King’s Cage (Red Queen Book 3)

The wind howls. It buffets the walls and ramparts, blowing more than a few back from their position. Rain freezes on the stonework, making our footing precarious. The first casualty is a fall. A Red soldier, one of Townsend’s. The wind catches his jacket, blowing him backward along the slick walkway. He shouts as he goes over the edge, plunging thirty feet—before sailing skyward, born of a gravitron’s concentration. He lands hard on the wall, colliding with a sickening crack. The gravitron didn’t have enough control. But the soldier is alive. Injured, but alive.

“Brace yourself!” echoes down the lines of soldiers, passing between green uniforms and red. When the wind roars again, we buckle down. I tuck myself against the icy metal of a rampart, safe from the worst of it. A windweavers’ strike is unpredictable, unlike normal weather. It splits and curves, clawing like fingers. All while the storm tightens around us.

Cameron shoves in next to me. I glance at her, surprised. She’s supposed to be back with the healers, to form a last wall against any siege. If anyone can defend them from Silvers, give them the time and space to treat our soldiers, it’s her. The rain makes her shiver, her teeth chattering. She seems smaller, younger, in the cold and closing darkness. I wonder if she’s even turned sixteen yet.

“All right, lightning girl?” she says with some difficulty. Water drips over her face.

“All right,” I murmur back. “What are you doing up here?”

“Wanted to see,” she says, lying. The young girl is here because she believes she has to be. Am I abandoning you? she asked before. I see the question in her eyes now. And my answer is the same. If she doesn’t want to be a killer, she shouldn’t have to be.

I shake my head. “You protect the healers, Cameron. Get back to them. They’re defenseless, and if they go down—”

She bites her lip. “We all do.”

We stare at each other, trying to be strong, trying to find strength in each other. Like me, she’s soaked through. Her dark lashes clump together, and every time she blinks it looks like she’s crying. The raindrops land hard, making us both squint as they pelt down our faces. Until they don’t. Until the raindrops start rolling in the opposite direction, flowing up. Her eyes widen as mine do, watching with horror.

“Nymph strike!” I scream in warning.

Above us, the rain shimmers, dancing on the air, joining together into larger and larger droplets. And the puddles, the inches of water in the streets and alleys—they become rivers.

“Brace!” echoes again. This time the blow is freezing water instead of wind, foaming white as it breaks like a wave, curving up and over the walls and buildings of Corvium. A spray catches me hard, dashing my head against the rampart, and the world spins. A few bodies go over the wall, spinning into the storm. Their silhouettes disappear quickly, as do their screams. The gravitrons save a few, but not all.

Cameron slides away, on hands and knees, to get back to the stairs. She uses her ability to make a cocoon of safety as she sprints back to her post well inside the second wall.

Cal skids next to me, almost losing his footing. In my daze, I grab at him, pulling him close. If he goes over the wall, I know I’ll just go after him. He watches, terrified, as the water assaults our ranks like the waves of a churning sea. It makes him useless. Flame has no place here. His fire cannot burn. And my lightning is just the same. One spark and I’ll shock who knows how many of our own troops. I can’t risk it.

Akkadi and Davidson have no such restriction. While the premier throws up a glowing blue shield at the edge of the wall, protecting anyone else from going over the edge, Akkadi roars to her newblood troops, barking orders I can’t hear over the crashing waves.

The water spikes, shuddering. Suddenly at war with itself. We have nymphs too.

But no storms. No newbloods who can seize control of the hurricane around us. Its darkness closes in, so absolute it seems like midnight. We’ll be fighting blind. And it hasn’t even started yet. I still haven’t seen a single one of Maven’s soldiers, or the Lakelander army. Not one red banner or blue. But they’re coming. They’re certainly coming.

I grit my teeth. “Get up.”

The prince is heavy, slowed by his fear. Putting a hand to his neck, I give him the smallest shock. The gentle kind Tyton showed me. He rockets to his feet, alive and alert. “Right, thanks,” he mutters. With a glance, he takes stock. “The temperature’s dropping.”

