[ tw: violence, death ]
𝖝𝖝𝖝𝖎. The Battle of Corvium
Maeve
THE WIND HOWLS. It buffers the walls and ramparts, blowing more than a few back from their position. Rain freezes on the stonework, making their footing precarious. The first causality is a fall. A Red soldier, one of Heyward's. The wind catches his jacket, blowing him backward along the slick walkway. He shouts as he goes over the edge, plunging thirty feet ━ before sailing skyward, born of a gravitron's concentration. He lands hard on the wall, colliding with a sickening crack. The gravitron didn't have enough control. But the soldier is alive. Injured, but alive.
"Brace yourself!" echoes down the lines of soldiers, passing between green uniforms and red. When the wind roars again, they buckle down. Maeve tucks herself against the icy metal of a rampart, safe from the worst of it. A windweavers' strike is unpredictable, unlike normal weather. It splits and curves, clawing like fingers. All while the storm tightens around them.
Blake shoves in next to Maeve. The Deuveux glances at her, surprised. She's supposed to be back with the healers, to form a last wall against any siege. If anyone can defend them from Silvers, give them time and space to treat their soldiers, it's Blake. The rain makes her shiver, her teeth chattering.
"All right, lightning girl?" she says with some difficulty. Water drips over her face.
"All right," Maeve murmurs back. "What are you doing up here?"
"Wanted to see," she says, lying. The young girl is here because she believes she has to be. Am I abandoning you? she asked before. If she doesn't want to be a killer, she shouldn't have to be.
Maeve shakes her head. "You protect the healers, Blake. Get back to them. They're defenseless, and if they go down ━ "
Blake bites her lip anxiously. "We all do."
They stare at each other, trying to be strong, trying to find strength in one another. Like Maeve, Blake is soaked through. Her dark lashes clump together, and every time she blinks it looks like she's crying. The raindrops land hard, making them both squint as they pelt down their faces. Until they don't. Until the raindrops start rolling in opposite directions, flowing up. The pair's eyes widen at the exact same time, watching with horror.
"Nymph strike!" Maeve screams in warning.
Above them, 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 Maeve hard, crashing her 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.
Blake slides away, on her 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.
Matt skids next to Maeve, almost losing his footing. In her daze, she grabs at him, pulling him close. If he goes over the wall, she knows she'll just go after him. He watches, terrified, as the water assaults their ranks like the waves of a churning sea. It makes him useless. Flame has no place here. His fire cannot burn. And Maeve's lightning is the same. One spark and she'll shock who knows how many of their own troops. She can't risk it.
Salim and Dawson 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, Salim roars to her newblood troops, barking orders Maeve can't hear over the crashing waves.
The water spikes, shuddering. Suddenly at war with itself. They have nymphs, too.
But no storms. No newbloods who can seize control of the hurricane around them. Its darkness closes in, so absolute it seems like midnight. They'll be fighting blind. And it hasn't even started yet. Maeve still hasn't seen a single one of Chris' soldiers, or the Lakelander army. Not one red banner or blue. But they're coming. They're certainly coming.
Maeve grits her teeth. "Get up."
The prince is heavy, slowed by his fear. Putting a hand to his neck, she gives him the smallest shock. The gentle kind Tristan showed her. He rockets to his feet, alive and alert. "Right, thanks," he mutters.
Suddenly, Nick comes skidding across the ground in front of them. He seems out of breath, perhaps having gotten the worst of the wave attack. He runs a hand through his hair, and heaves a great sigh of relief when he catches sight of his brother and Maeve.
His smile is grim when he says, "That was . . . something."
"It still is," Maeve reminds him.
Matt glances around, still entirely terrified. "The temperature's dropping," he observes.
"No shit," Nick snarks at the same time Maeve snaps, "Genius, Matt."
He just flushes silver. But, he was right ━ every part of Maeve feels frozen.
Above them, the water rages, splitting and reforming. It wants to crash down, it wants to dissipate. Some of it peels off and vaults over Dawson's shield, racing away into the storm like a strange bird. After a moment, the rest crashes down, drenching them all anew. A cheer goes up anyway. The newblood nymphs, while outnumbered and off guard, just won their first bout.
Matt 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 Matt's flame. Nick pulls some fire of his own around them, trying his best to keep those near from freezing.
