(/Mare/)

I launched into a brief set of jabs at Shade, forcing him toward the back wall of the train car. He dodged them artfully, and when he dropped into a crouch to sweep his leg and take my feet out from underneath me, I leaped over that. I landed gracefully on my toes and then pushed him back further. He changed his angle slightly though, and after that, we were fighting along the wall, which mean I could only swing with my weak left side. That was painfully obviously in this position too. I tried to take a step to the side but he pinned me back with a quick punch that I deflected.

"Have you and Evangeline talked about everything?" I asked, my breath coming in pants as I dodged his next punch. He chuckled softly, the sound lost in his own heavy breathing. "I don't know, have you and Cal talked about everything?"

"Touché." I replied as I blocked his kick and then somersaulted out into the open. He followed quickly, pushing me toward the open box car door. We'd opened it to allow fresh air, and a cool breeze in while we were fighting. I danced along the edge of the doorframe for a moment before side stepping again to find space. He smiled at me and then said, "You two need to figure that out soon."

"I would say the same to you." I grunted as he slipped inside my defenses. Growling I spun out of my position, and then dropped and came up behind him, placing a hand to his back and delivering a soft shock. He yelped at the sensation, and then stumbled forward. I smirked at that and then crossing my arms I said, "Besides, we'll talk about it when we're ready."

He glanced back at me and then shrugged and sank down against the wall to rest. Apparently the use of my ability had been forgiven and forgotten. He looked up at me from his position and then asked hesitantly, "What do you want out of that conversation Mare?"

I raised my brow and then shrugging as well, I glanced out at the rolling land. It was beautiful in spring, covered in gorgeous trees and thick forests. I hadn't lied when I said I could imagine living out here. "I'm not entirely sure."

He frowned at that response and then leaning his head back against the wall to look up at the roof of the car, he asked, "So you are just going to ignore it until it becomes an even bigger problem?"

Trying not show how much his question bothered me, I turned to grab a drink of water. He watched me carefully though, that brotherly concern that he had always had still present, even after all this time. It feels like it's been forever since we were just two kids in the Stilts, hiding out in abandoned homes, pretending we had a future. Here we are though, alive and striving toward a future neither of us could have predicted. Neither of us had been prepared for Cal or Evangeline to come along, but they had, and now the four of us had been ensnared by fate. We had been bound to one another for eternity, and whether it was for a life under the dirt, or as members of the living, none of us were sure.

The door into the car opened, and we turned to see Farley framed in the doorway, her hair whipping around as she announced, "We're approaching the drop point. You two need to get ready."

I nodded, and then glancing at Shade, I turned on my heel to leave. He scrambled up and grabbed my arm though, and pulling me close he insisted, "Promise me you'll talk to Cal, that the two of you will figure all of this out."

I glance down at the iron grip he has on my arm, and then looking up again, I nod carefully, the movement is so small though, that I think he misses it. I don't think when I pull away and follow Farley back into our car. The others are gathered around the map that Farley has spread out on the floor. Cal sits directly behind it, looking it over while telling Julian directions to write down. Sara sits with Evangeline, speaking quietly with her while she examines the young silver woman. I watch the scene form the doorway for a moment, imagining Evangeline a few months from now, holding a bundle of blankets while my brother dotes over the two of them. It's a hard thing to picture, simply because I could never imagine Evangeline holding a child.

Farley brushes passed me, and then settles in next to Cal. The two of them bow their heads together and start debating strategy. Should we take the ten-mile hike around the Choke, or should we try and cut across it somehow? I'd elect to never go near it, but it would cut our time in half if we go through it instead of around it. If we could go through though, we risk being killed, or worse caught. If they catch us, there is not telling what could happen. Most likely we'd be dragged back to Archeon to be put at Samson's nonexistent mercy. I doubt it would take long for him to determine what to do with Evangeline, worse yet, is the picture of what her family would do to my brother. In their eyes, he has violated her, soiled a perfect daughter. They're skin him alive for it, regardless of whether or not Evangeline is happy. That baby will be killed for so much as existing, and its body would be added to the piles of children that had been killed at the Choke and for other reasons. Something in me rebelled against the picture of a tiny infant that looked like Shade being tossed into a dark mass grave like the ones they supposedly dig in the Choke. I will not let anything happen to that baby, no matter what it costs me.