“Genius,” I hiss back. Every part of me feels frozen.

Above us, the water rages, splitting and re-forming. It wants to crash down, it wants to dissipate. Some of it peels off and vaults over Davidson’s shield, racing away into the storm like a strange bird. After a moment, the rest crashes down, drenching us all anew. A cheer goes up anyway. The newblood nymphs, while outnumbered and off guard, just won their first bout.

Cal doesn’t join in the celebrations. Instead, he rakes his wrists together, igniting his hands into weak flame. They sputter in the downpour, fighting to burn. Until, suddenly, the rain turns to bitter, blizzard snow. In the utter darkness it winks red, gleaming in the weak lights of Corvium and Cal’s flame.

I feel my hair start to freeze on my head and shake my ponytail. Splinters of ice go flying in every direction.

A roar rises out of the storm, different from the wind. With many voices. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand. The blackout blizzard presses in. Briefly, Cal’s eyes flutter shut, and he sighs aloud.

“Prepare for attack,” he says hoarsely.

The first ice bridge spikes through the rampart two feet away from me and I vault back, yelping. Another splits the stone twenty feet away, spearing soldiers with its jagged edges. Arezzo and the other teleporters spring into action, collecting the wounded to jump them back to our healers. Almost instantly, Lakelander soldiers, their shadows like monsters, vault off the bridges—they ran up the ice as it grew. Ready to strike.

I’ve seen Silver battles before. They are chaos.

This is worse.

Cal lunges forward, his fires jumping hot and high. The ice is thick, not so easily melted, and he carves pieces from the nearest bridge like a lumberjack with a chainsaw. It makes him vulnerable. I slice through the first Lakelander to get near him, and my sparks send the armored man spinning into darkness. Another quickly follows, until my skin crawls with purple-white veins of hissing lightning. Gunfire drowns out whatever orders anyone might be shouting. I focus on myself, on Cal. Our survival. Farley stays close, gun tucked up. Like Cal, she puts me to her back, letting me defend her blind spot. She doesn’t flinch as she fires her gun, pummeling the nearest bridge with bullets. She centers on the ice, not the warriors bursting out of the blizzard. It cracks and splinters beneath the berserkers, crumbling into darkness.

Thunder rumbles, closer by the second. Bolts of blue-white electricity explode through the clouds, crashing down around Corvium. From the towers, Ella’s aim is deadly, striking just outside the walls. An ice bridge falls to her wrath, cracking in two—but it regrows, re-forming in midair at the will of a shiver hiding somewhere. Bombers do the same, obliterating glassy hunks of ice with bursts of explosive force. They just creep back, skittering through another rampart. Green lightning crackles somewhere to my left as Rafe arcs his whips into a stampeding horde of Lakelanders. His blow meets a shield of water, which absorbs the current as they advance. Water doesn’t stop bullets, though. Farley peppers them with gunfire, dropping a few Silvers where they stand. Their bodies slide off into darkness.

I turn my attentions to the closest bridge of soldiers. Instead of the ice, I focus on the figures charging from the darkness. Their blue armor is thick, scaled, and with their helmets they look inhuman. It makes them easier to kill. They force one another forward, pressing on to the walls. A snaking line of faceless monsters. Purple lightning explodes from my clawed hands and races through their hearts, jumping from one suit of armor to the other. The metal superheats, fading from blue to red, and many fall off the bridge in their agony. More replace them, vaulting out of the storm. It is a killing ground, a funnel of death. Tears freeze on my cheeks as I lose count of how many skeletons I rip through.

Then the city wall cracks between my feet, one side sliding from the other. A concussive blow shudders through my bones. Then another. The crack widens. Quickly, I pick an edge, jumping to Cal’s side before the crack swallows me whole. Roots worm up through the fissure, thick as my arm, and growing. They pry apart the stone like massive fingers, sending spider cracks past my feet like bolts of stone lightning. The wall bucks under the strain.

Greenwardens.

“The wall is going to break,” Cal breathes. “They’ll crack it right open and get behind us.”