Maeve feels her hair start to freeze on her head and shakes her 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, Matt'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 Maeve and she vaults back, yelping. Another splits the stone twenty feet away, spearing soldiers with its jagged edges. Arecko and the other teleporters spring into action, collecting the wounded to jump them back to the healers. Almost instantly, Lakelander soldiers, their shadows like monsters, vault off the bridges ━ they ran up the ice as it grew. Ready to strike.
Maeve has seen Silver battles before. They're complete chaos.
This is so much worse.
Matt and Nick share a glance before moving in one motion, lunging forward, their fires jumping hot and high. The ice is thick, not so easily melted, and they both begin to carve pieces from the nearest bridge like a lumberjack with a chainsaw. It makes them vulnerable, though. Maeve slices through the first Lakelander who tries to get near Matt, and her sparks send the armored man spinning into darkness. Another quickly follows, trying to swipe at Nick, and she throws a bolt his way, too. Eventually, her skin crawls with purple-white veins of hissing lightning, too chaotic and dangerous for her to let them settle. Gunfire drowns out whatever orders anyone might be shouting. She focuses on herself, on Matt, on Nick. Their survival. Cyrus stays close, gun tucked up. Like the princes, she puts Maeve to her back, letting her 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, Marzia' aim is deadly, striking just outside the walls. An ice bridge falls to her wrath, cracking in two ━ but it regrows, reforming 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 Maeve's left as Jeremiah 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. Cyrus peppers them with gunfire, dropping a few Silvers where they stand. Their bodies slide off into darkness.
Maeve turns her attention to the closest bridge of soldiers. Instead of the ice, she focuses 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 Maeve's 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's a killing ground, a funnel of death. Tears freeze on Maeve's cheeks as she loses count of how many skeletons she rips through.
Then, the city wall cracks between her feet, one side sliding from the other. A concussive blow shudders through her bones. Then another. The crack widens. Quickly, she picks an edge, jumping to Matt and Nick's side before the crack swallows her whole. Roots worm up through the fissure, thick as an arm, and growing. They pry apart the stone like massive fingers, sending spider cracks past Maeve's feet like bolts of stone lightning. The wall bucks under the strain.
Greenwardens.
"The wall is going to break," Nick breathes. "They'll crack it right open and get behind us."
Maeve clenches a fist. "Unless?" She looks between the two princes. They both stare blankly, at a loss. "There has to be something we can do!"
"It's the storm," Matt offers. "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 lengths, charring the plant. It just grows back. "We need windweavers. Blow the clouds away."
"House Brekker. So we hold until they get here?"
"Hold and hope they're enough," Nick mumbles.
"Fine. As for this . . ." Maeve nods at the gap widening by the second. Soon, a Silver army will burst right through. "Let's give them an explosive welcome."
Matt nods, understanding. "Bombers!" he roars over the howling wind and snow. "Get down there and be ready!" Pointing, he indicates the street running just outside the outer wall. The first place Lakelander will overrun them.
A dozen or so bombers hear him and obey, peeling off their posts to man the street. Maeve's feet move of their own accord, intending to follow. Matt grabs her hand quickly ━ careful not to take her wrist ━ and she almost skids. "I didn't say you," he snaps. "You stay right here."
She pulls her hand from his. "Matt, I'm going to help the bombers hold. I can do that." His eyes flicker in the darkness, conflicting warm blue. "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." She puts a palm to his chest, pushing him away from her. "Cyrus, Heyward, Salim ━ the soldiers need generals on the line. They need you on the line."
"She's right," Nick offers, putting a hand to his brother shoulder. Looking at Matt's conflicting face, he adds, "I'll go with her. We'll keep each other safe."
Maeve nods, eyes never leaving Matt's. If not for the battle, he would argue. Instead, he just grazes her hand and gives Nick a long look. There's no time for anything else. Especially not when the pair is right.
"We'll be fine," Maeve tells him as she jumps away, sliding over frozen stones. The storm eats his response. She spares one heartbeat to worry for him, to wonder if they might never see each other again. The next heartbeat erases the thought. She has no time for it. She has to stay focused. She has to stay alive.
Behind her, she can hear Nick keeping pace, just a step away. Eventually, he skids to her side and the pair run together. Maeve picks her feet up and slides down the stairs, the frozen rails slipping through her 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 rampart, it widens to several feet, but here, the crack is just inches ━ and growing. Another shudder runs through the stone and below Maeve's feet, like an explosion or an earthquake in the ground. She swallows hard, imagining a strongarm on the other side of the wall, fists raining blow after blow upon the foundations.