Maggie hurries over to me, his hair laced with intricate braids, and her eyes shining as she announces, "We're almost there, Cal says it won't be long before we have to get off the train, Mare!"

"I know, I heard." I reply casually, before steering her back toward the others. Shade closes the door behind him as he enters, and seeing Evangeline, makes his way to her immediately. She smiles up at him, her cheeks flushed with some emotion or another, before gesturing to the spot next to her. I pass by them, my lips curling up in the slightest of smiles at how comfortable they are with one another. I wish for a moment that the country could see this, could see how easy it could be, if only we realized that we weren't that different after all.

Cal glances up at me, before giving me a tight grin. He looks tired, and his eyes are a little empty today. He must have spoken with Maven again, and judging by that emptiness in his eyes, it wasn't a good conversation. I skitter the circle of people looking over the map, and then settle down on Cal's other side. His hand slides along my lower back, the touch chaste and yet passionate at the same time. His touch sends shivers down my spine, and I can't help but smile as I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. If he knows the effect he has on me, he doesn't show it. He remains focused on his map, his eyes scanning for every possibility. He runs numbers in his head, and calculates risk versus reward. He was built for this, for war, for strategy. I can't help but think that perhaps, if he had been born a different man, the world might have been a very different place. Maybe his heart would have been with the Guard from the start, maybe he would have joined up on his own choice earlier. Maybe he would have lead us to victory sooner.

I shake those thoughts away though. I shake away the shadow of a man clothed in bright red, like flame with the sun framing him as he leads us toward that horizon, toward the future. I can't lose focus now, I have to be focused, have to be thinking about the present, not what could be or what might have been. There is no time for those things.

Farley runs her fingertip along a small stream that meets a larger river and eventually one of the massive lakes inside of the Lakelander border. She speaks to no one in particular when she says, "A squadron from Trial will be waiting for us when we cross the border. They're job is to see us safely across and then to Trial."

"They can't cross over though and meet us at the drop point?" I ask, thinking it might be nice to have an escort through the massive ten mile hike we will have to take. She shrugs and then replies, "They don't have orders to do so. Besides, they assume we are capable enough to get ourselves over the border and to them."

"It might be nice to have more men, more people to keep an eye out so that we can keep an eye on Maven." Cal murmurs as he traces a different path, one that is slightly straighter than Farley's and that brushes the borders of the Choke. He's a man of military strategy, and he's not afraid to dance on the edge of a battlefield. In his eyes, going around is just pointless, when we could go straight through. It would be a bad idea though, what with the expanse of the Choke just one massive open field with nothing but trenches. We wouldn't even make it half way across before we got shot.

The group falls to silence when Cal brings up our prisoner. What we were going to do with him? As far as plans go, we didn't really have one, and although Cal and I had discussed what might happen, we hadn't truly thought about it. Maven's death would mean an end to my nightmares, but it would mean the true death of Cal's brother. Any effort to save him would be lost, and I knew that in his heart of hearts, all Cal wanted to do was save his brother.

"We're going to have to make do with what we have." Farley says as she picks the map up and folds it, ending that conversation and the thoughts it brings up before those things can even being. Cal glances up at her heatedly though, and then says, "We're not going to be able to get him across the Choke without someone seeing him and engaging us."

"Which is why we're going around the Choke and not through it." Farley states coolly, an ice to counter Cal's fire. He doesn't back down though; in fact, her challenge only seems to ignite his anger further. Standing up to face her, he says, "It's quicker to go through the Choke, even if we just cut across the edge of it."

"But we risk getting caught," Farley replies, gripping the map tightly between her fingers like it's a towel and she can wring the water out of it. Although Farley is always willing to listen to both sides of a fight, I can tell she does not want to hear Cal's, and I know why too. His plan is risky, and it calls for stealth that we just don't have right now. He'd be putting our lives at risk just to get us across a little faster. I can understand her point of view as well, and as much as it worries me to disagree with Cal's tactically trained mind, I'd rather go around and take the extra time.

