A kick catches me in the stomach and I let it roll me. Over and over, until I’m facedown in the dirt of the garden, my face scraped and bleeding. The cool scent is a momentary balm, soothing me enough to let me see again. But when I open my eyes, I want nothing more than to go blind.
Maven crouches in front of me, his head tipped to one side, an inquisitive puppy with a toy. Behind him, battle rages. A very uneven one. With Shade incapacitated, and me in the dirt, only Cal and Farley remain. She has a gun now, but it’s little use with Ptolemus deflecting bullets at every turn. At least Cal melts whatever gets close, burning away knives and vines as fast as he can. It can’t last, though. They’re cornered.
I almost scream. We escape one noose only to find another.
“Look at me, please.”
Maven shifts, obstructing my view of the scene beyond. But I will not give him the satisfaction of my gaze. I won’t look at him, for my own sake. Instead, I focus on the clicking sound, the one no one else seems to hear. It stabs with every passing second.
He grabs my jaw and yanks, forcing me to face him. “So stubborn.” He tuts. “One of your most intriguing qualities. Along with this,” he adds, drawing a finger through the red blood on my cheek.
Click.
His grip tightens, sending a firework of pain through my jawbone. The clicking makes everything hurt more, hurt deeper. Reluctantly, I meet familiar blue eyes and a pointed, pale face. To my horror, he is exactly as I remember him. Quiet, unassuming, a haunted boy. He is not the Maven of my nightmarish memories, a ghost of blood and shadows. He is real again. I recognize the determination in his eyes. I saw it on the deck of his father’s boat, as we sailed downriver to Archeon, leaving the world in our wake. He kissed my lips then and promised that no one would hurt me.
“I said I would find you.”
Click.
His hand moves from my jaw to my throat, squeezing. Enough to keep me silent, but not enough to stop me from breathing. His touch burns. I gasp, unable to summon enough air to scream.
Maven. You’re hurting me. Maven, stop.
He is not his mother. He cannot read my thoughts. My vision spots again, darkening. Pinpoints of black swim before my eyes, expanding and contracting with every awful click.
“And I said I would save you.”
I expect his grip to tighten. Instead, it remains constant. And his free hand reaches for my collarbone, one blazing palm against my skin. He is scorching me, branding me. I try to scream again, and barely get out a whimper.
“I am a man of my word.” He tips his head again. “When I want to be.”
Click. Click. Click.
My heart tries to match the rhythm, beating at a frenzy I won’t survive, threatening to explode.
“Stop—” I manage to choke out, one hand reaching into thin air, wishing for my brother. But it is Maven who takes my hand in his, and that burns too. Every inch of me burns.
“That’s enough,” I think I hear him say, but not to me. “I said enough!”
His eyes seem to bleed, the last bright spots in my darkening world. Pale blue, streaking across my vision, drawing jagged lines of painful ice. They surround me, caging me. I feel nothing but the burn.
That’s the last thing I remember before a white flash of light and sound splits my brain apart. And my entire world is pain.
It’s too much of everything, and strangely nothing at all. No bullets, no knives, no fists or fire or strangling green vines. This is not a weapon I’ve ever faced before—because it’s my own. Lightning, electricity, sparks, an overload beyond even my limits. I called up a storm once before in the Bowl of Bones, and it exhausted me. But this, whatever Maven has done, is killing me. Pulling me apart, nerve by nerve, splintering bone and ripping muscle. I am being obliterated inside my own skin.
Suddenly I realize—Is this what they felt? The ones I killed? Is this what it feels like to die by lightning?
Control. It’s what Julian always told me. Control it. But this is too much. I am a dam trying to hold back an entire ocean. Even if I could stop what this is, I can’t find a way past my own exploding pain. I can’t reach out. I can’t move. I’m trapped within myself, screaming behind my teeth. I will be dead soon. And at least this will end. But it doesn’t. The pain stretches on in a constant assault on every sense. Pulsing but never ebbing, changing but never stopping. White spots, brighter than the sun, dance across my vision, until an explosion of red squeezes them out. I try to blink it away, to control something in myself, but nothing seems to happen. I wouldn’t know if it did.
My skin must be gone by now, scorched away by the surging bolts. Perhaps I’ll be given the mercy of bleeding to death. That will be quicker than this white abyss.
Kill me. The words repeat, over and over. It’s the only thing I can say, the only thing I want now. All thoughts of newbloods and Maven, my brother and Cal and Kilorn are gone entirely. Even the faces that haunt me, the faces of the dead, have disappeared. Funny, now that I’m dying, my ghosts decide to leave.
I wish they would come back.
I wish I didn’t have to die alone.
SEVENTEEN
“Kill me.”
The words sear in my mouth, slashing past what must be a throat burned raw from screaming. I expect to taste blood—no, I expect nothing at all. I expect to be dead.
But as my senses return, I realize I am not stripped bare of flesh and bone. I am not even bleeding. I am whole, though I certainly don’t feel it. With a burst of willpower, I force open my eyes. But instead of Maven or his executioners, I’m met with familiar green eyes.
“Mare.”
Kilorn doesn’t give me a chance to catch my breath. His arms circle my shoulders, pressing me into his chest, back into darkness. I can’t help but flinch at the contact, remembering the feel of fire and lightning in my bones.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs. There’s something so soothing about the way he speaks, his voice deep and shuddering. And he refuses to let me go, even when I involuntarily shrink away. He knows what my heart wants, even if my frayed nerves can’t handle it. “It’s over, you’re all right. You’re back.”
For a moment, I don’t move, curling my fingers into the folds of his old shirt. I focus on him, so I don’t have to feel myself shaking. “Back?” I whisper. “Back where?”
“Let her breathe, Kilorn.”
Another hand, so warm it can only be Cal’s, takes my arm. He holds on tightly, the pressure careful and controlled, enough for me to focus on. It helps the rest of me swim out of the nightmare, fully returning to the real world. I lean back slowly, away from Kilorn, so I can see exactly what I’m waking up to.
We’re underground, judging by the damp, earthy smell, but this isn’t another one of Farley’s tunnels. We’re far out of Harbor Bay, if my electrical sense is any indication. I can’t feel a single pulse, meaning we must be well away from the city. This is a safe house, dug right into the ground, camouflaged by forest and design. Red-made, no doubt, probably used by the Scarlet Guard, and everything looks faintly pinkish. The walls and floor are packed dirt, and the slanting roof is sod, reinforced by rusted metal poles. There’s no decoration; in fact, there’s barely anything in here at all. A few sleeper sacks, my own included, ration packs, a switched-off lantern, and a few crates of supplies from the airjet are all I can see. My Stilts home was a palace compared to this, but I’m not complaining. I sigh in relief, happy to be out of danger and away from my blinding pain.
Kilorn and Cal let me blink around at the sparse room, allowing me to come to my own conclusions. They look haggard with worry, transformed into old men in the span of a few hours. I can’t help but stare at their dark-circled eyes and deep frowns, wondering what wounded them in this way. Then I remember. The light slanting in from the narrow windows is red-orange and the air has gone cold. Night is coming. The day is over. And we have lost. Wolliver Galt is dead, a newblood to Maven’s slaughter. Ada too, for all I know. I failed them both.