"Wait to strike," Maeve tells the bombers. They look to her and Nick for orders, even though neither of them are officers. "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 her.
She whirls to see Dawson, his face streaked in grey blood steadily turning black. He looks pale beneath the blood, stunned by it. "Premier," Maeve and Nick mutter in unison, nodding their heads respectfully. He responds after a long moment, dazed by the battle. So different on the field than it is in the war room.
Just then, Maeve turns her electricity on their attackers. She uses the roots as a map, running her lightning along the plant matter, letting it curl and spiral with the path of the root. She can't see the greenwarden at the far side, but she feels him. Though dulled by the dense root, her 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. Nick responds in kind, sending a raging inferno through the hole.
Dawson stands on the pair's left, mouth slightly agape. Numb.
"First battle?" Nick mutters as he controls his flames. Even still, another thunderous strike hits home.
"Hardly," he says, to both the prince's and Maeve's surprise. "I was a soldier once, too. I'm told I was on a list of yours, Miss Deuveux?"
Derek Dawson. The name flutters in her mind, a butterfly brushing wings against the bars of a bone cage. It comes back as if through mud, slowly, with great effort. "Cedric's list."
He nods, "Smart man, Anderson. 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. I fled to Montfort, collecting others like me along the way."
Another crack. The gap before them widens as feeling returns to Maeve's toes. "Sounds familiar."
Dawson's voice gains strength and momentum as he speaks. As he remembers what they're 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 Deuveux. 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 Reds wait to take the whole lot. Though Dawson looks overwhelmed, Maeve can almost smell the steel in his bones. A genius, perhaps, and dangerous certainly.
A gust of snow brings her back. The only thing she needs 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. Dawson holds the shield in place with an outstretched hand. Nick pulls back his fire, as the flames and the shield cannot exist together.
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 only grows with their efforts.
"Be ready," Dawson says. "When I split the shield, fire with everything."
Maeve, Nick, and the others obey, preparing to strike.
"Three."
Purple sparks web between Maeve's fingers and weave into a pulsing ball of destructive light. Nick's hands bounce aflame, fire licking all across his arms.
"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. Maeve and the others fire through the opening, her lightning ablaze. It illuminates the darkness beyond ━ along with Nick's fire ━ 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, Dawson seals the shield again, catching a returning volley of bullets.
He looks surprised by his and their group's success.
On the wall above them, a giant fireball churns in the black storm, a torch against the false night. Matt's fire spreads and strikes in a snake of flame. The red heat turns the sky to scarlet hell.
Maeve just clenches a fist and gestures at Dawson.
"Again," she tells him.
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to mark the passage of time. Without the sun, Maeve has no idea how long they spend battling the breach. Even though they push back the assault again and again, every attempt widens the gap bit by bit. Inches for miles, she tells herself. On the wall, the wave of soldiers has not won the ramparts. The ice bridges keep coming back, and they keep fighting them. A few corpses land in the street, beyond even a healer's touch. Between strikes, soldiers drag the bodies into the alleyways, out of sight. Maeve helps, too. She searches each dead face, holding her breath every time. Not Matt, not Cyrus. The only she recognizes is Heyward, his neck snapped clean. She expects a wash of guilt or pity, but, instead, she feels nothing. Just the knowledge that strongarms are up on the walls as well, tearing the Guard's and Montfort's soldiers apart.
Dawson'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 and fire, or brutally ripped open by a bomber's merciless stare. Through the quivering field of blue, shadows gather in the darkness, waiting to try their wall again. Hammers of water and ice batter against Dawson's ability. A banshee scream reverberates off its expanse, and even the echo is painful to Maeve's ears. Dawson winces. Now, the blood on his face streaks with sweat dripping down his forehead, nose, and cheeks. He sprints toward his limit, and they're beginning to run out of time.
"Someone get me Jeremiah!" Maeve shouts. "And Tristan!"
A runner sprints off as soon as the words come out of her mouth, vaulting up the steps to find them. Maeve watches the wall above, searching for a familiar silhouette.