"She's right Cal. We can't afford to get caught. Besides, as much as Evangeline protests, she's in no state to get into a hand to hand combat situation."

Sure enough the Magnetron bristles as my comment, and then opens her mouth to argue. Shade wraps an arm around her shoulders though and says cautiously, "Mare's right. If we get caught, or surrounded, you're in no state to engage people. You'd put yourself and the baby in danger."

She glares at him and then says heatedly, "I don't need you to coddle me. I can handle a battle."

Cal gestures to Evangeline as if she just proved his point, only to turn and stare in surprise when she says, "As much as it irritates me to say, I agree, though. I'd rather go around." Her hand caresses her stomach for a second, and she doesn't need to say anything else. She won't put her baby in danger, and for that reason, she'd rather make the extra trek. Farley squares her shoulders at Evangeline's comment, and stuffing the map in the pocket of her jacket she declares, "It's decided then, we'll be going around."

I glance at Cal hesitantly, but his jaw is only set tightly. That is the only sign that he's upset with the decision though. He turns his back and cross the car to gather up his things, and I follow him slowly. I crouch down to help him roll up the blankets, but he pulls them away from me and does it himself. I bristle in annoyance and then whisper, "Don't be angry, she's right."

"It's quicker if we go through. The more time we take to get there, is just more time for Maven to plot."

"You don't really think that Cal." I accuse, as I watch him shove things into his bag. His brows knit together at the comment, and his skin flushes pale. Whether it's from anger at my insinuation, or embarrassment at the fact that I called him out, I can't tell. In the end though, he sits back to look at me. He doesn't say anything, and the two of us just sit in that borderline painful silence for a few heartbeats. His eyes soften first, but only after I raise my chin slightly to match his pointed stare. When his expression does finally loosen, he drops his eyes and says softly, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get that angry."

I almost stand and walk away, almost leave him like that, instead I swallow my pride and cross my arms in response. "You were willing to risk Evangeline and her baby to make it across the Choke a few hours faster?"

"No, I…" He pauses, knowing what I already know. Anything he says would have been a lie, because the truth is that he wasn't thinking about Evangeline and the baby. He was thinking about our need to get across quickly. Caution be damned, my brother's baby be damned, so long as we crossed that border. When my expression doesn't change, he squeezes his hands into fists and says stiffly, "I would have done everything my power to protect her and the baby, you have to know that."

"Then you have to know that I don't think you were even thinking about my brother's child." If we're being honest with each other, then we're going to be completely honest. He should be able to take it, and if he couldn't then he was letting his emotions about Maven cloud his judgement. I wasn't about to trade my brother, Evangeline, or that baby's life for Maven Calore's. He had to know that, he had to know that their lives meant so much more to me now. Maven had been a nightmare that haunted my dreams, but now that we had him in our clutches, I didn't have those nightmare's anymore. I had finally realized how much energy I had expelled hating him, and fearing him, and it had been too much. My energy was better spent protecting my brother's future, and the little family he was going to have soon. He'd been through enough hell that he deserved it, and I was going to do everything in my power to make sure that they came out of this war unscathed.

Cal sighs at my comment and then sits down with his arms resting on his bent knees. He watches me for a few seconds and then says softly, "I'm sorry. I never meant to put them in danger Mare."

"But you were going to, consequences be damned," he opens his mouth to argue, and I cut him off before he has a chance to, "This is my brother's one shot at happiness, I'm not going to watch him crumble when it's lost."

"And what about us, what about our happiness?" He asks heatedly. My hackles raise, but he doesn't let me speak, just like I hadn't let him speak a few seconds ago. "What happened to running away and living in the county side? Is that just another dream to throw into the ashes, Mare?"

Bowing my head, I collect my thoughts and try to keep from spitting something horrendous at him. I could lash out and ask the same thing of him, but then I would just be fighting fire against his own. I would only get burned then, and I didn't want to push him away just yet.

