King's Cage

by Victoria Aveyard

  “Theory?” a soft voice says behind us.

  I was so focused on the range that I didn’t notice Julian standing by to watch, with Kilorn at his side. My old teacher offers a tight smile, his hands folded behind his back in his usual way. I’ve never seen him so casually dressed, with a light cotton shirt and shorts revealing thin chicken legs. Cal should get him on a weights routine too.

  “Theory,” Cal confirms. “After a fashion.” He waves me down, giving me a brief respite. Immediately I sit in the dirt, stretching out my legs. Despite the constant dodging, it’s the lightning that makes me tired. Without the adrenaline of battle or the threat of death hanging over my head, my stamina is decidedly lessened. Not to mention the fact that I’m about six months out of practice. With even motions, Kilorn stoops and puts a frosty water bottle down at my side.

  “Thought you might need this,” he says with a wink.

  I grin up at him. “Thanks,” I manage, before gulping down a few cold mouthfuls. “What are you doing down here, Julian?”

  “Just on my way to the archives. Then I decided to see what all the fuss was about.” He gestures over his shoulder. I jolt at the sight of a dozen or so assembled on the edge of the range, all of them staring at us. At me. “Seems you have a bit of an audience.”

  I grit my teeth. Great.

  Cal shifts, just a bit, to hide me from view. “Sorry. Didn’t want to break your concentration.”

  “It’s fine,” I tell him, forcing myself to stand. My limbs groan in protest.

  “Well, I’ll see you both later,” Julian says, looking between me and Cal.

  I answer quickly. “We can go with you—”

  But he cuts me off with a knowing smirk, gesturing toward the crowd of bystanders. “Oh, I think you have introductions to make. Kilorn, would you mind?”

  “Not at all,” Kilorn replies. I want to smack the grin right off his face, and he knows it. “After you, Mare.”

  “Fine,” I force through a clenched jaw.

  Fighting my natural instinct to slink away from attention, I take a few steps toward the newbloods. A few more. A few more. Until I reach them, Cal and Kilorn alongside. In the Notch, I didn’t want friends. Friends are harder to say good-bye to. That hasn’t changed, but I see what Kilorn and Julian are doing. I can’t close myself off from others anymore. I try to force a winning smile at the people around me.

  “Hi. I’m Mare.” It sounds stupid and I feel stupid.

  One of the newbloods, the teleporter, bobs her head. She has a forest-green Montfort uniform, long limbs, and closely cropped brown hair. “Yeah, we know. I’m Arezzo,” she says, sticking out a hand. “I jumped you and Calore out of Archeon.”

  No wonder I didn’t recognize her. The minutes after my escape are still a blur of fear, adrenaline, and overpowering relief. “Right, of course. Thank you for that.” I blink, trying to remember her.

  The others are just as friendly and open, as pleased to meet another newblood as I am. Everyone in this group is Montfort-born or Montfort-allied, in green uniforms with white triangles on the breast and insignia on each bicep. Some are easy to decipher—two wavy lines for the nymph-like newblood, three arrows for the swift. No one has badges or medals, though. There’s no telling who might be an officer. But all are military-trained, if not military-raised. They use last names and have firm handshakes, each one a born or made soldier. Most know Cal on sight and nod at him in a very official manner. Kilorn they greet like an old friend.

  “Where’s Ella?” Kilorn asks, directing his question at a man with black skin and shockingly green hair. Dyed, clearly. His name is Rafe. “I sent her a message to come down and meet Mare. Tyton too.”

  “Last I saw, they were practicing on top of Storm Hill. Which, technically”—he glances at me, almost apologetic—“is where electricons are supposed to train.”

  “What’s an electricon?” I ask, and immediately feel foolish.

  “You.”

  I sigh, sheepish. “Right. I figured that about as soon as I asked.”

  Rafe floats a spark over his hand, letting it weave between his fingers. I feel it, but not like my own lightning. The green sparks answer to him and him alone. “It’s an odd word, but we’re odd things, aren’t we?”

  I stare at him, almost breathless with excitement. “You’re . . . like me?”

  He nods, indicating the lightning bolts on his sleeves. “Yes, we are.”

