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.”