ONE
Mare
I fight the urge to punch yet another wall. Pain radiates from my scarlet-marred knuckles all the way up my arm and my shoulder, not doing anything to dispel the thoughts plaguing my mind.
Cal chose his crown. More than that, he's chosen it over me. After swearing up and down for months that he didn't want it, the smallest promise of getting his kingdom back has lured him away from whatever I thought we had. He didn't choose me. He'll never choose me.
I wish the thought would hurt more. I wish I could bring myself to cry or scream or even punch the wall one more time. But I don't have any emotion left. All I have is the twinge of my abused hand and the sense of utter and complete emptiness. Between the battle, and Cal, and everything else that's happened to me in the past year, I'm simply drained.
"You're not saying anything," Farley states plainly, arms crossed over her chest. "Not like any of the Barrows to keep their mouths shut." Though her face is a mask of disinterest, I've known her long enough to recognize the slightest concern in her voice. It should infuriate me, but the lick of anger that shoots through me dies before I even really feel it.
"What am I supposed to say?" I mutter. When I said it in my mind, it came out as a haughty retort. Instead, it comes out flat. The muddy ground slops around my boots as I turn to slink back against the cool rock wall behind me. I can't meet Farley's gaze—not right now, not like this—so I cast my gaze down to the battered flesh of my hand.
I poke at one of the dark bruises, nearly black beneath the skin. The pain is biting, but momentary, and I barely have time to wince before it ebbs back into a dull ache. I wouldn't be surprised if I've fractured a bone or two. Maybe even broken one.
I'm reminded of Gisa's hand, after that chaotic day in Summerton, what feels like a lifetime ago. Her slim fingers, better suited to sewing than thieving, catching on a Silver's bag as she tried to rob them. To help me, I recall. To help steal the money Kilorn and I would need to pay Farley to escape conscription. Gisa's been healed since, as I'm sure I'll be soon enough. But I don't think the image of shattering bones and bruise-painted skin afterward will ever be purged from my mind.
"This alliance had to happen, Mare," Premier Davidson interjects, breaking me from my reverie with his patented calm tone. I meet his impassive gaze with a glare. How dare you lecture me on what had to happen? You don't know me. You don't get to talk to me right now. Ignoring the flurry of messages I try to convey through my eyes, Davidson just continues. "With the war in the Lakelands over, the King is finally able to dedicate his time and forces to defeating the Revolution. With a King on our side, the rightful King that Maven helped usurp, we will be more powerful than ever. And with the Reds and Newbloods and Silvers behind him? Tiberias will be undefeatable."
His name is Cal, I want to snap at the Premier. Tiberias is his father. But the words don't make it past my lips. I can't find it in me to fight for him right now.
"Fighting together," Davidson continues in his placating voice, "we can wipe Archeon off the map, and the boy king along with it."
Even the thought of Maven cuts through me, sharper than any blade of Evangeline Samos. After all he's done, the pain he's caused and the blood he's spilt, I want nothing more than to storm the capital and separate his twisted head from the rest of his body. I want to display it on a pike for all in the kingdom to see that true evil can be defeated.
But the Premier doesn't know Cal like I do. He doesn't know about our conversation, about Cal's musings on whether or not his brother could be fixed. If, by some miracle, someone could reverse the irreparable damage Elara inflicted on him growing up. Davidson wants Cal and Maven to kill each other. He doesn't know that Cal, for all his posturing and planning, can never hurt his brother if there is any chance that he doesn't have to. Even a miniscule chance. Even this fool's chance.
He believes Cal is a weapon to be wielded. He doesn't know that Cal will break with the Guard and go his own way the moment his needs aren't being met. But again, I don't tell Davidson my thoughts. I'm too exhausted. Instead, I simply shrug at him and drop my gaze. "Whatever."
To my side, Farley scoffs. Though motherhood has softened her at moments, I can tell she's getting fed up with my angsty teenager bullshit. I'm surprised she's tolerated it as long as she has, actually.
The Premier stares at me, awkwardly fidgeting with one hand. His lips work overtime, trying to form words before he can even figure out which he wants to say. In the end, he says nothing, as we are interrupted by subtle whoosh of air as Arezzo appears beside Davidson. Once, I might have jumped at the sudden intrusion. Now, I barely notice. So much time with Shade helped me in that regard.
