King’s Cage: Chapter 22

Every morning starts the same way. I can’t stay in the bedroom; the birds always wake me up early. Good that they do. It’s too hot to run later in the day. The Piedmont base makes for a good track, though. It is well protected, the boundaries guarded by both Montfort and Piedmont soldiers. The latter are all Reds, of course. Davidson knows that Bracken, the puppet prince, is likely quietly scheming and won’t let any of his Silvers past the gates. In fact, I haven’t seen any Silvers at all, except the ones I already know. All of the abilitied are newbloods or Ardents, depending on who you speak to. If Davidson has Silvers with him, serving equally in his Free Republic as he says they are, I haven’t seen any.

I lace my shoes tightly. Mist curls in the street outside, hanging low along the brick canyon. Unlatching the front door, I grin when the cool air hits my skin. It smells like rain and thunder.

As expected, Cal sits on the bottom step, legs stretched out on the narrow sidewalk. Still, my heart lurches in my chest at the sight of him. He yawns loudly in greeting, almost unhinging his jaw.

“Come on,” I chide him, “this is sleeping in for a soldier.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t prefer to sleep in when I can.” He stands with exaggerated annoyance, all but sticking his tongue out.

“Feel free to go back to that little bunk room you insist on staying in at the barracks. You know, you’d get a bit more time if you moved to Officers Row—or stopped running with me altogether.” I shrug with a sly grin.

Matching my smile, he tugs on the hem of my shirt, pulling me toward him. “Don’t insult my bunk room,” he mutters, before dropping a kiss on my lips. Then my jaw. Then my neck. Each touch blooms, a burst of fire beneath my skin.

Reluctantly, I push his face away. “There is a real possibility my dad shoots you from the window if you keep this up here.”

“Right, right.” He recovers quickly, paling. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Cal was actually scared of my father. The thought is comical. A Silver prince, a general who can raise infernos with a flick of his fingers, afraid of a limping old Red. “Let’s stretch.”

We go through the motions, Cal more thoroughly than I. He scolds me gently, finding something wrong with every move. “Don’t lunge into it. Don’t rock back and forth. Easy, slow.” But I’m eager, thirsty to run. Eventually, he relents. With a nod of his head, he lets us begin.

At first the pace is easy. I almost dance on my toes, exhilarated by the steps. They feel like freedom. The fresh air, the birds, the mist brushing past with damp fingers. My even, steady breath and steadily rising heartbeat. The first time we ran here, I had to stop and cry, too happy to stop the tears. Cal sets a good clip, keeping me from sprinting until my lungs give out. The first mile passes well enough, getting us to the perimeter wall. Half stone, half chain link topped with razor wire, and a few soldiers patrol the far side. Montfort men. They nod to each of us, used to our route after two weeks. Other soldiers jog in the distance, running their usual training exercises, but we don’t join them. They drill in rows with shouting sergeants. It’s not for me. Cal is demanding enough. And thankfully, Davidson hasn’t pressed me on the whole “resettlement or service” choice. In fact, I haven’t seen him since my debriefing, even though he now lives on base with the rest of us.

The next two miles are more difficult. Cal pushes a harder pace. It’s hotter today, even this early, with clouds gathering overhead. As the mist burns off, I sweat hard and salt collects on my lips. Legs pumping, I wipe my face on the hem of my shirt. Cal feels the heat too. At my side, he just pulls his shirt off entirely, tucking it into the waistband of tight training pants. My first instinct is to warn him against sunburn. The second is to stop and stare at the well-defined muscles of his bare abdomen. Instead, I focus on the path before me, forcing another mile. Another. Another. His breathing beside me is suddenly very distracting.

We round the shallow forest separating the barracks and Officers Row from the airfield, when thunder rumbles somewhere. A few miles away, certainly. Cal puts out an arm at the noise, slowing me down. He snaps to face me, both hands gripping my shoulders as he leans down to my eye level. Bronze eyes bore into mine, looking for something. The thunder rolls again, closer.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, all concern. One hand strays to my neck to soothe the scars burning red hot with exertion. “Calm down.”