I clench a fist. “Unless?” He just stares blankly, at a loss. “There has to be something we can do!”

“It’s the storm. If we can get rid of the storm, get visibility, we can use our range. . . .” As he speaks, he sets fire to the roots, now creeping closer. Flame races its length, charring the plant. It just grows back. “We need windweavers. Blow the clouds away.”

“House Laris. So we hold until they get here?”

“Hold and hope they’re enough.”

“Fine. As for this . . .” I nod at the gap widening by the second. Soon a Silver army will burst right through. “Let’s give them an explosive welcome.”

Cal nods, understanding. “Bombers!” he roars over the howling wind and snow. “Get down there and be ready!” Pointing, he indicates the street running just inside the outer wall. The first place Lakelanders will overrun us.

A dozen or so bombers hear him and obey, peeling off their posts to man the street. My feet move of their own accord, intending to follow. Cal grabs my wrist and I almost skid. “I didn’t say you,” he growls. “You stay right here.”

Quickly, I peel his fingers away. The grip is too tight, heavy as a manacle. Even in the heat of battle, I find myself thrown back through time, to a palace where I was a prisoner. “Cal, I’m going to help the bombers hold. I can do that.” His bronze eyes flicker in the darkness, the red flames of two blazing candles. “If they breach the wall, you’re going to be surrounded. And then the storm will be the least of our worries.”

His decision is quick—and stupid. “Fine, I’ll come.”

“They need you up here.” I put a palm to his chest, pushing him away from me. “Farley, Townsend, Akkadi—the soldiers need generals on the line. They need you on the line.”

If not for the battle, Cal would argue. He just grazes my hand. There’s no time for anything. Especially when I’m right.

“I’ll be fine,” I tell him as I jump away, sliding over frozen stones. The storm eats his response. I spare one heartbeat to worry for him, to wonder if we might never see each other again. The next heartbeat erases the thought. I have no time for it. I have to stay focused. I have to stay alive.

I pick up my feet up and slide down the stairs, the frozen rails slipping through my curled hands. On the street, out of the wind, the air is much warmer and the puddles are gone. Either frozen or the water was used above to assault the defenders of the Corvium wall.

Bombers face the crack in the wall, spreading farther with each second. Up on the ramparts it widens to several feet, but here the crack is just inches—and growing. Another shudder runs through the stone and below my feet, like an explosion or an earthquake in the ground. I swallow hard, imagining a strongarm on the other side of the wall, her fists raining blow after blow upon our foundations.

“Wait to strike,” I tell the bombers. They look to me for orders, even though I’m not an officer. “No explosions until it’s clear they’re coming through. We don’t need to help them along.”

“I’ll shield the breach as long as possible,” a voice says behind me.

I whirl to see Davidson, his face streaked in gray blood steadily turning black. He looks pale beneath the blood, stunned by it. “Premier,” I mutter, dipping my head. He responds after a long moment. Dazed by the battle. So different on the field than it is in the war room.

Instead, I turn my electricity on our attackers. Using the roots as a map, I run lightning along the plant matter, letting it curl and spiral with the path of the root. I can’t see the greenwarden at the far side, but I feel him. Though dulled by the dense root, my sparks ripple through his body. A distant shriek echoes through the cracks in the stone, somehow audible over the chaos above and around.

The greenwarden isn’t the only Silver able to bring down stone. Another takes his place, a strongarm judging by the way the stone shudders and cracks. Blow after blow sends rubble and dust through the widening gap.

Davidson stands on my left, mouth slightly agape. Numb.

“First battle?” I mutter as another thunderous strike hits home.

“Hardly,” he says, to my surprise. “I was a soldier once too. I’m told I was on a list of yours?”

Dane Davidson. The name flutters in my mind, a butterfly brushing wings against the bars of a bone cage. It comes back as if through mud, slowly, with great effort. “Julian’s list.”

He nods. “Smart man, Jacos. Connecting dots no one else even sees. Yes, I was one of the Nortan Reds to be executed by their legion. For crimes of blood, not body. When I escaped, the officers marked me as dead anyway. So they didn’t have to explain another lost criminal.” He licks lips cracked by the cold. “I fled to Montfort, collecting others like me along the way.”