My gaze falls on the teleporter's shaking hands and wide eyes as she reaches out and puts a hand on the Premier's shoulder. Her voice trembles as she speaks. "Sir. You're needed in Command."
He furrows a brow, a question forming on his lips. But, before he or anyone else can get a word out, both Arezzo and the Premier disappear. I'm left alone in the street with Farley. Both of us wait a moment before speaking, still processing what's just happened.
Farley takes a step in the direction from which we've come. "Come on. Let's go see what the fuss is all about. I'll be damned if the Princeling shuts me out of a meeting now that he's got his crown back."
She's already a good distance away before she realizes I haven't moved with her. She halts, turning back to me with a questioning gaze. "Mare?"
His crown. His crown. The words swirl in my head incessantly, taunting me, driving me as mad as the boy who currently wears the dreadful crown of fire and flames.
It was easy to label Maven as the evil brother the night he snatched that blasted piece of metal from his father's still-cooling silverblood. A child driven by a lust for power. Strength. It was easy to make him a villain. But right now, I can only think that Cal may be exactly the same, if not worse. A man promised the throne his whole life, only for his brother to steal it out from under him. He's vengeful. His bloodlust unmatched. If given the chance, would he be a better ruler than Maven? Worse? Or, in the worst of worse possibilities, could he be exactly the same?
"I wish I'd never met him," I mutter under my breath. I only realize I've spoken aloud when Farley cocks her head to the side in confusion.
She crosses her arms again and steps back toward me. "Cal?"
I nod. "Don't you think about it? How different the world would be if I had never come into the picture?" Maven had asked me something similar one day at Whitefire. The day I'd had the opportunity to drown him in the bath. The day I'd been too weak to end all of this. He'd asked me if I would take it all back. Going to the Palace, losing my brother, causing so much death. My answer had been easy then. No. So what's changed?
Cal, my mind taunts me. Cal's changed. I've felt true heartbreak, and it somehow hurts more than anything else I've endured so far.
Farley shrugs, though I can see her composure slipping. She's pissed at me for even thinking about this. Join the club. "Dwelling on the past is pointless, Mare. We can't change what happened. And even if we could, nothing that's happened is entirely on you. This revolution would have happened with or without you."
"Maybe," I acknowledge, leaning my pulsing head back against the wall and shutting my eyes against the beaming sun above. Exhaustion and the migraine poking needles into my brain make my bones feel like nothing more than dead limbs on the winter trees back in the Stilts. "But not with the Newbloods."
Farley pauses, considering this. To my surprise, she doesn't argue. "You're right. We would have built our forces, but never enough. It would have been a bloodbath. Especially for the Reds. Without you, without the Newbloods, no one would have thought any sort of revolution possible."
Tears prick my eyes, though I don't know if it's from sheer emotion, the throb in my head, the biting ache in my hand, or all three working together against me. "Do you ever wonder if maybe it would have been for the best?"
The ugly question hangs stagnant in the air for a moment, neither of us willing to touch it immediately. Eventually, Farley tries. "You don't mean–"
"I mean," I cut her off, "that a lot less blood would be running in the streets of Norta, of the entire continent, right now if I'd never gotten that job at the palace. If I'd never gone looking for a way out of conscription."
Farely bristles at the insinuation. She's the one who gave us the astronomical price for escaping conscription. I guess in her mind, by blaming that for all our troubles, I'm also blaming her. I'm not, but I don't get the chance to explain before she's doling out her words, each sentence like another blow. "If you'd never gone looking, you'd be dead by now. Kilorn too, probably. The boy's great at fishing and talking, but not exactly fighting. Not to mention the dozens of other Red soldiers, murdered every day on the front lines."
"Are they any better off now?" I shoot back. "Look around. Blood flows in rivers all around us. It's everywhere. That's all I see anymore is blood. We kill them. They kill us in retaliation. It doesn't even matter where it started anymore. It's blood for blood for blood for blood until we're all bled dry. Red and Silver." I take a breath, recomposing myself. I hadn't meant to say this much, especially not to Farley. But it's been a thought dragging on my mind for far longer than I care to admit. "We know the price being paid. But what's the cost? The real cost?" I open my eyes to look at her. Anger, confusion, and a deep, profound disappointment fight for dominance on her face. "Do we fight to make sure that everyone knows loss equally? So no one goes to sleep at night without fearing to not see the dawn the next morning? You can't tell me you don't think about what life would be if I'd never fallen into Queenstrial."
