King's Cage

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.

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.