“That’s not me.” I tip my head toward the darkening storm clouds with a smile. “That’s just weather. Sometimes, when it gets too hot and humid, thunderstorms can—”

He laughs. “Okay, I get it. Thank you.”

“Ruining a perfectly good run,” I tut, moving my hand to take his. He grins crookedly, smiling so wide it crinkles his eyes. As the storm moves closer, I feel its electric heart thrumming. My pulse steadies to match it, but I push away the seductive purr of lightning. Can’t let loose a storm so close.

I have no control of rain, and it falls in a sudden curtain, making us both yelp. Whatever bits of my clothes weren’t covered in sweat quickly soak through. The sudden cold is a shock to us both, Cal in particular.

His bare skin steams, wrapping his torso and arms in a thin layer of gray mist. Raindrops hiss when they make contact, flash-boiling. As he calms, it stops, but he still pulses with warmth. Without thought, I tuck into him, shivering down my spine.

“We should go back,” he mutters to the top of my head. I feel his voice reverberate in his chest, my palm flat to where his heart rips a fast tempo. It thunders under my touch, in stark contrast to his calm face.

Something stops me from agreeing. Another tug, deeper inside. Somewhere I can’t name.

“Should we?” I whisper, expecting the rain to swallow my voice.

His arms tighten around me. He didn’t miss a word.

The trees are new growth, their leaves and branches not splayed wide enough to offer total cover from the sky. But enough from the street. My shirt goes first, landing in mud. I toss his into the muck too, just so we’re even. Rain pelts down in fat drops, each one a cold surprise to run down my nose or spine or my arms wrapped around his neck. Warm hands do battle across my back, a delightful opposite to the water. His fingers walk the length of my spine, pressing into each vertebra. I do the same, counting his ribs. He shivers, and not from the rain, as my nails scrape along his side. Cal responds with teeth. They graze the length of my jaw before finding my ear. I shut my eyes for a second, unable to do anything but feel. Every sensation is a firework, a thunderbolt, an explosion.

The thunder gets closer. As if drawn to us.

I run my fingers through his hair, using it to pull him closer. Closer. Closer. Closer. He tastes like salt and smoke. Closer. I can’t seem to get close enough. “Have you done this before?” I should be afraid, but only the cold makes me shiver.

He tips his head back, and I almost whine in protest. “No,” he whispers, looking away. Dark lashes drip rain. His jaw tightens, as if ashamed.

So like Cal, to feel embarrassment for something like this. He likes to know the end of a path, the answer to a question before asking. I almost laugh.

This is a different kind of battle. There’s no training. And instead of donning armor, we throw the rest of our clothes away.

After six months of sitting by his brother’s side, lending my entire being to an evil cause, I have no fear of giving my body to a person I love. Even in the mud. Lightning flashes overhead and behind my eyes. Every nerve sparks to life. It takes all my concentration to keep Cal from feeling the wrong end of such things.

His chest flushes beneath my palms, rising with reckless heat. His skin looks even paler next to mine. Using his teeth, he unlatches his flamemaker bracelets and tosses them into the undergrowth.

“Thank my colors for the rain,” he murmurs.

I feel the opposite. I want to burn.

I refuse to go back to the row house covered in mud, and due to Cal’s oh-so-inconvenient living quarters, I can’t clean off at his barracks unless I feel like sharing the showers with a dozen other soldiers. He picks leaves out of my hair as we walk toward the base hospital, a squat building overgrown with ivy.

“You look like a shrub,” he says, sporting an almost-manic smile.

“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say.”

Cal nearly giggles. “How would you know?”

“I—ugh,” I deflect, ducking into the entrance.

The hospital is nearly deserted at this hour, staffed with a few nurses and doctors to oversee next to no patients. Healers make them mostly irrelevant, needed only for lengthy diseases or extremely complicated injuries. We walk the cinder-block halls alone, under harsh fluorescent lights and easy silence. My cheeks still burn as my mind does war with itself. Instinct makes me want to shove Cal into the nearest room and lock the door behind us. Sense tells me I cannot.

I thought it would be different. I thought I would feel different. Cal’s touch has not erased Maven’s. My memories are still there, still just as painful as they were yesterday. And as much as I try, I have not forgotten the canyon that will always stretch between us. No kind of love can erase his faults, just like none can erase mine.

A nurse with an armful of blankets rounds the corner ahead, her feet a blur over the tiled floor. She stops at the sight of us, almost dropping the linens. “Oh!” she says. “You’re fast, Miss Barrow!”

My flush intensifies as Cal quickly turns a laugh into a cough. “Excuse me?”

She grins. “We just sent a message to your home.”

“Uh . . . ?”

“Follow me, sweetie; I’ll take you to her.” The nurse beckons, shifting the linens to her hip. Cal and I trade confused glances. He shrugs and trots after her, oddly carefree. His army-trained caution seems far away.

The nurse chatters excitedly as we walk in her wake. Her accent is Piedmontese, making the words slower and sweeter. “Shouldn’t take long. She’s progressing quickly. Soldier to the bone, I suppose. Doesn’t want to waste any time.”

Our hallway dead-ends into a larger ward, much busier than the rest of the hospital. Wide windows look out on yet another garden, now dark and lashed with rain. Piedmont certainly has a thing for flowers. Several doors branch off on either side, leading to empty rooms and empty beds. One of them is open, and more nurses flit in and out. An armed Scarlet Guard soldier keeps watch, although he doesn’t look very alert. It’s still early, and he blinks slowly, numbed by the quiet efficiency of the ward.

Sara Skonos looks awake enough for the two of them. Before I can call to her, she raises her head, eyes gray as the storm clouds outside.

Julian was right. She has a lovely voice.

“Good morning,” she says. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her speak.

I don’t know her very well, but we embrace anyway. Her hands graze my bare arms, sending shooting stars of relief into overworked muscles. When she leans back, she pulls another leaf out of my hair, then demurely brushes mud from the back of my shoulder. Her eyes flicker, noting the mud streaking Cal’s limbs. Next to the sterile atmosphere of the hospital, with its gleaming surfaces and bright lights, we stick out like a pair of very sore and dirty thumbs.

Her lips twist into the slightest smirk. “I hope you enjoyed your morning run.”

Cal clears his throat and his face flushes. He wipes a hand on his pants, but only succeeds in spreading the incriminating mud even more. “Yeah.”

“Each of these rooms is equipped with a bathroom, including a shower. I can arrange for changes of clothes as well.” Sara points with her chin. “If you like.”

The prince ducks his face to hide his flush as it deepens. He slinks away, leaving a trail of wet footprints in his wake.

I remain, letting him go on ahead. Even though she can speak again, her tongue returned by another skin healer, I assume, Sara doesn’t talk much. She has more meaningful ways to communicate.

She touches my arm again, gently pushing me toward the open door. With Cal out of sight, I can think a little more clearly. The dots connect, one by one. Something tightens in my chest, an equal twist of sadness and excitement. I wish Shade were here.

Farley sits up in the bed, her face red and swollen, a sheen of sweat across her brow. The thunder outside is gone, melting to a downpour of endless rain weeping down the windows. She barks out a laugh at the sight of me, then winces at the sudden action. Sara moves quickly to her side, putting soothing hands to Farley’s cheeks. Another nurse idles against the wall, waiting to be useful.

“Did you run here or crawl through a sewer?” Farley asks over Sara’s fussing.

I move deeper into the room, careful not to get anything else dirty. “Got caught in the storm.”

“Right.” She sounds entirely unconvinced. “Was that Cal outside?”

My blush suddenly matches hers. “Yes.”

“Right,” she says again, drawing out the word.

Her eyes tick over me, as if she can read the last half hour on my skin. I fight the urge to check myself for any suspicious handprints. Then she reaches out, gesturing for the nurse. She leans down and Farley whispers in her ear, her words too fast and low for me to catch. The nurse nods, scurrying off to procure whatever Farley wants. She gives me a tight smile as she goes.

“You can come closer. I’m not going to explode.” She glances up at Sara. “Yet.”

The skin healer offers a well-practiced, obliging smile. “It won’t be long now.”

Tentative, I take a few steps forward, until I can reach out and take Farley’s hand if I want to. A few machines blink at the side of her bed, pulsing slowly and quietly. They pull me in, hypnotic in their even rhythm. The ache for Shade multiplies. We’re going to get a piece of him soon, but he’s never coming back. Not even in a baby with his eyes, his name, his smile. A baby he will never get to love.

“I thought about Madeline.”

Her voice snaps me out of the spiral. “What?”

Farley picks at her white bedspread. “That was my sister’s name.”

“Oh.”

Last year, I found a photo of her family in the Colonel’s office. It was taken years ago, but Farley and her father were unmistakable, posing next to her equally blond mother and sister. All of them had a similar look. Broad-shouldered, athletic, their eyes blue and steely. Farley’s sister was the smallest of them all, still growing into her features.

“Or Clara. After my mother.”

If she wants to keep talking, I’m here to listen. But I won’t pry. So I keep quiet, waiting, letting her lead the conversation. “They died a few years ago. Back in the Lakelands, at home. The Scarlet Guard wasn’t so careful then, and one of our operatives was caught knowing too much.” Pain flickers across her face now and then, both from the memory and her current state. “Our village was small, overlooked, unimportant. The perfect place for something like the Guard to grow. Until one man breathed its name under torture. The king of the Lakelands punished us himself.”

The memory of him flashes through my mind. A small man, still and foreboding as the surface of undisturbed water. Orrec Cygnet. “My father and I were away when he raised the shores of the Hud, pulling water out of the bay to flood our village and wipe it from the face of his kingdom.”

“They drowned,” I murmur.

Her voice never wavers. “Reds across the country were inflamed by the Drowning of the Northlands. My father told our story up and down the lakes, in too many villages and towns to count, and the Guard flourished.” Farley’s empty expression becomes a scowl. “‘At least they died for something,’ he used to say. ‘We could only be so lucky.’”

“Better to live for something.” I agree, a lesson I learned the hard way.

“Yes, exactly. Exactly . . .” She trails off, but she takes my hand without flinching. “So how are you adjusting?”

“Slowly.”

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“The family stays around the house most days. Julian visits when he isn’t holed up in the base lab. Kilorn is always around too. Nurses come to work with my dad, get him readjusted to the leg—he’s progressing beautifully by the way,” I add, looking back to Sara, quiet in her corner. She beams, pleased. “He’s good at hiding what he feels, but I can tell he’s happy. Happy as he can be.”

“I didn’t ask about your family. I asked about you.” Farley taps a finger against the inside of my wrist. In spite of myself, I flinch, remembering the weight of manacles. “For once, I’m giving you permission to whine about yourself, lightning girl.”

I sigh.

“I—I can’t be alone in rooms with locked doors. I can’t . . .” Slowly, I pull my wrist from her grasp. “I don’t like things on my wrists. It feels too much like the manacles Maven used to keep me a prisoner. And I can’t see anything for what it is. I look for deceit everywhere, in everyone.”

Her eyes darken. “That’s not necessarily a terrible instinct.”

“I know,” I mutter.

“What about Cal?”

“What about him?”

“The last time I saw you two together before—all that, you were inches from ripping each other to shreds.” And inches away from Shade’s corpse. “I assume that’s all settled.”

I remember the moment. We haven’t spoken of it. My relief, our relief at my escape pushed it far into the background, forgotten. But as Farley speaks, I feel the old wound reopen. I try to rationalize. “He is still here. He helped the Guard raid Archeon; he led the takeover of Corvium. I only wanted him to choose a side, and he clearly has.”

Words whisper in my ear, tugging on the back of a memory. Choose me. Choose the dawn. “He chose me.”

“Took him long enough.”

I have to agree. But at least there’s no turning him from this path now. Cal is the Scarlet Guard’s. Maven made sure the country knew that.

“I have to go clean up. If my brothers see me like this . . .”

“Go ahead.” Farley shifts against her raised pillows, trying to adjust into a more comfortable position. “You might have a niece or nephew by the time you get back.”

Again the thought is bittersweet. I force a smile, for her sake.

“I wonder if the baby will be . . . like Shade.” My meaning is obvious. Not in appearance, but ability. Will their child be a newblood like he was and I am? Is that how this even works?

Farley just shrugs, understanding. “Well, it hasn’t teleported out of me yet. So who knows?”

At the door, her nurse returns, holding a shallow cup. I move back to let her pass, but she approaches me, not Farley. “The general asked me to get you this,” she says, holding out the cup. In it is a single pill. White, unassuming.

“Your choice,” Farley says from the bed. Her eyes are grave as her hands cradle her stomach. “I thought you should have that, at least.”

I don’t hesitate. The pill goes down easily.

Some time later, I have a niece. Mom refuses to let anyone else hold Clara. She claims to see Shade in the newborn, even though that’s practically impossible. The little girl looks more like a wrinkled red tomato than any brother of mine.

Out in the ward, the rest of the Barrows congregate in their excitement. Cal is gone, returning to his training schedule. He didn’t want to intrude on a private family moment. Giving me space as much as anyone else.

Kilorn sits with me, cramped into a little chair against the windows. The rain weakens with every passing second.

“Good time to fish,” he says, glancing at the gray sky.

“Oh, don’t you start mumbling about the weather too.”

“Touchy, touchy.”

“You’re living on borrowed time, Warren.”

He laughs, rising to the joke. “I think we all are at this point.”

From anyone else it would sound foreboding, but I know Kilorn too well for that. I nudge his shoulder. “So, how’s training going?”

“Well. Montfort has dozens of newblood soldiers, all trained. Some abilities overlap—Darmian, Harrick, Farrah, a few more—and they’re improving by leaps and bounds with their mentors. I drill with Ada, and the kids when Cal doesn’t. They need a familiar face.”

“No time for fishing, then?”

He chuckles, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “No, not really. It’s funny—I used to hate getting up to work the river. Hated every second of sunburns and rope burns and stuck hooks and fish guts all over my clothes.” He gnaws on his nails. “Now I miss it.”

I miss that boy too.

“The smell made it really hard to be friends with you.”

“Probably why we stuck together. No one else could handle my stink or your attitude.”

I smile and tip my head back, leaning my skull against the window glass. Raindrops roll past, fat and steady. I count them in my head. It’s easier than thinking about anything else around me or ahead of me.

Forty-one, forty-two . . .

“I didn’t know you could sit still for this long.”

Kilorn watches me, thoughtful. He’s a thief too, and he has thief’s instincts. Lying to him won’t accomplish anything, only push him farther away. And that’s not something I can bear right now.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper. “Even in Whitefire, as a prisoner, I tried to escape, tried to scheme, spy, survive. But now . . . I don’t know. I’m not sure I can continue.”

“You don’t have to. No one on earth would blame you if you walked away from all of this and never came back.”

I keep staring at the raindrops. In the pit of my belly, I feel sick. “I know.” Guilt eats through me. “But even if I could disappear right now, with everyone I care about, I wouldn’t do it.”

There’s too much anger in me. Too much hate.

Kilorn nods in understanding. “But you don’t want to fight either.”

“I don’t want to become . . .” My voice trails away.

I don’t want to become a monster. A shell with nothing but ghosts. Like Maven.

“You won’t. I won’t let you. And don’t even get me started on Gisa.”

In spite of myself, I bite back a laugh. “Right.”

“You’re not alone in this. In all my work with the newbloods, I found that’s what they most fear.” He leans his own head back against the window. “You should talk to them.”

“I should,” I murmur, and I mean it. A tiny bit of relief blooms in my chest. Those words comfort me like nothing else.

“And in the end, you need to figure out what you want,” he prods gently.

Bathwater swirls, boiling lazily in fat, white bubbles. A pale boy looks up at me, his eyes wide and his neck bared. In reality I just stood. I was weak and stupid and scared. But in the daydream I put my hands around his neck and squeeze. He flails in the scalding water, dipping under. Never to resurface. Never to haunt me again.

“I want to kill him.”

Kilorn’s eyes narrow as a muscle twinges in his cheek. “Then you have to train, and you have to win.”

Slowly, I nod.

At the edge of the ward, almost entirely in shadow, the Colonel keeps vigil. He stares at his feet, not moving. He doesn’t go in to see his daughter and new grandchild. But he doesn’t leave either.