"I try to focus more on the here and now, the people I've sworn to protect and fight for, instead of moping about," she retorts, her calm façade from earlier quickly melting into nonexistence.
"I'm sorry," I scoff. "Are you saying that you haven't noticed that, even after all the bloodshed, we're headed straight back to square one here? Cal on the throne? Silvers in charge, or completely wiped out. Neither side even considering a happy medium."
"Mare–"
"No, you know what?" I continue, so far gone, I don't even care anymore. "Forget all of that. Forget the Reds and the Silvers and the Newbloods for five seconds. Think of yourself. If I'd never met Cal, Shade would be alive." His name sticks in my throat, but I continue anyway. "Clara would have a father, and you'd be happy, no matter the war's outcome." I shrug, shoulders and head growing ever heavier with the headache eating at the base of my skull. "Tell me I'm wrong."
Farley's contemplative grimace twists into a positively feral snarl, and it is at this moment that I realize how monumentally I have overstepped. She stalks across the street to me, looking like a woman possessed. She pulls me forward by my good arm, so harshly I fear she might dislocate my shoulder, and slaps me clear across the face.
I stifle a gasp as the crack resonates through the empty streets of Corvium. Farley may not be Silver, not a strongarm with muscles of steel, but her blow still sends me staggering backward. I bring my uninjured hand up to my face, the touch cool against the hot blood flowing to the handprint burning on my cheek. When I finally meet her eyes with my own incredulous stare, her lips are set in a thin line and her eyes shoot daggers through me.
"How dare you." She doesn't shout. She doesn't need to. Her quiet, perfect articulation is lethal. "Shade gave his life for this cause. Because that's who he was. If this particular chain of events hadn't happened, he'd still probably be dead sooner or later because that's just who he was. Same as me." She gestures to the scars on her face, stark in the harsh sunlight. "I wear my scars, even knowing a healer could take them away, even knowing that they're not the prettiest, because I earned them. Because I am a fighter and, like Shade, I would die for this cause. That's who I am."
I gulp, suddenly cotton mouthed. I want to speak, to tell her I understand, that I'm sorry. Where I can't find the words to interject, Farley seems to steal my diction for herself and continue. "And Cal is taking that crown because it's who he is. He may be kind, and brilliant, and decent looking. But, stars above, Mare, he's a Prince. A Silver Prince. It's who he has always been, whether you've forgotten or not. The crown of Norta is what he's been working for his entire life. It's his birthright. And as much as you want this to be some pretty little fantasy world where the boy sacrifices everything for the girl, it's not going to happen. Because Cal knows, in his heart, who he is, Mare."
She pauses, features softening as the tension in her shoulder seeps from her muscles. She reaches out to touch and I almost flinch, before I realize she's just reaching for my hand. "I know it hurts right now. It hurts like a bitch, because you really did love him." Love. I bristle at the word. Of course I loved him. I'd admitted as much to him. But it was so much stranger to hear someone else say it. "But you can't give up everything about yourself chasing after him. He knows who he is," she reiterates, squeezing my hand. "But do you know who you are, Mare Barrow?"
No. The answer pops into my head immediately, much to my despair. I am only eighteen years old. I've spent the better part of the past year trying to save everyone I care about, and trying to save the world from falling into ruin in the meantime. I've trusted people and I've been betrayed. I thought I knew people, thought I knew what drove them, only to find out that my instincts could not be more wrong. And now, staring into Farley's eyes, hearing her question, I wonder if all that pain and confusion is because I don't know myself at all.
Her words still echo in my mind when a runner dashes around the corner, nearly tripping over his own two feet as he approaches Farley. Not a Newblood, but rather a Red soldier. Judging by the sun embroidered on the sash around his wrist, he's one of Farley's men. Well, a boy, really. He can't be more than sixteen. Farley catches him by the arm as he tries to stop, slipping in the mud. "Coulson," she acknowledges him. "What's wrong?"
Coulson coughs, still trying to reign in his breathing. "Command, ma'am." I think I catch a glimmer of irritation in Farley's eyes at the moniker, but it's gone before I can be sure it was anything more than a trick of the light. "They need you in Command."
"What's going on?"
The boy's eyes fall on me, but flick back to Farley almost instantly. "The king," he stutters. "There's a broadcast."
"He's on the screen more than he's on his throne lately. What's different about this speech?"
Again, Coulson's gaze shifts to me, an accusatory glare flaring behind cool grey. "It's not just a speech."