"It's just a dream Cal, and we're getting too old for fairy tales." I stand up then, deciding that even though my comment had been bitter, and had probably pushed him away anyways, it was the better thing to say. I could have said something much worse and crushed him for good, but I wouldn't' do that, I never could. I loved him too much to destroy him. I walk back toward Farley and the others, never once looking over my shoulder, even though it burns me not to do so.

(/)

The pine needles of the forest we trudge through crunch under my boots, and I try to ignore the sound that I can't help. It grates on my nerves though, because it's just one more little imperfection in my life right now. I watch the back of Cal's head as he and Farley led our small party around the Choke. Next to me, Maven tries to hide his limp as he keeps pace with me. There would be no falling behind for him, especially now. If he tried to leave, a Red on the front lines might shoot him, or a Silver soldier from the Lakelands would. There was no escape for him at this point, and he seemed to have finally realized that. His eyes were constantly shifting, dancing over the shadows that the evening sun was creating around us. It would be dark in a couple of hours, but by then we would be at the border, and we would finally be able to hand him over to Command.

"Trouble in paradise?" Maven asks innocently when he notices the heated glance I throw in Cal's direction when he looks back at me. Huffing at his intrusion into my personal affairs, I reply, "None that concerns you."

He shrugs and then glancing back at Evangeline as he says, "If you and my brother are going to go to blows, I want to be as far away as possible to avoid being collateral damage."

"Why do you care so much anyway? I figured you would be happy that we're in the middle of this." I grumble as I glance through the expanse of trees, keeping an eye out for any soldiers. His dark chuckle pulls me back though and with a smirk he says smoothly, "Don't flatter yourself Mare. All I wanted was for you to be in my possession. I didn't want you to love you, or to have you as anything more than a companion."

"A companion?" I snort, he certainly hadn't been acting like that in Archeon when he had separated me and Cal after he'd demonstrated exactly what he wanted to do with that serum. He'd practically been crawling across the floor to grovel at my feet and beg me to stay. All of that for a possession, I think, disgusted for a moment by the whole thing. To think that once upon a time, I had thought the young man next to me could feel love, and that he had loved me.

"Do you feel anything at all?" I ask, not bothering to hide the disgust in my tone. He doesn't even flinch at it though, in fact, his lips curl up in a dark smile as he turns to me and replies quietly, dangerously, like a storm brewing on the horizon, "We are products of our making Mare."

My blood runs cold as he speaks, there, the ghost of his mother haunts his eyes as he turns to look ahead once more. I reach down and set my hand on my pistol, jumpy now that his mood seems to have taken a very sudden turn. "And what are you a product of?" I ask quietly, hoping the others are not listening to this conversation.

His head tilts to the side, and he gives me a pitying glance, as if it's pathetic that I haven't figured out the answer to that question. "My mother of course," he says like a cat toying with its prey, "just as Cal is a product of our father, and you are a product of the streets, and Evangeline is a product of a mother and father who had a daughter just so they could try and get their hands on the crown."

My skin crawls again, and I glance over my shoulder at the Magnetron behind me, who is carefully picking her way across the landscape, avoiding roots and holes as she talks quietly with Shade. I couldn't imagine having been born to simply marry someone. She had been born to marry Cal though, a woman bred to sit on a throne beside him. I shiver at the thought, and at the future that could have been. It would have been a future of iron and fire, shaping Norta into a blade for war.

Without even realizing what I'm asking, I breathe, "Was any of it real?"

His brow lifts for a moment, the movement so practiced and perfect, it's almost unsettling. "You'd be disappointed to hear that I do not know." He replies after a few seconds of silence, his eyes growing cold and distant as he looks ahead again. In front of us, Farley has peeled off from Cal to scan the trees to the left of us, which might be harboring an ambush. We pause while we wait for her, and I glance at Cal for a moment, thinking about how certain he is in everything he says and does.

"How can you not know?" I ask, dumbfound that he doesn't know how he came to be the way he is.

"When you live with a mother as a whisperer, you are never alone in your own head Mare," he sneers when he sees me throw him a quiet glance, and continues coolly, "I don't expect any pity from you, nor do I want any. Besides, everything my mother did was to make me stronger, and she succeeded."

