King's Cage

TWENTY-EIGHT

Mare

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.