  Storm Hill is just like it sounds. It rises at a gentle incline in the middle of another field at the opposite end of the base, as far from the airfield as possible. Less chance of hitting a jet with a stray bolt of lightning. I get the sense the hill is a new addition, judging by the loose earth beneath my feet as we approach the summit. The grass is new growth too, the work of a greeny or newblood equivalent. It’s more lush than the training fields. But the crown of the slope is a mess, charred earth packed flat, crisscrossed by cracks and the smell of a distant thunderstorm. While the rest of the base enjoys bright blue skies, a black cloud revolves over Storm Hill. A thunderhead, rising thousands of feet into the sky like a column of dark smoke. I’ve never seen anything like it, so controlled and contained.

  The blue-haired woman from Archeon stands beneath the cloud, her arms outstretched, palms up to the thunder. A straight-backed man with swooping white hair like a wave’s crest stands back from her, thin and lean in his green uniform. Both have lightning-bolt insignia.

  Blue sparks dance over the woman’s hands, small as worms.

  Rafe leads us, Cal close at my side. Even though he deals with his fair share of lightning, the black cloud puts him on edge. He keeps glancing up, as if expecting it to explode. Some blue flashes weakly in the darkness, illuminating it from within. Thunder rumbles with it, low and thrumming like a cat’s purr. It shivers my bones.

  “Ella, Tyton,” Cal calls. He waves a hand.

  They turn at their names, and the flashing in the clouds abruptly stops. The woman lowers her hands, tucking away her palms, and the thunderhead starts to dissolve before our eyes. She bounds over in leaps of energy, trailed by the more stoic man.

  “I was wondering when we would meet,” she says, her voice high and breathy to match her dainty stature. Without warning, she takes my hands and kisses me on both cheeks. Her touch shocks, sparks leaping from her skin to mine. It doesn’t hurt, but it certainly perks me up. “I’m Ella, and you’re Mare, of course. And this tall drink of water is Tyton.”

  The man in question is certainly tall, with tawny skin, a sprinkling of freckles, and a jaw sharper than the edge of a cliff. With a flick of his head, he tosses his white hair to one side, letting it fall over his left eye. He winks with the right. I expected him to be old, with hair like that, but he can’t be more than twenty-five. “Hello” is all he says, his voice deep and certain.

  “Hi.” I nod at them, overwhelmed both by their presence and my own inability to act anywhere close to normal. “Sorry, this is a bit of a shock.”

  Tyton rolls his eyes, but Ella bursts out laughing. A half second later, I understand and cringe.

  Cal chuckles at my side. “That was pretty horrible, Mare.” He nudges my shoulder as discreetly as he can, a brush of warmth emanating from him. A very small comfort in the Piedmont heat.

  “We understand,” Ella offers quickly, stealing the words away. “It’s always overwhelming to meet another Ardent, let alone three who share your ability. Right, boys?” She elbows Tyton in the chest and he barely reacts, annoyed. Rafe just nods. I get the feeling Ella does most of the talking and, based on what I remember from the blue lightning storm in Archeon, most of the fighting. “I despair of you both,” Ella mutters, shaking her head at them. “But I have you now, don’t I, Mare?”

  Her eager nature and open smile take me severely off guard. People this nice are always hiding something. I swallow my suspicion enough to give her what I hope is a genuine smile.

  “Thank you for bringing her,” she adds to Cal, her tone shifting.
The cheery, blue-haired pixie draws up her spine and hardens her voice, becoming a soldier before my eyes. “I think we can take her training from here.”

  Cal barks out a low laugh. “Alone? Are you serious?”

  “Were you?” she shoots back, narrowing her eyes. “I saw your ‘practice.’ Little bursts on a target range is hardly sufficient to maximize her abilities. Or do you know how to coax a storm out of her?”

  Based on the way his lips twist, I can tell he wants to say something decidedly inappropriate. I stop him before he can, grabbing his wrist. “Cal’s military background—”

  “—is fine for conditioning.” Ella cuts me off. “And perfect for training you to fight Silvers the way he does. But your abilities stretch beyond his understanding. There are things he can’t teach you, things you must learn either the hard way—by yourself—or the easy way . . . with us.”

  Her logic is sound, albeit unsettling. There are things Cal can’t teach me, things he doesn’t understand. I remember when I tried to train Cameron—I didn’t know her ability the same way I knew mine. It was like speaking a different language. I was still able to communicate, but not truly.

  “I’ll watch, then,” Cal says with stony resolve. “Is that acceptable?”

  Ella grins, her mood bouncing back to cheerful. “Of course. I would, however, advise you to stand back and stay alert. Lightning is a bit of a wild filly. No matter how much you rein her in, she’ll always try to run wild.”

  He gives me one last look and the tiniest quirk of a supportive smile before heading to the edge of the hilltop, well beyond the ring of blast marks. When he gets there, he flops down and leans back on his arms, eyes trained on me.

  “He’s nice. For a prince,” Ella offers.

  “And a Silver,” Rafe pipes in.

  I glance at him, confused. “There aren’t nice Silvers in Montfort?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been,” he replies. “I’m Piedmont-born, from down in the Floridians.” He dots his fingers in the air, illustrating the chain of swampy islands. “Montfort recruited me a few months ago.”

  “And you two?” I look between Ella and Tyton.

  She’s quick to reply. “Prairie. The Sandhills. That’s raider country, and my family lived on the move. Eventually we kept west into the mountains. Montfort took us in near ten years ago. That’s where I met Tyton.”

  “Montfort-born,” he says, as if that’s any explanation. Not very talkative, probably because Ella has enough words for all of us. She steers me toward the center of what can only be called a blast zone, until I’m directly beneath the still-dissipating storm cloud.

  “Well, let’s see what we’re working with,” Ella says, nudging me into place. The breeze rustles her hair, sending bright blue locks over one shoulder. Moving in tandem, the other two take up spots around me, until we’re clustered in the four corners of a square. “Start small.”

  “Why? I can—”

  Tyton looks up. “She wants to check your control.”

  Ella nods.

  I heave a breath. Excited as I am with fellow electricons, I feel a bit like an overnannied child. “Fine.” Cupping my hands, I call forth the lightning, letting jagged sparks of purple and white splay around the bowl of my fingers.

  “Purple sparks?” Rafe says, grinning. “Nice.”

  I flicker between the unnatural colors on their heads, smirking. Green, blue, white locks.

  “I have no plans to dye my hair.”

  Summer hits Piedmont with a boiling vengeance, and Cal is the only person who can stand it. Gasping from exertion and heat, I smack him in the ribs until he rolls away. He does so slowly, lazily, almost drifting off to sleep. Instead, he goes too far and falls right off the narrow bed onto the hard, laminated floor. That wakes him up. He vaults forward, black hair sticking up at angles, naked as a newborn.

  “My colors,” he curses, rubbing his skull.

  I have little pity for his pain. “If you didn’t insist on sleeping in a glorified broom closet, this wouldn’t be an issue.” Even the ceiling, blocks of speckled plaster, is depressing. And the single open window does nothing for the heat, especially in the middle of the day. I don’t want to think about the walls or how thin they might be. At least he doesn’t have to bunk with other soldiers.

  Still on the floor, Cal grumbles. “I like the barracks.” He fumbles for a pair of shorts before pulling them on. Then go the bracelets, snapping back into place on his wrists. The latches are complicated, but he slips them on like it’s second nature. “And you don’t have to share a room with your sister.”

  I shift and throw a shirt over my head. Our midday break will be over in a few minutes, and I’m expected up on Storm Hill soon. “You’re right. I’ll just get over that little thing I have about sleeping alone.” Of course, by thing I mean still-debilitating trauma. I have terrible nightmares if there isn’t someone in the room with me.

  Cal stills, shirt half over his head. He sucks in a breath, wincing. “That’s not what I meant.”

  It’s my turn to grumble. I pick at Cal’s sheets. Military-issue, washed so many times they’re almost worn through. “I know.”

  The bed shifts, springs groaning, as he leans toward me. His lips brush the crown of my head. “Any more nightmares?”