Matt works a manic rhythm, perfect as a machine. Step, turn, strike. Step, turn, strike. Like Maeve, he finds an empty place where survival is the only thought. At every break in the oncoming rush of enemies, he reforms his soldiers, directing the Reds in their fire, or working with Salim and Tori to eliminate another target in the darkness. How many are dead, Maeve can't say.
Another corpse tumbles from the ramparts, end over end. Maeve grabs his arms to drag him off before she realizes his armor is not armor at all, but scaled pieces of stony flesh, smoldering with the heat of a fire prince's anger. She draws back, surprised, as if burned herself. A stoneskin. The few clothes on his dead body are blue and grey. House Laughlin. Norta. One of Chris'.
Nick sees that, too. Him and Maeve share a look, swallowing hard against the implication.
Chris' forces have reached the walls. They aren't just fighting Lakelanders anymore.
A rise of fury tears through Maeve's chest and she almost wishes she could storm through the breach herself. Tear through everything on the other side. Hunt Chris down. Kill him between his army and hers.
Then, the corpse grabs her.
He twists, and Maeve's wrist breaks with a snap. She shrieks against the sudden bleeding pain racing up her arm.
Lightning ripples from her flesh, escaping her 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 doesn't let go, his pincer-like fingers now clawing at Maeve's neck. Explosions blossom along his back, the work of bombers. Fire licks all across him, due to Nick. Bits of stone slough off the man like dead skin, and he howls. However, his grip only tightens with the pain. Maeve makes the mistake of trying to pry off his hands, now locked around her throat. His rocky flesh cuts her skin, and blood wells up between her fingers, red and hot in the frozen air.
Spots dance before her eyes, and she looses another blast of lightning, letting it pour from her agony. The blow rockets him off her 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.
Maeve collapses back, expecting to hit the ground hard. Instead, a pair of warm arms catch her, and she sighs in relief.
"It's OK, you're OK," Nick murmurs in her ear, holding her until she finds the strength to stand. She squeezes his arm in thanks while her other hand strays to her neck, caressing the bruised skin.
She finally stands once her breathing has returned to normal. Nick lets her go, watching cautiously. When they make eye contact, he sends her a small ━ albeit, grim ━ smile.
Dawson trembles on his feet, still holding the thinning shield. He saw the whole thing occur, and could do nothing unless he wanted the invading force to overrun them. A corner of his mouth quivers, as if to apologize for making the right decision.
"How much longer can you hold?" Maeve asks, before spitting blood on the street.
He grits his teeth. "A little while."
That's not helpful, she wants to snap. "A minute? Two?"
"One," he forces out.
"One will do."
Maeve glares through the shield as it weakens, the vivid shade of blue fading with Dawson'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 them. Chris won't set foot in Corvium unless the city is his. While the Sturniolo brothers will fight to the death if they have to, Chris 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.
Jeremiah and Tristan approach from opposite sides, having held their stretch of the wall. While Jeremiah looks meticulous, green hair still slicked back from his face, Tristan is positively painted in blood. All silver. He isn't wounded. His eyes glow with a strange kind of anger, burning bright blue in the churning firelight over their heads.
Maeve notes Xander along with a number of other wreckers, all of them gifted with invulnerable flesh. They carry wicked axes, their edges worked to razor sharpness. Good to combat strongarms. At close range, they're the best chance.
"Form up," Tristan says, taciturn to a fault.
Everyone follows, organizing into hasty lines at Dawson's back. His arms shake as they move, holding on as long as he can. Jeremiah takes Maeve's left, Tristan her right, and Nick just behind. She glances between her fellow electricons, wondering if she should say something. She can feel the static energy blooming from them both, familiar but strange. Their electricity, not hers.
In the storm, the blue thunder continues to rage. Marzia fuels them, and they leech to her lightning.
"Three," Dawson says.
Green on Maeve's left, white on her right. The colors flicker on the edge of her vision, each spark a tiny heartbeat. She can feel Nick's fire, just a step behind her.
"Two."
She sucks in one more breath. Her throat aches, bruised by the stoneskin. But she's still breathing. That's all that matters.
"One."
Again, the shield collapses, opening their insides to the oncoming storm.