A product of his mother indeed, he knew exactly what to say to please me. He had known me impossibly well two years ago. Not so much now. I was not the naïve girl that had fallen into the middle of Queenstrial anymore, I was an entirely different person, broken and reshaped under his betrayal. Maybe two years ago I would have felt pity for the shadow, but now, I saw what the shadow harbored, what secrets lurked beneath the surface. I'd seen the monster beneath the mask, and now, I was determined to destroy both of them before they destroyed me.

"She made you a monster," I whisper, the thought of what having Elara at his back would have done if she had remained alive this long while he was king made me almost sick to my stomach. I could almost see the mounds of bodies that would have piled up on both sides, the chess pieces thrown off the board haphazardly as the two of them struck us down one by one. If we weren't careful though, Samson would do exactly that too.

He chuckles at my statement and then replies simply, "Monsters make the best Kings though Mare."

I blink in confusion; my idea of the king Cal would be clashing instantly with the idea of what Maven is inferring. A monster with claws sitting on the throne, sending children to die was not what I pictured when I thought of a king anymore. No, now, I pictured a boy with icy blue eyes, and a feral smile, sitting back idly as he burned the country to the ground. But I refuse to believe that that is the best option. I square my shoulders, prepared to die on this hill, and defend my notion. "And why is that?"

If anything, my bolstering only seems to amuse him. With a dark, silky voice, he replies, "Because you can't have heart and sit on a throne, one or the other gives out eventually. Usually it's the heart," he glances at Cal then, as if to prove his point. My eyes follow his and I tense as I picture the High Houses coming back with a vengeance and tearing Cal apart like the wolves they are. Maven had once told me that Cal wouldn't even make it past his wedding night. I hadn't doubted it back then, but then again, I hadn't known Cal the way I do now. I set my jaw tightly, refusing to back down, and then say stiffly, "You're wrong."

"For my brother's sake, I hope you're right."

Farley returns then, her gun resting at her side, and her expression neutral. Apparently we were safe to move on. She glances at Cal though and says, "I caught sight of a patrol passing through. They're running parallel to us, so I doubt we'll run into them, but I don't want to take the chance."

Cal nods, and then glancing at me quickly, he says, "We'll wait for them to pass then. No point in getting caught now when we're so close."

Evangeline sinks onto a tree root in response and starts to massage her knees, which I had noticed were starting to swell. Sara sinks down next to her and starts to go about taking the swelling down as much as she can. Evangeline thanks her quietly, her expression softening as Shade sinks into a crouch next to her and offers her the canister of water. Maggie comes along with Julian at the back, walking across a fallen tree while asking Julian questions about the colors of the sky as they start to shift with the setting sun.

"We need to keep moving," Evangeline says after Sara finished with her knees. She glances up at Cal then and says, "We shouldn't be out here after dark. It may be spring, but it will be cold, and we don't have enough provisions to make it one more night out here."

Cal seems to think about this for a little bit, and then glancing at Farley he asks, "How far away from us where they?"
"I'd say a good hundred yards. They were moving slow though. They're combing the forest for runaways." Farley replies before dropping her pack to the ground and sinking down to rest for a second as well. Maggie hops off of her tree and then stepping up next to me, she asks hesitantly, "Can I help at all?"

"I don't think so," Cal states as he shifts his pack and then glances at the trees as if he can see through them and find the group of soldiers moving through the trees. "We have at most another two miles, and maybe thirty minutes until its completely dark out here. The longer we are out in these woods, the harder it will be for the party to see us when we arrive at the border."

"Then we should go now." Farley says as she stretches her long legs in front of her. She turns her eyes to Evangeline and then asks, "Are you ready to move forward? We will have to move faster."

Evangeline's lips draw in a tight line at the implication that she is not ready to move and then standing she says, "I can move as fast as any of you. Let's go." She starts forward then, pushing past Cal to lead the way. Shade sighs behind me and then stands and follows her. He quickens his pace to match hers, and the rest of us have no choice but to hurry after them to catch up.

After another ten minutes, Maggie starts to get tired. She stumbles a little more, her young legs not exactly used to this much walking and running. Cal pauses next to her, and I pause a little bit ahead of them. The shadows of the trees bend around them, warping their figures in the dim light. It's starting to get harder to see, and I have to squint to make their more intricate details out. Cal crouches down to Maggie's height, obviously about to lift her up onto his shoulders or back so that the trip is a little quicker.