Another crack. The gap before us widens as feeling returns to my toes. I wiggle them in my boots, preparing to fight. “Sounds familiar.”

Davidson’s voice gains strength and momentum as he speaks. As he remembers what we are fighting for. “Montfort was in ruin. A thousand Silvers claiming their own crowns, every mountain its own kingdom, the country splintered beyond recognition. Only Reds stood united. And Ardents were in the shadows, waiting to be unleashed. Divide and conquer, Miss Barrow. It’s the only way to beat them.”

The Kingdom of Norta, the Kingdom of the Rift, Piedmont, the Lakelands. Silvers at one another’s throats, squabbling for smaller and smaller pieces while we wait to take the whole lot. Though Davidson looks overwhelmed, I can almost smell the steel in his bones. A genius, perhaps, and dangerous certainly.

A gust of snow brings me back. The only thing I need to be concerned with is what happens now. Survive. Win.

Blue-tinged energy bursts through the splintering wall, pulsing across the foot-wide expanse of emptiness. Davidson holds the shield in place with an outstretched hand. A drop of blood drips off his chin, steaming in the cold.

A silhouette on the other side pummels the shield, fists raining knuckled hell down on the rippling field. Another strongarm joins the shadow and works to widen the gap, attacking stone instead. The shield grows with their efforts.

“Be ready,” Davidson says. “When I split the shield, fire with everything.”

We obey, preparing to strike.

“Three.”

Purple sparks web between my fingers and weave into a pulsing ball of destructive light.

“Two.”

The bombers kneel in formation, like snipers. Instead of guns, they just have their fingers and eyes.

“One.”

With a twitch, the blue shield cuts in two and slams the pair of strongarms into the walls with sickening cracks of bone. We fire through the opening, my lightning a blaze. It illuminates the darkness beyond, showing a dozen berserker soldiers ready to rush the breach. Many drop to their knees, spitting fire and blood as the bombers explode their insides. Before any can recover, Davidson seals the shield again, catching a returning volley of bullets.

He looks surprised by our success.

On the wall above us, a fireball churns in the black storm, a torch against the false night. Cal’s fire spreads and strikes in a snake of flame. The red heat turns the sky to scarlet hell.

I just clench a fist and gesture at Davidson.

“Again,” I tell him.

It’s impossible to mark the passage of time. Without the sun, I have no idea how long we spend battling the breach. Even though we push back the assault again and again, every attempt widens the gap bit by bit. Inches for miles, I tell myself. On the wall, the wave of soldiers has not won the ramparts. The ice bridges keep coming back, and we keep fighting them. A few corpses land in the street, beyond even a healer’s touch. Between strikes, we drag the bodies into the alleyways, out of sight. I search each dead face, holding my breath every time. Not Cal, not Farley. The only one I recognize is Townsend, his neck snapped clean. I expect a wash of guilt or pity, but I feel nothing. Just the knowledge that strongarms are up on the walls as well, tearing our soldiers apart.

Davidson’s shield stretches across the gap in the wall, now at least ten feet wide, yawning open like stone jaws. Bodies lie in the open mouth. Smoking corpses felled by lightning, or brutally ripped open by a bomber’s merciless stare. Through the quivering field of blue, shadows gather in the darkness, waiting to try our wall again. Hammers of water and ice batter against Davidson’s ability. A banshee scream reverberates off its expanse, and even the echo is painful to our ears. Davidson winces. Now the blood on his face streaks with sweat dripping down his forehead, nose, and cheeks. He sprints toward his limit, and we are running out of time.

“Someone get me Rafe!” I shout. “And Tyton.”

A runner sprints off as soon as the words are out of my mouth, vaulting up the steps to find them. I watch the wall above, searching for a familiar silhouette.