"BREACH!" echoes along the ramparts as the forces turn their attention on the gap in the wall. The Silver army responds in kind, surging toward Maeve and the others with a deafening yell. A raging inferno swallows portions of the crowd, screams of agony echoing from inside of it. Green and purple lightning shudders through the killing ground, leaping along the first wave of soldiers. Tristan moves like a man throwing darts, his minuscule needles of lightning exploding into blinding bolts that toss Silver troops into the air. Many seize and twitch. He has no mercy.
The bombers follow their lead, moving with them as they close the breach. They only need an open line of sight to work, and their destruction churns stone, flesh, and earth in equal measure. Dirt falls with the snow, and the air tastes like ash. Is this what war is? echoes in Maeve's mind. Is this what it feels like to be in the Choke? Nick tosses her back, throwing out an arm to move her body. At first, she doesn't understand why. Then, she sees Xander and the other wreckers surge before them, a human shield. Their axes cut in and out, spraying blood until the ruined walls on either side are coated in mirrored swaths of liquid silver.
No. Maeve remembers the Choke. The trenches. The horizon stretched in every direction, reaching down to meet a land cratered by decades of bloodshed. Each side knew the other. That war was evil, but defined. This is just a nightmare.
Soldier after soldier, Lakelander after Nortan, pulses into the breach. Each pushes by the man or woman behind. As on the bridges, they funnel into a killing ground. The crowd moves like the pull of the ocean, one wave drawing them back before the other goes forward. Maeve and the others have the advantage over their enemy, but only slightly. More strongarms pummel at the walls, hoping to widen the gap. Telkies lob rubble into Maeve's line, pulverizing one of the bombers, while another freezes solid, mouth fixed open in a silent scream.
Tristan dances with fluid movements, each palm blazing with white lightning. Maeve uses web on the ground, spreading a puddle of electric energy beneath the pounding feet of the advancing army. Their bodies pile up, threatening to form another wall across the breach. But the telkies just wave them away, sending corpses spinning into the black storm.
Maeve tastes blood, but her broken wrist is just a buzz of pain now. It hangs limp at her side, and she's grateful for the adrenaline that won't let her feel the snapped bone.
The street and earth turn to liquid beneath her feet, running with red and silver. The swampy ground claims more than a few. When a newblood falls, a nymph jumps on him, pouring water down his nose and throat. He drowns before Maeve's eyes. Another corpse lies on his side, roots curling from his eyeballs. All Maeve knows is lightning. She can't remember her name, her purpose, what she's fighting for ━ beyond the air in her lungs and the beating of her heart. Beyond one more second of life.
A telky splits the group apart, sending Nick flying backward. Then, Maeve in the opposite direction. She spirals forward, over the top of the force pushing through the wall breach. To the other side. To the killing fields of Corvium.
She lands hard, rolling end over end until she comes to an abrupt stop, half buried in freezing mud. A bolt of pain spikes through her adrenaline shield, reminding her of a very broken bone and perhaps a few more. The storm winds tear at her clothes as she tries to sit up, shards of ice scraping at her eyes and cheeks. Even though the wind howls, it isn't so dark out here. Not black, but grey. A blizzard at dusk rather than midnight. She squints back and forth, too winded to do anything but lie in pain.
What were open fields, green lawns sloping off either side of the Iron Road, are now frozen tundra, each blade of grass like a razor of icicle. From this angle, Corvium is impossible to make out. Just like they couldn't see through the pitch black of the storm, neither can the assaulting forces. It hinders them as much as Maeve's army. Several battalions cluster like shadows, cutting silhouettes against the storm. Some attempt the ice bridges still forming and reforming, but now must surge toward the breach. The rest lie in wait behind Maeve, a smudge outside the worst of the storm. Maybe hundreds held in reserve, maybe thousands. Blue and red flags snap in the wind, just bright enough to make out. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Maeve sighs to herself. And she's stuck in the mud, surrounded by corpses and the walking wounded. At least most are focused on themselves, on missing limbs or split abdomens, rather than the lightning girl in their midst.
Lakelander soldiers dart around her, and she braces herself for the worst. But they simply march on, stomping for the thundering clouds and the rest of the army slouching against destruction. "Get to the healers!" one of them shouts over their shoulder, not even looking back. Maeve glances down, realizing she's covered in silver blood. Some red, but mostly silver.
Quickly, she rubs mud over her bleeding wounds and the bits of her uniform that are still green. The cuts sear with pain, making her hiss through her teeth. She looks back at the clouds, watching lightning pulse within. Blue at the crown, green at the base, where the breach is. Where she has to get back to.