The door to the administrative tower is ajar when we reach it. Premier Davidson, Colonel Farley, Queen Anabel, and the entire Samos family await us. And Cal, of course. Only Evangeline seems to notice our arrival, which she acknowledges with a short dip of her head in my direction before nailing her eyes back to the video screen which enraptures the room's other occupants.
Maven's familiar features do, in fact, grace the screen. Harsh shadows below his eyes—the ones so like his mother's—age him, making him seem far older than just seventeen. The crown of flames, that cursed piece of metal that everyone seems so obsessed with, weighs down his carefully styled curls. But he does not seem weighted. He seems strangely happy.
He speaks animatedly from a podium, though the frame is too cropped for me to tell anything about where he is, other than the fact that he certainly isn't at Whitefire. Still, the lights, the pale white color of the vaulted walls and ceilings behind him tickle the edges of my memory with a vague sense of recognition.
"What's he doing?" I ask the deathly silent room. Cal is the only one to even notice my words. He tears his gaze away from the video screen to meet mine, searching for something in my eyes. An answer, I guess. Resolution. Something to say that we're okay after our fight. Subtly, I shake my head at him. This isn't the time. Farley's right. Cal has his duty, his life. And I have mine.
"Just watch," Davidson mutters. In his hands, he holds a smaller video screen. A flick of his wrist brings the volume on the larger screen up, and Maven's voice fills the space.
"Even in the face of betrayal, Norta is strong as ever," he announces, to the cheers of thousands. The way the sound echoes brings forward flashes of memories from the not so distant past, but I can't put two and two together. I'm too distracted by the words befalling the little King's mouth. "We rise, ever more powerful."
The camera pulls back slightly, allowing the person beside him to come into view. Iris Cygnet. Princess of the Lakelanders and now, Queen of Norta. Maven's wife. Like the first time I met her, she does not wear the dripping jewels or ostentatious clothing of a courtier. Rather, she wears a simple light blue gown, tied with a garish sash of red and black around her waist. A crown of golden flames interspersed with sapphires in the shape of water droplets adorns her dark hair. Though I try not to notice, my eyes also fall to the wedding band on her finger.
Cal's voice cuts through the room. "Who the hell is that?"
"Your new sister-in-law," Ptolemus sneers.
"The Lakelands and Norta stand now, united as one," Maven continues, gripping Iris's hand. It's not the awkward touch he occasionally shared with Evangeline, but it's also not the comforting touch he shared with me. It's political, kind. But not loving. "And together, I give you my word that every last member of the Scarlet Guard will be hunted down and destroyed within the year. Soon, the peace we've worked to create will no longer be threatened by these terrorists!"
The crowd cheers, and suddenly the room around is stifling. This time, I can't tell if it's Cal's doing, or my own lungs failing me.
"And, my dear people, I assure you," Maven adds when the crowd dies down a little. He turns to the camera with a fierce expression, one not meant for anyone around him, or anyone else that may be watching. His look cuts through the screen directly into me, as if he stands only a few feet away. Whatever is about to happen, it's for me and me alone. "I am nothing if not a man of my word."
Maven claps, shattering the moment. I have to force myself not to jump at the sudden intrusion on our moment. "But enough talk. Let's get to it. The real reason you've all tuned in today." The camera cuts from Maven's close-up to an all too familiar sight that sets my teeth on edge. Judging from the tension in Cal's shoulders, I can tell he recognizes the arena as well.
When I lived in the Stilts, arenas full of people were a weekly occurrence. Feats in which Silvers fought each other with abilities helped to keep would-be rebels from hoping and dreaming of ever defeating the Silver elite. But this isn't any arena. It's the Bowl of Bones. And this is no ordinary Feat. "The Scarlet Guard may soon be extinct, but to the Newbloods only, who I've welcomed into my home, who have betrayed both myself and the country, I provide these small mercies."
On one side of the arena, from a doorway I recognize intimately, a man steps forward, an Arven Silent ghosting behind him. One hand grips a shiny sword, while a few inches above, his wrists are wrapped in familiar Silent Stone manacles. I vaguely remember him from my time at Whitefire. But he's not a lord of one of the High Houses. He's not even Silver. He is one of Maven's Newblood recruits. A Wrecker, I remember. Like Nix or Damarian, with virtually indestructible skin. A feeling of dread pools in my stomach and I pull into myself as the realization dawns on me. The change in posture does not go unnoticed by Farley, who glances from me back to the screen with an increased sense of anxiety.
