King's Cage

“Is there a plan in place? She’s getting closer by the day. Arborus, the Iron Road—”

“She was in Rocasta yesterday.”

The silence around us shifts. If the rest of our unit weren’t listening before, they certainly are now. I look back to lock my gaze on Ada. Her liquid-amber eyes widen, and I can almost see the cogs turning in her flawless mind.

Farley presses on. “The king visited the wounded soldiers evacuated from the first wave of attack. I didn’t know until we were halfway here. If I had, maybe . . .” she breathes. “Well, it’s too late for that now.”

“The king practically travels with an army,” I tell her. “She’s guarded night and day. There was nothing you could have done, not with just us.”

Still her cheeks flush, and not from the cold. Her fingers keep tapping idly on the stock of her gun. “Probably not,” she replies. “Probably not.” Softer, to convince herself.

Corvium casts a shadow over us, and the temperature drops in the gloomy shade. I pull up the neck of my collar farther, trying to burrow into its warmth. The black-walled monstrosity seems to howl at us.

“There. The Prayer Gate.” Farley points to an open mouth of iron fangs and golden teeth. Blocks of Silent Stone line the arch, but I can’t feel them. They don’t affect me. To my relief, Red soldiers man the gate, marked by rust-colored uniforms and worn boots. We move forward, off the snowy road and into the jaws of Corvium. Farley looks up at the Prayer Gate as we pass through, her eyes wide, blue, and trembling. Under her breath, I hear her whisper something to herself.

“As you enter, you pray to leave. As you leave, you pray never to return.”

Even though no one is listening, I pray too.

Cal bends over a desk, knuckles pressed against the flat of the wood. His armor piles in a heap in the corner, plates of black leather discarded to show the muscled hulk of the young man beneath. Sweat plasters black hair to his forehead and paints glistening lines of exertion down his neck. Not from heat, though his ability warms the room better than any fire. No, this is fear. Shame. I wonder how many Silvers he was forced to kill. Not enough, part of me whispers. Still, the sight of him, the horrors of the siege plainly written on his face, gives even me enough reason to pause. I know this is not easy. It can’t be.

He stares at nothing, bronze eyes boring holes. He doesn’t move when I enter the room, trailing behind Farley. She goes to the Colonel, sitting across from him, one hand on his temple, the other smoothing a map or schematic of some kind. Probably Corvium, judging by the octagonal shape and expanding rings that must be walls.

I feel Ada at my back, hesitant to join us. I have to give her a nudge. She’s better at this than anyone, her exquisite brain a gift to the Scarlet Guard. But a maid’s training is hard to break.

“Go on,” I murmur, putting a hand on her wrist. Her skin isn’t as dark as mine, but in the shadows we all start to blend together.

She gives me a tiny nod and an even tinier smile. “Which ring are they in? Central?”

“Core tower,” the Colonel replies. He raps the corresponding place on the map. “Well fortified, even at the subterranean levels. Learned that the hard way.”

Ada sighs. “Yes, the core is built for something like this. A final stand, well armed and provisioned. Sealed twice over. And stuffed to the brim with fifty trained Silvers. With the bottleneck, there might as well be five times that number in there.”

“Like spiders in a hole,” I mutter.

The Colonel scoffs. “Maybe they’ll start to eat each other.”

Cal’s wince does not go unnoticed. “Not while a common enemy hammers at the door. Nothing unites Silvers so much as someone to hate.” He doesn’t look up from the desk, keeping his eyes fixed on the wood. The meaning is clear. “Especially now that everyone knows the king is near.” His face darkens, a storm cloud. “They can wait.”

With a low growl, Farley finishes the thought for him. “And we can’t.”

“If ordered, the legions of the Choke can hard march back here in a day’s time. Less if . . . motivated.” Ada wavers over the last word. She doesn’t need to elaborate. I can already see my brother, technically freed by Maven’s new laws, being driven on by Silver officers, forced to run through the snow. Only to throw himself against his own.

“Surely the Reds would join us,” I say, thinking aloud, if only to combat the images in my head. “Let Maven send his armies. It will only bolster ours. The soldiers will turn like the ones here did.”

“She might have a point—” the Colonel begins, agreeing with me for once. A strange sensation. But Farley cuts him off.

“Might. The garrison in Corvium has been stirred up for months, inciting its own havoc, pushed and prodded and boiled to this explosion. I can’t say the same for the legions. Or the amount of Silvers he’ll convince into service.”

Ada agrees with her, nodding along. “King Maven has been careful with the Corvium narrative. He paints everything here as terrorism, not rebellion. Anarchy. The work of a bloodthirsty, genocidal Scarlet Guard. The Reds of the legions, the Reds of the kingdom, have no idea what’s happening here.”

Seething, Farley puts a protective hand on her belly. “I’ve lost enough on ifs and maybes.”

“We all have,” Cal says, his voice distant. Finally he pulls away from the desk and turns his back on us all. He crosses to the window in a few long strides, looking out over a city still burning.