As he goes down though, I see the flash of a different color among the trees behind him. Bright blue, like a jaybird in spring, is the color that passes in the bushes near Cal. I blink for a second, thinking my eyes are playing tricks on me in the low light, but then I see another flash of blue, this time on the other side of them. We're standing in a creek bed, masking out sent from dogs by marching through a small creek. But above us, I see more blue, everywhere I look there is blue, royal blue, sky blue, blue, blue, blue. My heart accelerates in my chest t the beat of that word in my mind, and I glance at Cal to choke, "Cal…"

He looks up, confusion written on his face. He's taken his pack off so that he can put Maggie on his back, but when he sees my eyes, he follows them. He's trained to known those uniforms, and the color drains from his face until I can see the black smudges under his eyes. Without a second to spare then, he throws his bag on, pulls Maggie into his arms and shouts, "Ambush! Ambush!"

The others stop ahead, but he breaks into a sprint, and I catch up just as the bullets start flying. Shade has his arms around Evangeline before she can even inhale in surprise, and they disappear. I throw up a shield of lightning, and the bullets slam into it, melting until they run down my shield like rivers silver blood. Farley is at the lead, returning fire into the trees to give us cover as we start sprinting for the border. How the Lakelander soldiers crossed, I have no idea. The Nortian patrol should have seen them before we did, but here we are, running for our lives again.

Next to me, Cal throws up a wall of fire behind us, and when I glance over my shoulder I see why. Not only are their Lakelander soldiers above us and surrounding us, there are Nortian one's behind us. Silver's that must have been tracking us for miles. At this point, there is no time to stop and engage them. All I can think about though is my brother, who had teleported away. I hoped he had jumped far enough, that he had found the Scarlet Guard group waiting for us at the border. We could only hope that he would come back for us and jump whoever he could out before we got killed. The soldiers race along next to us, shouting at one another as they try to corral us so that they can pin us into a corner of their own making.

The light bends around us as the sun drops and bathes us in darkness. Cal's fire lights the way though, burning around us and pushing the soldiers back. He won't be able to keep that up forever though, because I hear the hiss of water on flame as a nymph begins to drown his fire. My shield begins to waver too as I lose my focus and start to fade from exerting myself by erecting our little shield.

Up ahead, the riverbed slowly begins to turn into a bottleneck, and the soldiers above us start dropping down to force us into it so that they can surround us. We're steadily running out of options though, and we cannot afford to get caught, not now, not when we're so close. Ahead of me, I see Farley take a firm grip on Maven's arm to prevent him from getting away. He sneers at her and tries to pull away, but Farley refuses to let him drag her off course. In the end, instead of taking her down, he trips himself, sprawling out in the dirt. He cries out, and the soldiers close in as I grab him and try to drag him to his feet. He grabs onto my jacket then and yanks me back down with him though. I cry out as I fall backwards on top of him. With a hiss, he wraps his arms around me and pins me to him as he growls in my ear, "You're not getting away this time."

I squirm in his arms, screaming for help, and in front of me, I see Cal throw Maggie to Julian before sprinting headlong towards me. A soldier beats him though, a man dressed in navy blue. He sneers down at us and then spits, "A couple of insurgents making a run for the border? How interesting."

I sneer up at him and try to pull myself out of Maven's arms, but before the solider can so much as raise his gun, a bullet slams into his forehead. Blood sprays from the hit, silver blood, I realize. Maven lets out a surprised gasp, and then over that sound, I hear the pop of bullets as different uniforms appear. They're ragged and falling apart, but I would know them anywhere. The Scarlet Guard insignia is embroidered on every jacket, shirt and bandana they wear across their faces. I have never been happier to see that golden sun.