Cal works a manic rhythm, perfect as a machine. Step, turn, strike. Step, turn, strike. Like me, he finds an empty place where survival is the only thought. At every break in the oncoming rush of enemies, he re-forms his soldiers, directing the Reds in their fire, or working with Akkadi and Lory to eliminate another target in the darkness. How many are dead, I can’t say.

Another corpse tumbles from the ramparts, end over end. I grab his arms to drag him off before I realize his armor is not armor at all, but scaled pieces of stony flesh, smoldering with the heat of a fire prince’s anger. I draw back surprised, as if burned myself. A stoneskin. The few clothes on his dead body are blue and gray. House Macanthos. Norta. One of Maven’s.

I swallow hard against the implication. Maven’s forces have reached the walls. We aren’t just fighting Lakelanders anymore. A roar of fury rises in my chest and I almost wish I could storm through the breach myself. Tear through everything on the other side. Hunt him down. Kill him between his army and mine.

Then the corpse grabs me.

He twists, and my wrist breaks with a snap. I shriek against the sudden bleeding pain racing up my arm.

Lightning ripples from my flesh, escaping me like a scream. It covers his body in purple sparks and lethal, dancing light. But either his stony flesh is too thick or his resolve is too strong. The stoneskin does not let go, his pincerlike fingers now clawing at my neck. Explosions blossom along his back, the work of bombers. Bits of stone slough off him like dead skin and he howls. His grip only tightens with the pain. I make the mistake of trying to pry off his hands, now locked around my throat. His rocky flesh cuts my skin, and blood wells up between my fingers, red and hot in the frozen air.

Spots dance before my eyes, and I loose another blast of lightning, letting it pour from my agony. The blow rockets him off me and back into a building. He crashes through headfirst, body hanging out into the street. The bombers finish him off, exploding through the exposed skin on his back.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

Davidson trembles on his feet, still holding the thinning shield. He saw it all, and could do nothing unless he wanted the invading force to overrun us. A corner of his mouth quivers, as if to apologize for making the right decision.

“How much longer can you hold?” I ask, gasping out the words. I spit blood on the street.

He grits his teeth. “A little while.”

That’s not helpful, I want to snap. “A minute? Two?”

“One,” he forces out.

“One will do.”

I glare through the shield as it weakens, the vivid shade of blue fading with Davidson’s strength. As it clears, so do the figures on the other side. Blue armor and black cut with red. Lakelands and Norta. No crown, no king. Just shock troops meant to overwhelm us. Maven won’t set foot in Corvium unless the city is his. While the Calore brother on the wall will fight to the death, Maven is not foolish enough to risk himself in a fight. He knows his strength is behind the lines, on a throne rather than a battlefield.

Rafe and Tyton approach from opposite sides, having held their stretch of wall. While Rafe looks meticulous, green hair still slicked back from his face, Tyton is positively painted in blood. All silver. He isn’t wounded. His eyes glow with a strange kind of anger, burning red in the churning firelight over our heads.

I note Darmian along with a number of other wreckers, all of them gifted with invulnerable flesh. They carry wicked axes, their edges worked to razor sharpness. Good to combat strongarms. At close range, they’re our best chance.

“Form up,” Tyton says, taciturn to a fault.

We follow, organizing into hasty lines at Davidson’s back. His arm shakes as we move, holding on as long as he can. Rafe takes my left, Tyton my right. I glance between them, wondering if I should say something. I can feel the static energy blooming from them both, familiar but strange. Their electricity, not mine.

In the storm, the blue thunder continues to rage. Ella fuels us, and we leech to her lightning.

“Three,” Davidson says.

Green on my left, white on my right. The colors flicker on the edge of my vision, each spark a tiny heartbeat.

“Two.”

I suck in one more breath. My throat aches, bruised by the stoneskin. But I’m still breathing.

“One.”

Again the shield collapses, opening our insides to the oncoming storm.

“BREACH!” echoes along the ramparts as the forces turn their attention on the gap in the wall. The Silver army responds in kind, surging toward us with a deafening yell. Green and purple lightning shudders through the killing ground, leaping along the first wave of soldiers. Tyton moves like a man throwing darts, his minuscule needles of lightning exploding into blinding bolts that toss Silver troops into the air. Many seize and twitch. He has no mercy.

The bombers follow our lead, moving with us as we close the breach. They only need an open line of sight to work, and their destruction churns stone, flesh, and earth in equal measure. Dirt falls with the snow, and the air tastes like ash. Is this what war is? Is this what it feels like to fight in the Choke? Tyton tosses me back, throwing out an arm to move my body. Darmian and the other wreckers surge before us, a human shield. Their axes cut in and out, spraying blood until the ruined walls on either side are coated in mirrored swaths of liquid silver.

No. I remember the Choke. The trenches. The horizon stretched in every direction, reaching down to meet a land cratered by decades of bloodshed. Each side knew the other. That war was evil, but defined. This is just a nightmare.

Soldier after soldier, Lakelander and Nortan, pulses into the breach. Each pushed by the man or woman behind. As on the bridges, they funnel into a killing ground. The crowd moves like the pull of the ocean, one wave drawing us back before the other goes forward. We have the advantage, but only slightly. More strongarms pummel at the walls, hoping to widen the gap. Telkies lob rubble into our line, pulverizing one of the bombers, while another freezes solid, mouth fixed open in a silent scream.

Tyton dances with fluid movements, each palm blazing with white lightning. I use web on the ground, spreading a puddle of electric energy beneath the pounding feet of the advancing army. Their bodies pile up, threatening to form another wall across the breach. But the telkies just wave them away, sending corpses spinning into the black storm.

I taste blood, but my broken wrist is just a buzz of pain now. It hangs limp at my side, and I’m grateful for the adrenaline that won’t let me feel the snapped bone.

The street and earth turn to liquid beneath my feet, running with red and silver. The swampy ground claims more than a few. When a newblood falls, a nymph jumps on him, pouring water down his nose and throat. He drowns before my eyes. Another corpse lies on her side, roots curling from her eyeballs. All I know is lightning. I can’t remember my name, my purpose, what I’m fighting for—beyond the air in my lungs. Beyond one more second of life.

A telky splits us apart, sending Rafe flying backward. Then me in the opposite direction. I spiral forward, over the top of the force pushing through the wall breach. To the other side. To the killing fields of Corvium.

I land hard, rolling end over end until I come to an abrupt stop, half buried in freezing mud. A bolt of pain spikes through my adrenaline shield, reminding me of a very broken bone and perhaps a few more. The storm winds tear at my clothes as I try to sit up, shards of ice scraping at my eyes and cheeks. Even though the wind howls, it isn’t so dark out here. Not black, but gray. A blizzard at dusk rather than midnight. I squint back and forth, too winded to do anything but lie in pain.

What were open fields, green lawns sloping off either side of the Iron Road, are now frozen tundra, each blade of grass like a razor of icicle. From this angle, Corvium is impossible to make out. Just like we couldn’t see through the pitch black of the storm, neither can the assaulting forces. It hinders them as much as us. Several battalions cluster like shadows, cutting silhouettes against the storm. Some attempt the ice bridges still forming and re-forming, but now most surge toward the breach. The rest lie in wait behind me, a smudge outside the worst of the storm. Maybe hundreds held in reserve, maybe thousands. Blue and red flags snap in the wind, just bright enough to make out. Caught between a rock and a hard place, I sigh to myself. And I’m stuck in the mud, surrounded by corpses and the walking wounded. At least most are focused on themselves, on missing limbs or split bellies, rather than a single Red girl in their midst.

Lakelander soldiers dart around me, and I brace myself for the worst. But they march on, stomping for the thundering clouds and the rest of the army slouching toward destruction. “Get to the healers!” one of them shouts over their shoulder, not even looking back. I look down, realizing I’m covered in silver blood. Some red, but mostly silver.

Quickly, I rub mud over my bleeding wounds and the bits of my uniform that are still green. The cuts sear with pain, making me hiss through my teeth. I look back at the clouds, watching lightning pulse within. Blue at the crown, green at the base, where the breach is. Where I have to get back to.