  “No.” I answer so quickly he raises an eyebrow in suspicion, but it’s the truth. “As long as Gisa’s there. She says I don’t make a sound. Her, on the other hand . . . I forgot so much noise could come from such a small person.” I laugh to myself, and find the courage to look him in the eye. “What about you?”

  Back in the Notch, we slept side by side. Most nights he tossed and turned, muttering in his sleep. Sometimes he cried.

  A muscle ripples in his jaw. “Just a few. Maybe twice a week, that I can remember.”

  “Of?”

  “My father, mostly. You. What it felt like to be fighting you, watching myself try to kill you, and not being able to do a thing to stop it.” He flexes his hands in memory of the dream. “And Maven. When he was little. Six or seven.”

  The name still feels like acid in my bones, even though it’s been so long since I last saw him. He has given several broadcasts and declarations since, but I refuse to watch them. My memories of him are terrorizing enough. Cal knows that, and out of respect for me, he absolutely does not talk about his brother. Until now. You asked, I scold myself. I grit my teeth, mostly to stop from vomiting up all the words I haven’t told him. Too painful for him. It won’t help to know what kind of monster his brother was forced into becoming.

  He pushes on, eyes far away in the memory. “He used to be afraid of the dark, until one day he just wasn’t. In my dreams, he’s playing in my room, sort of walking around. Looking at my books. And darkness follows him. I try to tell him. Try to warn him. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t mind. And I can’t stop it. It swallows him whole.” Slowly, Cal runs a hand down his face. “Don’t need to be a whisper to know what that means.”

  “Elara is dead,” I murmur, moving so we’re side by side. As if that’s any comfort.

  “And he still took you. He still did horrible things.” Cal stares at the floor, unable to hold my gaze. “I just can’t understand why.”

  I could keep quiet. Or distract him. But the words boil furiously in my throat. He deserves the truth. Reluctant, I take his hand.

  “He remembers loving you, loving your father. But she took that love away, he said. Cut it out of him like a tumor. She tried to do the same with his feelings for me”—and Thomas before—“but it didn’t work. Certain kinds of love . . .” My breath hitches. “He said they’re harder to remove. I think the attempt twisted him, more than he already was. She made it impossible for him to let go of me. Everything he felt for both of us was corrupted, made into something worse. With you, hatred. With me, obsession. And there is nothing either of us could do to change him. I don’t even think she could undo her own work.”

  His only reply is silence, letting
the revelation hang in the air. My heart breaks for the exiled prince. I give him what I think he needs. My hand, my presence, and my patience. After a long, long time, he opens his eyes.

  “As far as I know, there are no newblood whispers,” he says. “Not one that I’ve found or been told about. And I’ve done my fair share of searching.”

  This I did not expect. I blink, confused.

  “Newbloods are stronger than Silvers. And Elara was just Silver. If someone can . . . can fix him, isn’t it worth it to try?”

  “I don’t know” is all I can say. Just the idea numbs me, and I don’t know how to feel. If Maven could be healed, so to speak, would that be enough to redeem him? Certainly it won’t change what he’s done. Not only to me and Cal, to his father, but to hundreds of other people. “I really don’t know.”

  But it gives Cal hope. I see it there, like a tiny light in the distance of his eyes. I sigh, smoothing his hair. He needs another cut with a steadier hand than his own. “I guess if Evangeline can change, maybe anyone can.”

  His sudden laugh echoes low in his chest. “Oh, Evangeline is the same as always. She just had more incentive to let you go than to let you stay.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know who told her to do it.”

  “What?” I ask sharply.

  With a sigh, Cal gets up and crosses the room. The opposite wall is all cabinetry, and mostly empty. He doesn’t have many possessions beyond his clothes and a few bits of tactical gear. To my surprise, he paces. It sets my teeth on edge.

  “The Guard blocked every attempt I made to get you back,” he says, hands moving rapidly as he speaks. “No messages, no support for infiltration. No spies of any kind. I wasn’t going to sit in that freezing base and wait for someone to tell me what to do. So I made contact with someone I trust.”

  Realization punches me in the gut. “Evangeline?”

  “My colors, no,” he gasps. “But Nanabel, my grandmother—my father’s mother—”

  Anabel Lerolan. The old queen. “You call her . . . Nanabel?”