The mud sucks at her limbs, trying to freeze solid around her. With her broken wrist tucked against her chest, she pushes off with one arm, fighting to be free. She pulls away with a loud pop and starts sprinting, heaving breath after breath. Each one burns.
She makes it ten yards, almost to the back of the Silver army, before she realizes this isn't going to work. They're packed too tightly to slip through, even for her. And they'll probably stop her if she tries. Her face is well known, even covered in mud. She can't chance it. Or the ice bridges. One might crumble beneath her, or the Red soldiers might shoot her dead as she tries to get back over the wall. Each choice ends badly. But so does standing here. Chris' forces will push another assault and send another wave of troops. She sees no way forward and no way back. For one terrifying, empty moment, she stares at the blackness of Corvium. Lightning flickers within the storm, weaker than before. It seems a towering hurricane topped with a thunderhead, layered with a blizzard and gale-force winds. She feels small against it, a single star in a sky of violent constellations.
How can we defeat this? pulses at her mind.
The first scream of a jet sends her to her knees, covering her head with her good hand. It ripples in her chest, a burst of electricity hammering like a heart. A dozen follow at low altitude, their engines spiraling the snow and ash as they scream between the two halves of the army.
More jets spiral on the outer edge of the storm, around and around, carving through it. The clouds drift with the jets, as if magnetized to the wings. Then, Maeve hears another roar. Another wind, stronger than the first, blowing with the fury of a hundred hurricanes. The wind works to clear the storm, tearing it apart with force. The clouds part enough to show the towers of Corvium, where blue lightning reigns. The wind follows the jets, pooling beneath their freshly painted wings.
Painted bright yellow.
House Brekker.
Maeve's lips tug into a smile. They're here. Annabel Roloson kept her word.
She looks for the other houses, but a falcon screams around her, its blue-black wings beating the air. Talons gleam, sharp as a blade, and she jumps to cover her face from the bird. It just screeches keenly before flapping away, gliding over the battleground toward ━ oh, no.
Chris' reserves are coming. Battalions, legions. Black armor, blue armor, red armor. Maeve's going to be smashed between both halves of his army.
Not without a fight.
She lets loose, purple bolts rocketing down around her. Pushing back soldiers, making them question every step. They know what her abilities look like. They've seen what the lightning girl can do. They pause, but only for a moment. Enough to let her set her feet and turn, angling her body. Smaller target, larger change of survival. Her good fist clenches, ready to take them all down with her.
Many of the Silvers assaulting the breach turn in her direction. The distraction is their downfall. Green and white lightning pulse through them, clearing the way for red flame as it charges toward Maeve.
The swifts close the distance first and catch a web of lightning. Some zip backward but others fall, unable to outrun sparks. Storm bolts, crackling out of the sky, keep the worst at bay, forming a protective circle around Maeve. From the outside, it looks like a cage of electricity, but it's a cage of her own making. A cage she controls.
She dares any king to put her in a cage now.
She expects her lightning to draw him, like a moth to a candle flame. She searches the oncoming horde for Chris. A red cape, a crown of iron flames. A pale face in the sea, his eyes blue enough to pierce mountains.
Instead, the Brekker jets move in for another pass, swooping low over both armies. They split around Maeve, making soldiers scramble for cover as screaming metal rushes overhead. A dozen or so figures tumble from the backs of the larger jets, somersaulting on the air before plummeting to the ground at a speed that would pancake most humans. Instead, they throw out their arms, stopping themselves abruptly, churning up dirt, ash, and snow. And iron. Lots of iron.
Valencia and her family, brother and father included, turn to face the oncoming army. The falcon keens around them, screaming as it darts on the harsh wind. Valencia spares a glance over her shoulder, her eyes finding Maeve's.
"Don't make this a habit!" she shouts. A smile crawls it's way up her face. A real smile.
Exhaustion hits Maeve because, strangely, she feels safe.
Valencia Vesper has her back.
Fire blazes at the edge of her vision on either side. It hems her in, almost blinding. She stumbles back and hits a wall of tactical armor. Matt cradles her broken wrist, holding it gently.
For once, she doesn't remember the manacles.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
beware of next chapter 😬
also never really mentioned this but it's canon that val was actually maeve's bi awakening ❤️