War Storm

Then her elbow cracks into my chin, throwing me backward. I see stars again.

“Nice trick,” I mumble, rolling the blood around my mouth. When I spit this time, I think I hear a tooth ping off the floor. I confirm my suspicious with my tongue, feeling the sudden, unfamiliar gap in my bottom teeth.

Evangeline rolls her shoulders, her breath coming in uneven gasps. “Had to even the playing field somehow.” With a small grunt, she yanks the spear out of the floor and twists it around her wrist. “Finished warming up?”

Slowly, I laugh.

“Oh yes.”

I wait my turn, watching as Wren works on Evangeline’s face. One of her eyes is swollen shut, colored a black and sickly gray-purple that deepens with the passing minutes. The other eyelid twitches every few seconds. Some busted nerve. She huffs at me, shoulders rising and falling, then winces, pressing a bloody hand to her side.

“Stay still,” Wren mutters for the third time. She traces the side of Evangeline’s face, and the swelling recedes in her wake. “You broke a rib.”

Evangeline glares as best she can with one barely working eye. “Good fight, Barrow.”

“Good fight, Samos,” I answer with some difficulty. Between a split lip, the nose, and the bruised jaw, even talking stings. I have to lean, keeping my weight off my left ankle, which is steadily dripping blood from a neat gash above the knobbly exposed bone.

The three men stand back, giving us all the space we need to breathe.

Kilorn looks between Evangeline and me, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. And maybe fear. “Girls are weird,” he mutters to himself.

Tiberias and Ptolemus bob their heads, agreeing.

I think Evangeline is trying to wink. Or the twitch is worse than I thought. Maybe I’m exhausted from the fight, but I almost laugh. With her, not at her. The realization sobers me up, and the pulsing, electric feel of adrenaline starts to fade. I can’t forget who she is, and what her family has done to mine. Her brother, sitting just a few feet away, killed Shade. Robbed Clara of a father, Farley of a partner. Took a son from my mother and father. Stole a brother from me.

And I’ve tried to do the same.

Evangeline senses the shift in me, and her gaze drops, her face returning to carefully sculpted stone.

Wren Skonos is skilled: her skin-healer abilities restore Evangeline to fighting shape in a few minutes. The two young women contrast each other, Evangeline with her braided silver hair and pale skin, Wren with a long braid of gleaming jet hair cast over one bare blue-black shoulder. I don’t miss the way Ptolemus watches the skin healer as she finishes up with his sister. His eyes linger on her neck, her face, her collarbone. Not her fingers or her handiwork. It’s easy to forget he’s married to Elane. At least in name. Though I suppose his sister spends more time with his bride, while he spends his own with Wren. What a confusing family.

“Now you,” Wren says, gesturing for me to take Evangeline’s spot. The Samos princess stands, stretching out her newly healed abdomen with the grace of a cat.

I sit gingerly, wincing as I do.

“Big baby,” Kilorn chuckles.

In response, I grin aggressively, careful to show the new gap in my bloodstained teeth. He pretends to shudder.

Ptolemus laughs at the display, earning a glare from both of us.

“Something funny?” Kilorn sneers, stepping closer to the silver-haired man. My friend is too brave for his own good, with no regard for the magnetron prince who could cut him in two.

“Kilorn, I’ll be along in a second,” I cut in loudly, hoping to kill any conflict before it starts. I don’t fancy wiping Kilorn’s blood off the training floor. He glances at me, annoyed by my nannying, but I stay resolute. “It’s okay, go on.”

“Fine,” he grinds out, careful to glare back at Ptolemus as he walks away.

When the echo of his footsteps dies, Evangeline smoothly stands, her intentions clear. She barely smirks as she leaves us too, her brother in tow, and they head in a different direction. She glances over her shoulder. I catch her gaze as it flicks between me and Tiberias, who is still silent, hanging close. Hope flares in her eyes. It only makes my heart sink.

It’s a stupid plan, I want to say again.

Relief pulses from Wren’s fingers, soothing each aching muscle and blooming bruise. I shut my eyes, letting her prod and pull me in different directions. Wren is Sara Skonos’s cousin, a daughter of a noble house torn between two Calore kings. She served Maven before, working as my healer in Archeon. She watched me through those days. Kept me alive when the weight of Silent Stone would otherwise kill me. Kept my face and my body presentable for Maven’s broadcasts. Neither of us could predict where we would be today.

Suddenly, I don’t want the pain to go. It’s an easy distraction from the want in my heart. As Wren’s fingers dance along my jaw, stimulating bone growth to replace my lost tooth, I try not to picture Tiberias. But it’s impossible. He’s close enough to feel, the familiar warmth of him steady and constant.

Before, Evangeline said I was the difficult one. I think she’s wrong. If she trapped Tiberias and me in a room together, I’d probably snap.

And would that be so terrible?

“You blush a great deal.”

My eyes wrench open to see Wren hovering in front of my face, her full lips pursed. She blinks at me, her eyes the same stormy gray as Sara’s.

“It’s hot in here,” I reply.

Tiberias blushes too.

We walk in silence. The glass walls of Ridge House look out on flat darkness, the long, clean lights of the passages bouncing back at us. Our reflections keep pace, and I’m struck by the sight of us side by side. I never forget how tall he is, but this is a firm reminder of how ill suited we are. Despite the training session, the sweat still clinging to his skin, Tiberias is a prince born, descended from three centuries of kings. He was bred to be better than anyone else, and it shows.

I feel smaller than usual beside him. A dirty little speck of scars and heartache.

He feels my gaze and glances down. “So, New Town.”

Sighing, I brace myself for the discussion. “We need to do it,” I reply. “Not just for the war, but for us. Reds. The tech towns are little more than enslavement.” I’ve never set foot inside one, but I’ve seen Gray Town, a city of ash and smoke crowded onto the poisoned riverbank. I’ve seen Cameron’s neck and her brother’s, both harshly tattooed with their assigned place. Their “profession.” Their prison.

I intend to leave New Town and the other slums as little more than corpses. Empty, dead. Doomed to rot and disappear and be forgotten.

“I know,” Tiberias says softly, his voice tinged by blue regret. As I watch, his eyes darken. He knows what I’m really saying. If there were no crown between us, I would take his hand, kiss his shoulder. Thank him for even such a small display of support.

I bite my lip, blinking quickly to chase off the urge to touch. “I’ll need Cameron.”

Her name wakes him up. “Is she . . .”

“Alive?” I offer, letting the word echo off the tumbled stone of the passageway. It lingers, a question as much as a hope. “She has to be.”

He slows his pace. “Farley still hasn’t heard anything?”

“She will soon.”

The Scarlet Guard contingents in Piedmont, now converging on the Lowcountry to evacuate anyone who escaped the base, should have reports back in a matter of hours. And Ibarem should have more intelligence to relay when Rash gets to the other survivors. There is no realm of possibility where Cameron isn’t on the list. She’s too strong, too smart, and too damn stubborn to get herself killed.