Cal has me on my feet then, and has Maven pinned down in the mud. They roll around for a few seconds in the corner of my eye while I return fire of my own, until Cal's superior size, and Maven's injury, forces him to admit defeat. He collapses in the dirt under Cal, and I watch as Cal drives the butt of his rifle into the back of Maven's head. There's a blossom of silver in his hair, and Cal's heaves for breath above him for a few seconds, his rifle raised to bring it down again. In the light, he looks like a shadow, with a slanted beam of the last sun rays cutting across his eyes, turning them to burning pools for fury. He looks like an archangel, a being hell bent on wiping out whatever is below it. I had listened to Julian read me stories about them at Anabel's estate. Archangels were creatures of an ancient religion, one that had died around the time of the First Disasters. They were beings sent by a god to do its bidding, to end the lives of those who questioned, and who rose up against the power of some supposed all mighty heaven. Seeing Cal like that, with colors around him making him look like a painting of one of the archangels makes my stomach turn and my heart hammer in my chest. It terrifies me, the way he looks, the feral look in his eye.

"Cal stop!" I cry as I grab the gun to prevent him from bringing it down on his brother's head again. The soldiers around us have fled, their shouts heard through the trees like ghostly howls as they race back to safety. The Guard has surrounded us, and the few that do not go after the soldiers, form a ring around our little party, checking for injuries, for our numbers.

Cal heaves for breath, and where I'm standing, with my legs pressed against his back, I can feel every shudder as it leaves his body. My own chest hitches with fear, at what he had been about to do, what he had been willing about to do. He had almost murdered his brother, had almost smashed his head in, and something about that made my stomach squirm with another unknown emotion. What if I had just let him do it? What would have happened? Would it have finally ended the tension between us, or would it have finally torn us apart?

He calms down slowly, and when he sees the blood running down Maven's neck, he leaps off of his body, his eyes wide as he throws the rifle into the dirt. I watch him, watch his every move like he's a wild animal. Back in the Stilts, I had seen this kind of thing before. Animal's fighting in alleyways, only to back off at the last second and then go in for the kill. He glances at me though, eyes full of as much terror as I'm feeling. We look at each other for a few seconds, before he slowly crouches down to pick up the rifle. Maven groans into the dirt, and Cal takes a second to register that sound, before hurrying toward Farley and leaving me with Maven.

I watch him race away, panic lining his features as he tries to get away from what he almost did. He can't escape it though, and I know he never will. There are just somethings that are always etched into our hearts. Crouching down then so that I can whisper in Maven's ear, I spit, "Are you alive you ass?"

He moans again, one of his eyes opening slowly to look at me before he closes it and falls unconscious completely. I want to scream at him, to tackle him myself and tear him apart. Damn him, I should have known better than to trust that he would have let me pull him out of the dirt. If Cal had killed his brother, it would have been my fault. I had set that situation into motion, and I would have had to deal with the consequences of that too.

I sit next to Maven for a while, until the other soldiers return. They are clearly led by a tall woman at the front, with eyes like storm clouds, and hair like a halo of tight curls on her head. She turns to look at our little rag tag group, and then her eyes land on Farley. Her face breaks into a wide grin and she takes two steps to cover the distance and then grabs Farley's arm before yanking her into a hug.

"Diana," The woman says softly, and then pulling away she teases, "you leave us for two years and you lose your touch, you're going soft."

Farley scoffs and then gesturing to Maven's prone form in the dirt, she says, "It's not easy to run with a snake that wants to bite you."

The woman laughs, and then turns those eyes on me, before looking over our whole group. She smiles then and says, "Welcome to the Lakelands, Nortians, Command has been expecting you."

A/N

And welcome back, yes, yes, I knoooooooow, it feels like it's been eternity since I updated. Deepest apologies. I got really active on tumblr and school has been as hard as ever. (good news is that I'm officially a Film Major and a Pre-Med Major so I'm ready to suffer obviously). I hit a bit of a rut in this story after reading King's Cage, just cause I'm obviously so very far away from what King's Cage is. I've come to realize this is not terrible. A lot of things are yet to come though, and weve got some fun new character's to meet. We should have a short little Third POV from the Nortian court, just to give you an idea of what's going on there, and then back to the Lakelands with the squad to find out what is to become of them. (((:

NO QUESTION: BUT WE DO HAVE A GENDER AND A NAME FOR THE BABE (((: