No one deserves this. No one. In my head, I reach for the lightning, and it comes. I blast away Elara and Maven, saving the prince and the king. But even that fantasy is tainted. Farley is dead. Kilorn is dead. The revolution is over. Even in my imaginings, I cannot fix that.
The sword rises in the air, shaking in Cal’s trembling fingers. The blade is ceremonial at best, but the edge gleams, sharp as a razor. The steel reddens, warming under Cal’s fiery touch, and bits of the gilded hilt melt between his fingers. Gold and silver and iron, dripping from his hands like tears.
Maven watches the blade closely, carefully, because he is too afraid to watch his father in his last moments. I thought you were brave. I was so wrong.
“Please,” is all Cal can say, forcing the words out. “Please.”
There is no regret in Elara’s eyes and no remorse. This moment has been coming for a long time. When the sword flashes, arcing through air and flesh and bone, she doesn’t blink.
The king’s corpse lands with a thud, his head rolling to a stop a few feet away. Silverblood splashes across the floor in a mirrored puddle, lapping at Cal’s toes. He drops the melting sword, letting it clang against stone, before falling to his knees, his head in his hands. The crown clatters across the floor, circling through the blood, until it stops to rest at Maven’s feet, sharp points bright with liquid silver.
When Elara screams, wailing and thrashing over the king’s body, I almost laugh aloud at the absurdity of it all. Has she changed her mind? Has she lost it entirely? Then I hear the click of cameras switching on, coming back to life. They poke out of the walls, pointing straight down at the king’s body and what looks like a queen mourning her fallen husband. Maven yells at her side, one hand on his mother’s shoulder.
“You killed him! You killed the king! You killed our father!” he screams in Cal’s face. Only a hint of a smirk remains, and somehow Cal resists the urge to rip his brother’s head off. He’s in shock, not understanding, not wanting to understand. But for once, I certainly do.
The truth doesn’t matter. It only matters what the people believe. Julian tried to teach me that lesson before, and now I understand it. They will believe this little scene, this pretty play of actors and lies. And no army, no country will follow a man who murdered his father for the crown.
“Run, Cal!” I scream, trying to snap him back to life. “You have to run!”
Arven has let me go, and the electric pulse returns, surging through my veins like fire through ice. It’s nothing at all to shock the metal, burning it with sparks until the shackles fall off my wrists. I know this feeling. I know the instinct rising in me now. Run. Run. Run.
I grab Cal’s shoulders, trying to pull him up, but the big oaf doesn’t budge. I give him a little shock, just enough to catch his attention, before screaming again. “RUN!”
It’s enough, and he struggles to his feet, almost slipping in the pool of blood.
I expect Elara to fight me, to make me kill myself or Cal, but she continues screaming, acting for the cameras. Maven stands over her, arms ablaze, ready to protect his mother. He doesn’t even try to stop us.
“There’s nowhere for you to go!” he shouts, but I’m already running, dragging Cal along behind me. “You are murderers, traitors, and you will face justice!”
His voice, a voice I used to know so well, seems to chase us through the doors and down the hall. The voices in my head scream with him.
Stupid girl. Foolish girl. Look what your hope has done.
And then it’s Cal dragging me along, forcing me to keep up. Hot tears of anger and rage and sorrow drown my eyes, until I can’t see anything but my hand in his. Where he leads, I don’t know. I can only follow.
Feet pound behind us, the familiar sound of boots. Officers, Sentinels, soldiers, they’re all chasing, coming for us.
The floor beneath us steadily changes from the polished wood of back hallways to swirling marble—the banquet hall. Long tables set with fine china block the way, but Cal throws them aside with a blast of fire. The smoke triggers an alarm system, and water rains down on us, fighting the blaze. It turns to steam on Cal’s skin, shrouding him in a raging white cloud. He looks like a ghost, haunted by a life suddenly torn away, and I don’t know how to comfort him.
The world slows for me as the far end of the banquet hall darkens with gray uniforms and black guns. There’s nowhere for me to run anymore. I must fight.
Lightning blazes in my skin, begging to be loosed.
“No.” Cal’s voice is hollow, broken. He lowers his own hands, letting the flames disappear. “We can’t win this.”
He’s right.
They close in from the many doors and arches, and even the windows crowd with uniforms. Hundreds of Silvers, armed to the teeth, ready to kill. We are trapped.
Cal searches the faces, his eyes lingering on the soldiers. His own men. By the way they stare back, glaring at him, I know they’ve already seen the horror Elara created. Their loyalties are broken, just like their general. One of them, a captain, trembles at the sight of Cal. To my surprise, he keeps his gun at his side as he steps forward.
“Submit to arrest,” he says, his hands shaking.
Cal locks eyes with his old friend and nods. “We submit to arrest, Captain Tyros.”
Run, every inch of me screams. But for once, I cannot. Next to me, Cal looks just as affected, his eyes reflecting a pain I can’t even imagine. His wounds are soul-deep.
He has learned his lesson as well.
27
Maven has betrayed me. No, he was never on my side at all.
My eyes adjust, seeing bars through the dim light. The ceiling is low and heavy, like the underground air. I’ve never been here before, but I know it all the same.
“The Bowl of Bones,” I whisper aloud, expecting no one to hear me.
Instead, someone laughs.
The darkness continues to lift, revealing more of the cell. A lumpy shape sits against the bars next to me, shifting with every peal of laughter.
“I was four years old the first time I came here, and Maven was barely two. He hid behind his mother’s skirts, afraid of the darkness and the empty cells.” Cal chuckles, every word sharp as a knife. “I guess he’s not afraid of the dark anymore.”
“No, he’s not.”
I’m the shadow of the flame. I believed Maven when he said those words, when he told me how much he hated this world. Now I know it was all a trick, a masterful trick. Every word, every touch, every look was a lie. And I thought I was the liar.
Instinctively I reach out with my abilities, feeling for any pulse of electricity, something to give me a spark of energy. But there’s nothing. Nothing but a blank, flat absence, a hollow sensation that makes me shiver.
“Is Arven nearby?” I wonder, remembering how he shut off my abilities, forcing me to watch as Maven and his mother destroyed their family. “I can’t feel a thing.”
“It’s the cells,” Cal says dully. His hands draw shapes in the dirty floor—flames. “Made of Silent Stone. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t, and I don’t feel like trying.”
He looks up, eyes glaring through the darkness at the unending line of cells. I should be afraid, but I have nothing left to fear. The worst has already happened.
“Before the matches, back when we still had to execute our own, the Bowl of Bones hosted everything nightmares are made of. The Great Greco, who used to tear men in half and eat their livers. The Poison Bride. She was an animos of House Viper and sent snakes into my great-great- uncle’s bed on their wedding night. They say his blood turned to venom, he was bitten so many times.” Cal lists them off, the criminals of his world. They sound likes stories invented to make children behave. “Now, us. The Traitor Prince, they’ll call me. ‘He killed his father for the crown. He just couldn’t wait.’”