King's Cage

“Maven!” I gasp again, begging even though it will do nothing. Begging even though it burns my pride to think I’m asking him for anything. But what else is there to do? Samson is a whisper. He’ll destroy me from the inside out, search everything I am, everything I know. How many people will die because of what I’ve seen? “Maven, please! Don’t let him do this!”

I’m not strong enough to break Kitten’s grasp on my chain, or even struggle much when Trio seizes my shoulders. Both of them hold me in place with ease. My eyes flash from Samson to Maven. One hand on his throne, one hand in Evangeline’s. I miss you, his notes said. He is unreadable, but at least he’s looking.

Good. If he won’t save me from this nightmare, I want him to see it happen.

“Maven,” I whisper one last time, trying to sound like myself. Not the lightning girl, not Mareena the lost princess, but Mare. The girl he watched through the bars of a cell and pledged to save. But that girl isn’t enough. He drops his eyes. He looks away.

I am alone.

Samson takes my throat in his hand, squeezing above the metal collar, forcing me to look into his wretched, familiar eyes. Blue as ice, and just as unforgiving.

“You were wrong to kill Elara,” he says, not bothering to temper his words. “She was a surgeon with minds.”

He leans in, hungry, a starving man about to devour a meal.

“I am a butcher.”

When the sounder device leveled me, I wallowed in agony for three long days. A storm of radio waves turned my own electricity against me. It resounded in my skin, rattling between my nerves like bolts in a jar. It left scars. Jagged lines of white flesh down my neck and spine, ugly things that I’m still not used to. They twinge and tug at odd angles, making benign movements painful. Even my smiles are tainted, smaller in the wake of what was done to me.

Now I would beg for it if I could.

The screeching click of a sounder as it peels me apart would be a heaven, a bliss, a mercy. I would rather be broken in bone and muscle, shattered down to teeth and fingernails, obliterated in every inch, than suffer another second of Samson’s whispers.

I can feel him. His mind. Filling up my corners like a corruption or a rot or a cancer. He scrapes inside my head with sharp skin and even sharper intentions. Any part of me not taken by his poison writhes in pain. He enjoys doing this to me. This is his revenge, after all. For what I did to Elara, his blood and his queen.

She was the first memory he tore from me. My lack of remorse incensed him, and I regret it now. I wish I could’ve forced some sympathy, but the image of her death was too frightening for much more than shock. I remember it now. He forces me to.

In an instant of blinding pain, sucking me backward through my memories, I find myself back in the moment I killed her. My ability draws lightning out of the sky in ragged lines of purple-white. One strikes her head-on, cascading into her eyes and mouth, down her neck and arms, from fingers to toes and back again. The sweat on her skin boils to steam, her flesh chars until it smokes, and the buttons on her jacket turn red hot, burning through cloth and skin. She jerks, tearing at herself, trying to be rid of my electric rage. Her fingertips rip clean, exposing bone, while the muscles of her beautiful face go slack, drooping from the relentless pull of jumping currents. Ash-white hair burns black and smolders, disintegrating. And the smell. The sound. She screams until her vocal cords pull apart. Samson makes sure the scene passes slowly, his ability manipulating the forgotten memory until every second brands itself into my conscience. A butcher indeed.

His rage sends me spinning with nothing to cling to, caught in a storm I cannot control. All I can do is pray not to see what Samson is searching for. I try to keep Shade’s name from my thoughts. But the walls I put up are little more than paper. Samson rips through them gleefully. I feel each one being torn away, another part of me mangled. He knows what I’m trying to keep from him, to never live through again. He chases through my thoughts, faster than my brain, outrunning every weak attempt to stop him. I try to scream or beg, but no sound comes from my mouth or mind. He holds everything in the palm of his hand.

“Too easy.” His voice echoes in me, around me.

Like Elara’s ending, Shade’s death is captured in perfect, painful detail. I must relive every awful second in my own body, unable to do anything but watch, trapped inside myself. Radiation tangs the air. Corros Prison is on the edge of the Wash, close to the nuclear wasteland forming our southern border. Cold mist shrouds morning against a gray dawn. For a moment, all is still, suspended in balance. I stare out, unmoving, frozen midstep. The prison yawns at my back, still shuddering with the riot we began. Prisoners and pursuers bleed from its gates. Following us to freedom, or something like it. Cal is already gone, his familiar form a hundred yards away. I made Shade jump him first, to protect one of our only pilots, and our only manner of escape. Kilorn is still with me, frozen as I am, his rifle tucked against his shoulder. He aims behind us, at Queen Elara, her guards, and Ptolemus Samos. A bullet explodes from the muzzle, born of sparks and gunpowder. It, too, hangs in midair, waiting for Samson to release his grip on my mind. Overhead, the sky swirls, heavy with electricity. My own power. The feel of it would make me cry if I could.

The memory begins to move, slowly at first.

Ptolemus forges himself a long, gleaming needle in addition to the many weapons already at hand. The perfect edge glitters with Red and Silver blood, each droplet a gemstone warbling through the air. Despite her ability, Ara Iral is not fast enough to dodge its lethal arc. It slices through her neck in one lingering second. She falls a few feet away from me, sluggishly, as if through water. Ptolemus means to kill me in the same motion, using the momentum of his blow to turn the needle on my heart. Instead, he finds my brother in the way.