King's Cage

Shade jumps back to us, to teleport me to safety. His body materializes from thin air: first his chest and head, then his extremities paint into existence. Hands outstretched, eyes focused, his attention only on me. He doesn’t see the needle. He doesn’t know he’s about to die.

It was not Ptolemus’s intent to kill Shade, but he doesn’t mind doing it. Another enemy dead makes no difference to him. Just another obstacle in his war, another body with no name and no face. How many times have I done the same thing?

He probably doesn’t even know who Shade is.

Was.

I know what comes next, but no matter how hard I try, Samson won’t let me shut my eyes. The needle pierces my brother with clean grace, through muscle and organ, blood and heart.

Something in me erupts and the sky responds. As my brother falls, so does my rage. But I never feel the bittersweet release of it. The lightning never strikes the earth, killing Elara and scattering her guards as it should. Samson never allows me that small mercy. Instead, he pulls the scene backward. Again it plays. Again my brother dies.

Again.

Again.

Each time he forces me to see something else. A mistake. A misstep. A choice I could’ve made to save him. Small decisions. Step here, turn there, run a bit faster. It is torture of the worst kind.

Look what you did. Look what you did. Look what you did.

His voice ripples, all around me.

Other memories splinter through Shade’s death, visions bleeding into one another. Each plays on a different fear or weakness. There’s the tiny corpse I found in Templyn, a Red baby murdered by Maven’s newblood hunters at Maven’s command. In another instant, Farley’s fist connects with my face. She screams horrible things, blaming me for Shade’s death while her own anguish threatens to consume her. Steaming tears run down Cal’s cheeks as a sword trembles in his hand, the blade edged against his father’s neck. Shade’s meager grave on Tuck, alone beneath the autumn sky. The Silver officers I electrocuted in Corros, in Harbor Bay, men and women who were only following orders. They had no choice. No choice.

I remember all the death. All the heartache. The look on my sister’s face when an officer broke her hand. Kilorn’s bleeding knuckles when he found out he was going to be conscripted. My brothers taken to war. My father returning from the front half a man in mind and body, exiling himself to a rickety wheelchair—and a life apart from us. My mother’s sad eyes when she told me she was proud of me. A lie. A lie now. And finally the sick ache, the hollow truth that dogged every moment of my old life—that I was ultimately doomed.

I still am.

Samson sweeps through it all with abandon. He pulls me through useless memories, drawn up only to subject me to more pain. Shadows jump through the thoughts. Moving images behind every painful moment. Samson spools through them, too fast for me to truly grasp. But I gather enough. The Colonel’s face, his scarlet eye, his lips forming words I can’t hear. But surely Samson can. This is what he’s looking for. Intelligence. Secrets he can use to crush the rebellion. I feel like an egg with a cracked shell, slowly seeping my innards. He pulls whatever he wants from me. I don’t even have the ability to feel ashamed at what else he finds.

Nights spent curled against Cal. Forcing Cameron to join our cause. Stolen moments rereading Maven’s sickening notes. Memories of who I thought the forgotten prince was. My cowardice. My nightmares. My mistakes. Every selfish step I took that led me here.

Look what you did. Look what you did. Look what you did.

Maven will know it all soon enough.

This was always what he wanted.

The words, scrawled in his looping hand, burn through my thoughts.

I miss you.

Until we meet again.

FOUR

Cameron

I still can’t believe we survived. I dream about it sometimes. Watching them drag Mare away, her body held tightly between a pair of gigantic strongarms. They were gloved against her lightning, not that she tried to use it after she made her bargain. Her life for ours. I didn’t expect King Maven to follow through. Not with his exiled brother on the line. But he kept his deal. He wanted her more than the rest.

Still, I wake up from the usual nightmares, afraid he and his hunters have returned to kill us. The snores from the rest of my bunk room chase the thoughts away.

They told me the new headquarters was a bleeding ruin, but I expected something more like Tuck. A once-abandoned facility, isolated but functional, rebuilt in secret with all the amenities a burgeoning rebellion might need. I hated Tuck on sight. The block barracks and guard-like soldiers, even if they were Red, reminded me too much of Corros Prison. I saw the island as another jail. Another cell I was being forced into, this time by Mare Barrow instead of a Silver officer. But at least on Tuck I had the sky above me. A clean breeze in my lungs. Compared to Corros, compared to New Town, compared to this, Tuck was a reprieve.

Now I shiver with the rest in the concrete tunnels of Irabelle, a Scarlet Guard stronghold on the outskirts of the Lakelander city of Trial. The walls feel frozen to the touch, and icicles dangle from rooms without a heat source. A few of the Guard officers have taken to following Cal around, if only to take advantage of his radiating warmth. I do the opposite, avoiding his lumbering presence as best I can. I have no use for the Silver prince, who looks at me with nothing but accusation.

As if I could have saved her.

My barely trained ability was nowhere near enough. And you weren’t enough either, Your Bleeding Highness, I want to snap at him every time we cross paths. His flame was no match for the king and his hunters. Besides, Mare offered the trade and made her choice. If he’s angry at anyone, it should be her.