The mud sucks at my limbs, trying to freeze solid around me. With my broken wrist tucked against my chest, I push off with one arm, fighting to be free. I pull away with a loud pop and start sprinting, heaving breath after breath. Each one burns.

I make it ten yards, almost to the back of the Silver army, before I realize this isn’t going to work. They’re packed too tightly to slip through, even for me. And they’ll probably stop me if I try. My face is well known, even covered in mud. I can’t chance it. Or the ice bridges. One might crumble beneath me, or the Red soldiers might shoot me dead as I try to get back over the wall. Each choice ends badly. But so does standing here. Maven’s forces will push another assault and send another wave of troops. I see no way forward and no way back. For one terrifying, empty moment, I stare at the blackness of Corvium. Lightning flickers within the storm, weaker than before. It seems a towering hurricane topped with a thunderhead, layered with a blizzard and gale-force winds. I feel small against it, a single star in a sky of violent constellations.

How can we defeat this?

The first scream of a jet sends me to my knees, covering my head with my good hand. It ripples in my chest, a burst of electricity hammering like a heart. A dozen follow at low altitude, their engines spiraling the snow and ash as they scream between the two halves of the army.

More jets spiral on the outer edge of the storm, around and around, carving through it. The clouds drift with the jets, as if magnetized to the wings. Then I hear another roar. Another wind, stronger than the first, blowing with the fury of a hundred hurricanes. The wind works to clear the storm, tearing it apart with force. The clouds part enough to show the towers of Corvium, where blue lightning reigns. The wind follows the jets, pooling beneath their freshly painted wings.

Painted bright yellow.

House Laris.

My lips tug into a smile. They’re here. Anabel Lerolan kept her word.

I look for the other houses, but a falcon screams around me, its blue-black wings beating the air. Talons gleam, sharp as a blade, and I jump back to cover my face from the bird. It just screeches keenly before flapping away, gliding over the battleground toward—oh no.

Maven’s reserves are coming. Battalions, legions. Black armor, blue armor, red armor. I’m going to be smashed between both halves of his army.

Not without a fight.

I let loose, purple bolts rocketing down around me. Pushing back soldiers, making them question every step. They know what my abilities look like. They’ve seen what the lightning girl can do. They pause, but only for a moment. Enough to let me set my feet and turn, angling my body. Smaller target, larger chance of survival. My good fist clenches, ready to take them all down with me.

Many of the Silvers assaulting the breach turn in my direction. The distraction is their downfall. Green lightning and white pulse through them, clearing the way for red flame as it charges toward me.

The swifts close the distance first and catch a web of lightning. Some zip backward but others fall, unable to outrun sparks. Storm bolts, crackling out of the sky, keep the worst at bay, forming a protective circle around me. From the outside, it looks like a cage of electricity, but it’s a cage of my own making. A cage I control.

I dare any king to put me in a cage now.

I expect my lightning to draw him, like a moth to a candle flame. I search the oncoming horde for Maven. A red cape, a crown of iron flames. A white face in the sea, his eyes blue enough to pierce mountains.

Instead, the Laris jets move in for another pass, swooping low over both armies. They split around me, making soldiers scramble for cover as screaming metal rushes overhead. A dozen or so figures tumble from the backs of the larger jets, somersaulting on the air before plummeting to the ground at a speed that would pancake most humans. Instead, they throw out their arms, stopping themselves abruptly, churning up dirt, ash, and snow. And iron. Lots of iron.

Evangeline and her family, brother and father included, turn to face the oncoming army. The falcon keens around them, screaming as it darts on the harsh wind. Evangeline spares a glance over her shoulder, her eyes finding mine.

“Don’t make this a habit!” she shouts.

Exhaustion hits me because, strangely, I feel safe.

Evangeline Samos has my back.

Fire blazes at the edge of my vision on either side. It hems me in, almost blinding. I stumble back and hit a wall of muscle and tactical armor. Cal cradles my broken wrist, holding it gently.

For once, I don’t remember the manacles.