King's Cage

by Victoria Aveyard

  Above us, the rain shimmers, dancing on the air, joining together into larger and larger droplets. And the puddles, the inches of water in the streets and alleys—they become rivers.

  “Brace!” echoes again. This time the blow is freezing water instead of wind, foaming white as it breaks like a wave, curving up and over the walls and buildings of Corvium. A spray catches me hard, dashing my head against the rampart, and the world spins. A few bodies go over the wall, spinning into the storm. Their silhouettes disappear quickly, as do their screams. The gravitrons save a few, but not all.

  Cameron slides away, on hands and knees, to get back to the stairs. She uses her ability to make a cocoon of safety as she sprints back to her post well inside the second wall.

  Cal skids next to me, almost losing his footing. In my daze, I grab at him, pulling him close. If he goes over the wall, I know I’ll just go after him. He watches, terrified, as the water assaults our ranks like the waves of a churning sea. It makes him useless. Flame has no place here. His fire cannot burn. And my lightning is just the same. One spark and I’ll shock who knows how many of our own troops. I can’t risk it.

  Akkadi and Davidson have no such restriction. While the premier throws up a glowing blue shield at the edge of the wall, protecting anyone else from going over the edge, Akkadi roars to her newblood troops, barking orders I can’t hear over the crashing waves.

  The water spikes, shuddering. Suddenly at war with itself. We have nymphs too.

  But no storms. No newbloods who can seize control of the hurricane around us. Its darkness closes in, so absolute it seems like midnight. We’ll be fighting blind. And it hasn’t even started yet. I still haven’t seen a single one of Maven’s soldiers, or the Lakelander army. Not one red banner or blue. But they’re coming. They’re certainly coming.

  I grit my teeth. “Get up.”

  The prince is heavy, slowed by his fear. Putting a hand to his neck, I give him the smallest shock. The gentle kind Tyton showed me. He rockets to his feet, alive and alert. “Right, thanks,” he mutters. With a glance, he takes stock. “The temperature’s dropping.”

  “Genius,” I hiss back. Every part of me feels frozen.

  Above us, the water rages, splitting and re-forming. It wants to crash down, it wants to dissipate. Some of it peels off and vaults over Davidson’s shield, racing away into the storm like a strange bird. After a moment, the rest crashes down, drenching us all anew. A cheer goes up anyway. The newblood nymphs, while outnumbered and off guard, just won their first bout.

  Cal doesn’t join in the celebrations. Instead, he rakes his wrists together, igniting his hands into weak flame. They sputter in the downpour, fighting to burn. Until, suddenly, the rain turns to bitter, blizzard snow. In the utter darkness it winks red, gleaming in the weak lights of Corvium and Cal’s flame.

  I feel my hair start to freeze on my head and shake my ponytail. Splinters of ice go flying in every direction.

  A roar rises out of the storm, different from the wind. With many voices. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand. The blackout blizzard presses in. Briefly, Cal’s eyes flutter shut, and he sighs aloud.

  “Prepare for attack,” he says hoarsely.

  The first ice bridge spikes through the rampart two feet away from me and I vault back, yelping. Another splits the stone twenty feet away, spearing soldiers with its jagged edges. Arezzo and the other teleporters spring into action, collecting the wounded to jump them back to our healers. Almost instantly, Lakelander soldiers, their shadows like monsters, vault off the bridges—they ran up the ice as it grew. Ready to strike.

  I’ve seen Silver battles before. They are chaos.

  This is worse.

  Cal lunges forward, his fires jumping hot and high. The ice is thick, not so easily melted, and he carves pieces from the nearest bridge like a lumberjack with a chainsaw. It makes him vulnerable. I slice through the first Lakelander to get near him, and my sparks send the armored man spinning into darkness. Another quickly follows, until my skin crawls with purple-white veins of hissing lightning. Gunfire drowns out whatever orders anyone might be shouting. I focus on myself, on Cal. Our survival. Farley stays close, gun tucked up. Like Cal, she puts me to her back, letting me defend her blind spot. She doesn’t flinch as she fires her gun, pummeling the nearest bridge with bullets. She centers on the ice, not the warriors bursting out of the blizzard. It cracks and splinters beneath the berserkers, crumbling into darkness.

  Thunder rumbles, closer by the second. Bolts of blue-white electricity explode through the clouds, crashing down around Corvium. From the towers, Ella’s aim is deadly, striking just outside the walls. An ice bridge falls to her wrath, cracking in two—but it regrows, re-forming in midair at the will of a shiver hiding somewhere. Bombers do the same, obliterating glassy hunks of ice with bursts of explosive force. They just creep back, skittering through another rampart. Green lightning crackles somewhere to my left as Rafe arcs his whips into a stampeding horde of Lakelanders. His blow meets a shield of water, which absorbs the current as they advance. Water doesn’t stop bullets, though. Farley peppers them with gunfire, dropping a few Silvers where they stand. Their bodies slide off into darkness.

  I turn my attentions to the closest bridge of soldiers. Instead of the ice, I focus on the figures charging from the darkness. Their blue armor is thick, scaled, and with their helmets they look inhuman. It makes them easier to kill. They force one another forward, pressing on to the walls. A snaking line of faceless monsters. Purple lightning explodes from my clawed hands and races through their hearts, jumping from one suit of armor to the other. The metal superheats, fading from blue to red, and many fall off the bridge in their agony. More replace them, vaulting out of the storm. It is a killing ground, a funnel of death. Tears freeze on my cheeks as I lose count of how many skeletons I rip through.

  Then the city wall cracks between my feet, one side sliding from the other. A concussive blow shudders through my bones. Then another. The crack widens. Quickly, I pick an edge, jumping to Cal’s side before the crack swallows me whole. Roots worm up through the fissure, thick as my arm, and growing. They pry apart the stone like massive fingers, sending spider cracks past my feet like bolts of stone lightning. The wall bucks under the strain.

  Greenwardens.

  “The wall is going to break,” Cal breathes. “They’ll crack it right open and get behind us.”

  I clench a fist. “Unless?” He just stares blankly, at a loss. “There has to be something we can do!”

  “It’s the storm. If we can get rid of the storm, get visibility, we can use our range. . . .” As he speaks, he sets fire to the roots, now creeping closer. Flame races its length, charring the plant. It just grows back. “We need windweavers. Blow the clouds away.”

  “House Laris. So we hold until they get here?”

  “Hold and hope they’re enough.”

  “Fine. As for this . . .” I nod at the gap widening by the second. Soon a Silver army will burst right through. “Let’s give them an explosive welcome.”

  Cal nods, understanding. “Bombers!” he roars over the howling wind and snow. “Get down there and be ready!” Pointing, he indicates the street running just inside the outer wall. The first place Lakelanders will overrun us.

  A dozen or so bombers hear him and obey, peeling off their posts to man the street. My feet move of their own accord, intending to follow. Cal grabs my wrist and I almost skid. “I didn’t say you,” he growls. “You stay right here.”

  Quickly, I peel his fingers away. The grip is too tight, heavy as a manacle. Even in the heat of battle, I find myself thrown back through time, to a palace where I was a prisoner. “Cal, I’m going to help the bombers hold. I can do that.” His bronze eyes flicker in the darkness, the red flames of two blazing candles. “If they breach the wall, you’re going to be surrounded. And then the storm will be the least of our worries.”

  His decision is quick—and stupid. “Fine, I’ll come.”

  “
They need you up here.” I put a palm to his chest, pushing him away from me. “Farley, Townsend, Akkadi—the soldiers need generals on the line. They need you on the line.”

  If not for the battle, Cal would argue. He just grazes my hand. There’s no time for anything. Especially when I’m right.

  “I’ll be fine,” I tell him as I jump away, sliding over frozen stones. The storm eats his response. I spare one heartbeat to worry for him, to wonder if we might never see each other again. The next heartbeat erases the thought. I have no time for it. I have to stay focused. I have to stay alive.

  I pick up my feet up and slide down the stairs, the frozen rails slipping through my curled hands. On the street, out of the wind, the air is much warmer and the puddles are gone. Either frozen or the water was used above to assault the defenders of the Corvium wall.

  Bombers face the crack in the wall, spreading farther with each second. Up on the ramparts it widens to several feet, but here the crack is just inches—and growing. Another shudder runs through the stone and below my feet, like an explosion or an earthquake in the ground. I swallow hard, imagining a strongarm on the other side of the wall, her fists raining blow after blow upon our foundations.

  “Wait to strike,” I tell the bombers. They look to me for orders, even though I’m not an officer. “No explosions until it’s clear they’re coming through. We don’t need to help them along.”

  “I’ll shield the breach as long as possible,” a voice says behind me.

  I whirl to see Davidson, his face streaked in gray blood steadily turning black. He looks pale beneath the blood, stunned by it. “Premier,” I mutter, dipping my head. He responds after a long moment. Dazed by the battle. So different on the field than it is in the war room.

  Instead, I turn my electricity on our attackers. Using the roots as a map, I run lightning along the plant matter, letting it curl and spiral with the path of the root. I can’t see the greenwarden at the far side, but I feel him. Though dulled by the dense root, my sparks ripple through his body. A distant shriek echoes through the cracks in the stone, somehow audible over the chaos above and around.

  The greenwarden isn’t the only Silver able to bring down stone. Another takes his place, a strongarm judging by the way the stone shudders and cracks. Blow after blow sends rubble and dust through the widening gap.

  Davidson stands on my left, mouth slightly agape. Numb.

  “First battle?” I mutter as another thunderous strike hits home.

  “Hardly,” he says, to my surprise. “I was a soldier once too. I’m told I was on a list of yours?”

  Dane Davidson. The name flutters in my mind, a butterfly brushing wings against the bars of a bone cage. It comes back as if through mud, slowly, with great effort. “Julian’s list.”

  He nods. “Smart man, Jacos. Connecting dots no one else even sees. Yes, I was one of the Nortan Reds to be executed by their legion. For crimes of blood, not body. When I escaped, the officers marked me as dead anyway. So they didn’t have to explain another lost criminal.” He licks lips cracked by the cold. “I fled to Montfort, collecting others like me along the way.”

  Another crack. The gap before us widens as feeling returns to my toes. I wiggle them in my boots, preparing to fight. “Sounds familiar.”

  Davidson’s voice gains strength and momentum as he speaks. As he remembers what we are fighting for. “Montfort was in ruin. A thousand Silvers claiming their own crowns, every mountain its own kingdom, the country splintered beyond recognition. Only Reds stood united. And Ardents were in the shadows, waiting to be unleashed. Divide and conquer, Miss Barrow. It’s the only way to beat them.”

  The Kingdom of Norta, the Kingdom of the Rift, Piedmont, the Lakelands. Silvers at one another’s throats, squabbling for smaller and smaller pieces while we wait to take the whole lot. Though Davidson looks overwhelmed, I can almost smell the steel in his bones. A genius, perhaps, and dangerous certainly.

  A gust of snow brings me back. The only thing I need to be concerned with is what happens now. Survive. Win.

  Blue-tinged energy bursts through the splintering wall, pulsing across the foot-wide expanse of emptiness. Davidson holds the shield in place with an outstretched hand. A drop of blood drips off his chin, steaming in the cold.

  A silhouette on the other side pummels the shield, fists raining knuckled hell down on the rippling field. Another strongarm joins the shadow and works to widen the gap, attacking stone instead. The shield grows with their efforts.

  “Be ready,” Davidson says. “When I split the shield, fire with everything.”

  We obey, preparing to strike.

  “Three.”

  Purple sparks web between my fingers and weave into a pulsing ball of destructive light.

  “Two.”

  The bombers kneel in formation, like snipers. Instead of guns, they just have their fingers and eyes.

  “One.”

  With a twitch, the blue shield cuts in two and slams the pair of strongarms into the walls with sickening cracks of bone. We fire through the opening, my lightning a blaze. It illuminates the darkness beyond, showing a dozen berserker soldiers ready to rush the breach. Many drop to their knees, spitting fire and blood as the bombers explode their insides. Before any can recover, Davidson seals the shield again, catching a returning volley of bullets.

  He looks surprised by our success.

  On the wall above us, a fireball churns in the black storm, a torch against the false night. Cal’s fire spreads and strikes in a snake of flame. The red heat turns the sky to scarlet hell.

  I just clench a fist and gesture at Davidson.

  “Again,” I tell him.

  It’s impossible to mark the passage of time. Without the sun, I have no idea how long we spend battling the breach. Even though we push back the assault again and again, every attempt widens the gap bit by bit. Inches for miles, I tell myself. On the wall, the wave of soldiers has not won the ramparts. The ice bridges keep coming back, and we keep fighting them. A few corpses land in the street, beyond even a healer’s touch. Between strikes, we drag the bodies into the alleyways, out of sight. I search each dead face, holding my breath every time. Not Cal, not Farley. The only one I recognize is Townsend, his neck snapped clean. I expect a wash of guilt or pity, but I feel nothing. Just the knowledge that strongarms are up on the walls as well, tearing our soldiers apart.

  Davidson’s shield stretches across the gap in the wall, now at least ten feet wide, yawning open like stone jaws. Bodies lie in the open mouth. Smoking corpses felled by lightning, or brutally ripped open by a bomber’s merciless stare. Through the quivering field of blue, shadows gather in the darkness, waiting to try our wall again. Hammers of water and ice batter against Davidson’s ability. A banshee scream reverberates off its expanse, and even the echo is painful to our ears. Davidson winces. Now the blood on his face streaks with sweat dripping down his forehead, nose, and cheeks. He sprints toward his limit, and we are running out of time.

  “Someone get me Rafe!” I shout. “And Tyton.”

  A runner sprints off as soon as the words are out of my mouth, vaulting up the steps to find them. I watch the wall above, searching for a familiar silhouette.

  Cal works a manic rhythm, perfect as a machine. Step, turn, strike. Step, turn, strike. Like me, he finds an empty place where survival is the only thought. At every break in the oncoming rush of enemies, he re-forms his soldiers, directing the Reds in their fire, or working with Akkadi and Lory to eliminate another target in the darkness. How many are dead, I can’t say.

  Another corpse tumbles from the ramparts, end over end. I grab his arms to drag him off before I realize his armor is not armor at all, but scaled pieces of stony flesh, smoldering with the heat of a fire prince’s anger. I draw back surprised, as if burned myself. A stoneskin. The few clothes on his dead body are blue and gray. House Macanthos. Norta. One of Maven’s.

  I swallow hard against the implication. Maven’s forces have reached the wa
lls. We aren’t just fighting Lakelanders anymore. A roar of fury rises in my chest and I almost wish I could storm through the breach myself. Tear through everything on the other side. Hunt him down. Kill him between his army and mine.

  Then the corpse grabs me.

  He twists, and my wrist breaks with a snap. I shriek against the sudden bleeding pain racing up my arm.

  Lightning ripples from my flesh, escaping me like a scream. It covers his body in purple sparks and lethal, dancing light. But either his stony flesh is too thick or his resolve is too strong. The stoneskin does not let go, his pincerlike fingers now clawing at my neck. Explosions blossom along his back, the work of bombers. Bits of stone slough off him like dead skin and he howls. His grip only tightens with the pain. I make the mistake of trying to pry off his hands, now locked around my throat. His rocky flesh cuts my skin, and blood wells up between my fingers, red and hot in the frozen air.

  Spots dance before my eyes, and I loose another blast of lightning, letting it pour from my agony. The blow rockets him off me and back into a building. He crashes through headfirst, body hanging out into the street. The bombers finish him off, exploding through the exposed skin on his back.

  Davidson trembles on his feet, still holding the thinning shield. He saw it all, and could do nothing unless he wanted the invading force to overrun us. A corner of his mouth quivers, as if to apologize for making the right decision.

  “How much longer can you hold?” I ask, gasping out the words. I spit blood on the street.

  He grits his teeth. “A little while.”

  That’s not helpful, I want to snap. “A minute? Two?”

  “One,” he forces out.

  “One will do.”

  I glare through the shield as it weakens, the vivid shade of blue fading with Davidson’s strength. As it clears, so do the figures on the other side. Blue armor and black cut with red. Lakelands and Norta. No crown, no king. Just shock troops meant to overwhelm us. Maven won’t set foot in Corvium unless the city is his. While the Calore brother on the wall will fight to the death, Maven is not foolish enough to risk himself in a fight. He knows his strength is behind the lines, on a throne rather than a battlefield.