his shirt over his head, exposing familiar, lean muscles shaped by hauling nets, I’m not so inclined to follow. I don’t fancy running around a secret bunker shirtless.

He folds his shirt over his shoes, fiddling a bit. “I take it this isn’t a rescue mission.” How could it be? There’s nowhere to go.

“I just need to see him. Tell him about Julian. Let him know what’s going on.”

Kilorn winces, but he nods all the same. “Get in, get out. Shouldn’t be too hard, especially since they won’t expect anything from the ocean side.” He stretches back and forth, shaking out his feet and fingers to make ready for the swim. All the while, he goes over Farley’s whispered instructions. There’s a moon pool at the bottom of the bunker, opening up into a research lab. Once used to study marine life, now it serves as the Colonel’s own quarters, though he never visits them during the day. It’ll be locked from the inside, easy to open, and the corridors are simple to navigate. At this time of day, the bunks will be empty, the passage from the docks sealed, and very few guards will remain behind. Kilorn and I faced worse as children, when we stole a case of batteries for my dad from a Security outpost.

“Try not to splash,” Kilorn adds, before wading into the surf. Goose bumps rise on his skin, reacting to the cold autumn ocean, but he barely feels it. I certainly do, and by the time the water reaches my waist my teeth are chattering. With one last glance toward the dock, I dive below a wave, letting it chill me to the bone.

Kilorn cuts through the water effortlessly, swimming like a frog, making almost no noise at all. I try to mimic his movements, following close to his side as we swim farther out. Something about the water heightens my electrical sense, making it easier to feel the piping running out from the shore. I could trace it with a hand if I wanted, noting the path of electricity from the docks, through the water, and into Barracks 1. Eventually Kilorn turns toward it, angling us on a diagonal to the shore, and then parallel. His advance is masterful, with the stolen boats at anchor to hide our approach. Once or twice he touches my arm beneath the waves, communicating with a slight pressure. Stop, go, slow, fast, all of it while he stays fixed on the dock ahead. Luckily, the freighter ship is unloading, drawing the attention of any soldiers who might spot our heads bobbing through the water. More crates, all white, stamped with the green triangle. More clothes?

No, I realize as a crate topples, cracking open. Guns spill across the dock. Rifles, pistols, ammunition, probably a dozen in one crate alone. They gleam in the sunlight, newly made. Another gift for the Scarlet Guard, another twist of even deeper roots I never knew existed.

The knowledge makes me swim faster, pushing me past Kilorn even when my muscles ache. I duck under the dock, safe at last from any eyes above, and he follows, keeping pace just behind me.

“It’s right below us.” His whispers echo oddly, reverberating off the metal dock above and the water all around. “I can just feel it with my toes.” I almost laugh at the sight of Kilorn stretching, his brow set in concentration as he tries to brush a foot against the hidden bunker of Barracks 1. “Something funny?” he grumbles.

“You’re so useful,” I reply with a mischievous smirk. It feels good to be with him like this, sharing a secret goal again. Although this time we’re breaking into a military bunker, not someone’s half-locked house.

“Here,” he finally says, before his head disappears below the water. He bobs back up again, arms wide to keep himself afloat. “The edge.” Now comes the hard part. The plunge through suffocating, drowning darkness.

Kilorn reads the fear on my face plainly. “Just hold on to my leg, that’s all you have to do.” I can barely nod. “Right.” The moon pool is on the bottom of the bunker, only twenty-five feet down. “It’s nothing at all,” Farley had said. Well, it certainly looks like something, I think, peering at the black water below me. “Kilorn, Maven will be so disappointed if the ocean kills me before he can.” To anyone else, the joke would be in poor taste. But Kilorn chuckles lowly, his grin bright against the water. “Well, as much as I’d like to annoy the king,” he sighs, “let’s try and avoid drowning, shall we?” With a wink, he dives, end over end, and I grab hold.

The salt stings my eyes, but it’s not so dark as I thought it would be. Sunlight angles through the water, breaking up the shadow cast by the dock above. And Kilorn moves us quickly, pulling us down along the side of the barracks. The water-bent sunlight dapples his bare back, spotting him like a sea creature. I focus mainly on kicking when I can and not getting caught on anything. This is not twenty-five feet, my mind grumbles when the twinge of oxygen deprivation sets in.

I exhale slowly, letting the bubbles rise past my face, up to the surface. Kilorn’s own breath streams past, the only testament to his strain. When he finds the bottom edge, I feel his muscles tense, and his legs kick along, powering us both beneath the hidden bunker. Dimly, I wonder if the moon pool has a door, and if it’ll be closed. What a joke that would be.

Before I know what’s happening, Kilorn bursts up and through something, hauling me with him. Stuffy but blissful air hits my face and I gulp it down in deep, greedy gasps.

Already sitting on the edge of the pool, his legs dangling in the water, Kilorn grins at me. “You wouldn’t last a morning unknotting nets,” he says with a shake of the head. “That was barely a bath compared to what Old Cully used to make me do.” “You really know how to cut me deep,” I reply dryly, hoisting myself up and into the Colonel’s chambers.

The compartment is cold, lit by low lights, and offensively well organized. Old equipment is pushed neatly against the right wall, gathering dust, while a desk runs the length of the left. Stacks of files and papers crowd the surface in neat rows, dominating the space. At first I don’t even see a bed, but it’s there, a narrow bunk that rolls out from beneath the desk. Clearly the Colonel doesn’t sleep much.

Kilorn was always a slave to his curiosity, and now is no different. He drips his way over to the desk, ready to explore.

“Don’t touch anything,” I hiss at him while I wring out my sleeves and pant legs. “Get one drop on those papers and he’ll know someone was in here.” He nods, pulling his hand back. “You should see this,” he says, his tone sharp.

I step to his side in an instant, fearing the worst. “What?”

Careful, he points a finger at the only thing decorating the walls of the compartment. A photograph, warped by age and damp, but the faces are still visible. Four figures, all blond, posing with stern but open expressions. The Colonel is there, barely recognizable without his bloody eye, one arm around a tall, well-boned woman, and his hand on a young girl’s shoulder. Both the woman and the girl wear dirt-stained clothes, farmers by the look of it, but the gold chains at their necks say differently. Silently, I remove the gold chain from my pocket, comparing the metal so fine it could be thread to the necklaces in the picture. But for the mismatched key dangling from the end, they are identical. Gently, Kilorn takes the key from my hand, puzzling over what it could mean.

The third figure explains it all. A teenager with a long, golden braid, she stands shoulder to shoulder with the Colonel and wears a smirk of satisfaction. She looks so young, so different without her short hair and scars. Farley.

“She’s his daughter,” Kilorn says aloud, too shocked for much else.

I resist the urge to touch the photograph, to make sure it’s real. The way he treated her back in the infirmary, it can’t possibly be true. But he called her Diana. He knew her real name. And they had the necklaces, one from a sister, one from a wife.

“C’mon,” I murmur, pulling him away from the picture. “It’s nothing to bother with now.”

“Why didn’t she say anything?” In his voice, I hear a little bit of the betrayal I’ve felt for days.

“I don’t know.”

I keep hold of him, moving us both toward the compartment door. Left down the stairs, right at the landing, left again.

The door swings open on oiled hinges, revealing an empty passage quite like the ones on the mersive. Sparse and clean, with metal walls and piping above us. Electricity bleeds overhead, pumping through a wired network of veins. It’s coming from the shore, feeding the lights and other machinery.

Like Farley said, there’s no one down here. No one to stop us. I suppose, as the Colonel’s daughter, she would know firsthand. Quiet as cats, we follow her instructions, mindful of every single step. I’m reminded of the cells beneath the Hall of the Sun, where Julian and I incapacitated a squadron of black-masked Sentinels to free Kilorn, Farley, and the doomed Walsh. It seems so far away, yet that was only days ago. A week. Just one week.

I shudder to think where I’ll be in seven more days.

At last we come to a shorter passage, a dead end with three doors on the left, three doors on the right, and just as many observation windows set in between. The glass of each is dark, but for the window on the end. It flickers slightly, casting harsh white light through the pane. A fist collides with the glass and I flinch, expecting it to crack beneath Cal’s knuckles. But the window holds firm, echoing dully with every boom boom of his fists, showing nothing more than smears of silver blood.

No doubt he hears me coming, and thinks I’m one of them.

When I step in front of the window, he freezes mid-motion, one clenched and bleeding fist poised to strike. His flame-maker bracelet slides down his thick wrist, still spinning from his momentum. That’s a comfort, at least. They didn’t know enough to take away his greatest weapon. But then why is he still imprisoned at all? Couldn’t he just melt the window and be done with it?

For a single, blazing moment, our eyes meet through the glass, and I think our combined stare might shatter it. Thick, silver blood drips from where he struck his hand, mixing with already-dried stains. He’s been at this for a while, beating himself bloody in an attempt to get out—or burn off a little bit of his rage.

“It’s locked,” he says, his voice muffled behind the glass.

“Couldn’t tell,” I reply, smirking.

Next to me, Kilorn holds up the key.

Cal starts, as if noticing Kilorn for the first time. He smiles, grateful, but Kilorn doesn’t return the gesture. He won’t even meet his eyes.

From somewhere down the hall, I hear shouting. Footsteps. They echo strangely in the bunker but grow closer with every heartbeat. Coming for us.

“They know we’re here,” Kilorn hisses, looking back. Quickly, he jams the key in the lock and turns it. It doesn’t budge and I throw my shoulder against the door, slamming into cold, unforgiving iron.

Kilorn forces the key again, twisting. This time I’m close enough to hear the mechanism click. The door swings inward as the first soldier rounds the corner, but my thoughts are only of Cal.

It seems princes make me blind.

The invisible curtain drops the moment Kilorn shoves me into the cell. It’s a familiar sensation but I can’t place it. I’ve felt it before, I know I have, but where? I don’t have time to wonder. Cal surges past me, a strangled yell erupting from his lips, his long arms outstretched. Not to me, or the window. To the door as it yanks shut.

The click of the lock echoes inside my skull, again and again and again.

“What?” I ask the heavy, stale air. But the only answer I need is Kilorn’s face, staring at me from the other side of the glass. The key hangs from one clenched fist, and his face curls into something between a scowl and a sob.

I’m sorry, he mouths, and the first Lakelander soldier appears through the window. More follow, flanking the Colonel. His satisfied smirk matches the one his daughter wore in the photograph, and I begin to understand what just happened. The Colonel even has the audacity to laugh.

Cal hurls himself at the door in vain, driving his shoulder against solid iron. He swears through the pain, cursing Kilorn, me, this place, himself. I barely hear him over Julian’s voice in my head.

Anyone can betray anyone.

Without thought, I call for the lightning. My sparks will free me and turn the Colonel’s laughter into screams.

But they don’t come. There’s nothing. Bleak nothing.

Like in the cells, like the arena.

“Silent Stone,” Cal says, leaning heavily against the door. He points with one bloody fist to back corners of the floor and ceiling. “They have Silent Stone.” To make you weak. To make you like them.

Now it’s my turn to pound my fists against the window, punching at Kilorn’s head. But I hit glass, not flesh, and hear only the cracking of my own knuckles instead of his stupid skull. Despite the wall between us, he flinches.

He can barely look at me. He shivers when the Colonel puts one hand on his shoulder, whispering into his ear. Kilorn can only watch as I scream, an indecipherable roar of frustration, and my blood joins Cal’s on the glass.

Red running through silver, joining into something darker.