A woman around my mother's age enters from the other side of the Bowl of Bones, looking small in her ill-fitting armor. The small battle ax weighs her tiny arms down more than the manacles or the Arven woman behind her. Her familiar features are another slap in the face. Her, I certainly remember. Halley. She'd been a servant for an Eagrie family. I was there the day she came before Maven and showed us her ability–detecting the abilities of other. It was this ability that allowed her to expose Nanny, the shapeshifting Newblood Cal had sent to court to keep tabs on me. Nanny had chosen the Scarlet Guard's way out and swallowed a suicide pill before she could be interrogated, much to Maven's dismay. The memory makes me shudder.
Maven's threats from months ago wander back into my mind. While I stayed at Whitefire, the Newbloods I helped lure there would be safe. Cared for like the soldiers Maven wanted to turn them into. But if I went against him, fought him, they wouldn't be so lucky.
I didn't just leave. I escaped, along with fifty other Newbloods, and the entire Samos family. I'd humiliated him on his wedding day, of all days. And now, with his second defeat at Corvium, he's facing an uprising. Watching the video screen now, it seems that he hasn't exactly turned the other cheek. He knows what he's doing. And somehow, though I'm not sure how, he knows I'm watching. He knows how much this will hurt me.
"Lords Arven, if you please," Maven says in a booming voice, gesturing to the two Newbloods' Silent guards. They follow his cue, backing out of the arena and leaving the two terrified Reds alone to face each other. The guards don't, I notice with a lurch of nausea, remove the Silent Stone manacles.
"I don't understand." Farley squints at the screen in confusion. "If it's an arena fight between Newbloods, why does he leave the manacles on?"
"Because it's not just a fight," I answer in barely more than a whisper.
Cal inclines his head in my direction, nodding without looking at me. "It's an execution."
No one answers. We can only watch. Everyone in the room is painfully aware of just how far away from the capital we are. How useless we are to stop this.
Along the wall of the arena, dozens of Silvers step forward. Judging from the colors emblazoned on their uniforms, and the fact that they all wear the same face, they—rather, he—hails from House Tyros. Clones. But they don't attack. They merely seem to guard the exits, ready to stop any attempt at escape.
"Begin," Maven bellows. The Bowl of Bones surges with the cheers of thousands of Silvers. Both Halley and the Wrecker hesitate, staying where they are in confusion. Even from here, I can see the tremors running through them. I did this. My words brought them to Archeon. And my escape put them in this prison of death.
The moments of inactivity in the arena are broken by a sudden flurry of activity as both the Newbloods fall to their knees, choking and clutching at their throats. Among the sea of Tyros faces appear two tall Silvers with dark skin and equally dark eyes, clad in the blue uniforms. Lakelands windweavers. The ones who survived or didn't make it to the battle at Corvium only a few hours ago. Maven certainly is quick on his feet, I'll give him that.
Maven waves a hand at the Lakelanders, and they release Halley and the Wrecker instantly, allowing the air they've stolen back into their lungs. Both champions collapse into the fine sand.
"Come now," Maven condescends to them, as if they are nothing more than stubborn children refusing to listen to reason. "Play nicely. This does not have to be the end. For one of you at least," he adds with a cruel, cold smirk.
My heart sinks as his words rattle me. Small mercies, he'd said.
Cal was wrong. We both were. This isn't an execution. It's so much worse.
This is a fight to the death. And there can be only one winner.
There will be no martyr tonight. No Red blood spilt by the unmatched Silvers. This won't be ammunition against the elite, as the executions of the old days may once have been. This is different. The only Red blood spilled tonight will be drawn by another Red. Newblood versus Newblood.
The Feats of First Friday delighted in shedding Silver blood to show us that we were inferior beings. To keep us in our place. But now, with this little show, Maven has unlocked an even worse way of smothering the rebellion, one that replaces the all-too-valuable Silver blood with the disposable crimson blood that flows in our veins. His message speaks volumes, even without him speaking a word.
Even with abilities, even with power, we will always be Red. We will always be disposable. We will always be inferior. Tonight, one Red will die, and one will walk out of the arena alive, if only in body. As I turn to leave the administration building, I wonder which would be worse. To die at the hands of someone you thought was your friend? Or to be the one forced to take that life, and then live with it for the rest of your own existence?