“And when you find them . . . us? What then?”

I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. I haven’t thought that far ahead.

Farley steps forward when I can’t, extending a hand. She holds a red scarf, ragged but clean. “The Scarlet Guard will protect them, hide them. And train them if they want to be trained.”

I almost balk at her words, thinking back to the Colonel. The last thing he seems to want is newbloods around, but Farley sounds so sure, so convincing. Like always, I’m sure she has something else up her sleeve, something I shouldn’t question. Yet.

Slowly, Nix takes the scarf from her, turning it over in his stained hands. “And if I refuse?” he asks lightly, but I hear the steel beneath.

“Then Shade will put you right back in bed, and you’ll never hear from us again,” I tell him. “But Maven will come. If you don’t want to stick with us, you’re better off in the wild.”

His grip tightens on the scarlet fabric. “Not much of a choice.”

“But you do have a choice.” I hope he knows I mean it. I hope it for my own sake, for my own soul. “You can choose to stay, or come. You know better than anyone how much has been lost—but you can help us regain something too.”

Nix is quiet for a long while after that. He paces, scarf in hand, occasionally glancing through the branches at the watchtower beacon. It revolves three times before he speaks again.

“My girls are dead, my wife’s dead, and I’m sick of the marsh stink,” he says, stopping in front of me. “I’m with you.” Then he glares over my shoulder, and I don’t need to turn around to know he’s looking at Cal. “Just keep that one far away from me.”

TWELVE

We trudge back through the woods unscathed, chased by nothing except sea breeze and clouds. But I can’t shake the feeling of dread curling around my heart.

Even though Nix almost split Cal’s skull, recruiting him seemed easy. Too easy. And if I’ve learned anything over the past seventeen years, over the past month, it’s that nothing is easy. Everything has a price. If Nix is not a trap, then he is certainly a danger. Anyone can betray anyone.

So even though he reminds me of Dad, even though he’s little more than a gray beard and grief, even though he’s like me, I close my heart to the man from Coraunt. I have saved him from Maven, told him what he was, and let him make his choice. Now I must carry on, to do the same for another and another and another. All that matters is the next name.

The starlight illuminates the woods enough for a quick glance, and I thumb through the now familiar pages of Julian’s list. There are few in the area, clustered around the city of Harbor Bay. Two are listed in the city proper, and one in the New Town slum. How we’ll get to any of them, I’m not sure. The city will surely be walled like Archeon and Summerton, while the restrictions on techie slums are even worse than the Measures. Then I remember; walls and restrictions don’t apply to Shade. Luckily, he’s walking better by the hour, and shouldn’t need the crutch after a few more days. Then we’ll be unstoppable. Then we might even win.

The thought thrills and confuses me in equal measure—what will a world like that look like? I can only imagine where I’ll be. At home maybe, certainly with my family, somewhere in the woods where I can hear a river. With Kilorn nearby, of course. But Cal? I don’t know where he’ll choose to be, in the end.

In the darkness of night, it’s easy to let your mind wander. I’m used to forests and don’t really need to focus to keep from tripping on roots and leaves. So I dream as I walk, thinking of what might be. An army of newbloods. Farley leading the Scarlet Guard. A proper Red uprising, from the Choke trenches to the alleys of Gray Town. Cal always said that all-out war was not worth the cost, that the loss of Red and Silver life would be too great. I hope he’s right. I hope Maven will see what we are, what we can do, and know he cannot win. Even he is not a fool. Even he knows when he is beaten. At least, I hope he does. Because as far as I can tell, Maven has never been defeated. Not when it really counts. Cal won their father, his soldiers, but Maven won the crown. Maven won every battle that truly mattered.

And given time . . . he would’ve won me too.

I see him in every shadow of every tree, a ghost standing tall against the rainstorm in the Bowl of Bones. Water streams between the points of his iron crown, into his eyes and mouth, into his collar, into the icy abyss that is his wasted heart. It goes red in color, turning from water to my blood. He opens his mouth to taste it, and the teeth within are sharp, gleaming razors of white bone.

I blink him away, blotting out the memory of the traitor prince.

Farley murmurs in the darkness, detailing the true purpose of the Guard. Nix is a smart man, but like everyone else beneath the rule of the Burning Crown, he has been fed lies. Terrorism, anarchy, bloodlust, those are the words the broadcasts use when describing the Guard. They show the children dead in the Sun Shooting, the flooded wreckage of the Archeon Bridge, everything to convince the country of our supposed evil. All the while, the real enemy sits on his throne and smiles.

“What about her?” Nix whispers, tossing a flint-eyed glance in my direction. “Is it true she seduced the prince into killing the king?”

Nix’s question cuts like a blade, so wounding I expect to see a knife sticking out of my chest. But my own pains can wait. Ahead of me, Cal stills, his broad shoulders rising and falling, an indication of deep, steadying breaths.

I put a hand to his arm, hoping to calm him as he calms me. His skin flames beneath my fingers, almost too hot to touch.

“No, it isn’t,” I tell Nix, pushing all the steel I can into my voice. “That’s not what happened at all.”

“So the king’s head rolled off on its own, then?” He chuckles, expecting a rise of laughter. But even Kilorn has the good sense to stay quiet. He doesn’t even smile. He understands the pain of dead fathers.

“It was Maven,” Kilorn growls, surprising us all. The look in his eyes is pure fire. “Maven and his mother, the queen. She can control your mind. And—” His voice falters, not wanting to continue. The king’s death was so horrible, even for a man we hated.

“And?” Nix prods, chancing a few steps toward Cal. I stop him with one daggered glare, and thankfully, he halts a few feet away. But his face pulls into a sneer, eager to see the prince in pain. I know he has his reasons to torture Cal, but that doesn’t mean I have to let him.

“Keep walking,” I murmur, so low only Cal can hear.

Instead, he turns, his muscles taut beneath my touch. They feel like hot waves rolling on a solid sea. “Elara made me do it, Marsten.” His bronze eyes meet Nix’s, daring him to take another step. “She twisted her way into my head, controlling my body. But she let my mind stay. She let me watch as my arms took his sword, as I separated his head from his shoulders. And then she told the world it’s what I wanted all along.” And then softer, as if reminding himself, “She made me kill my father.”

Some of Nix’s malice dies away, enough to reveal the man beneath. “I saw the pictures,” he mumbles, as if in apology. “They were everywhere, on every screen in town. I thought— It looked—”

Cal’s eyes flicker, out to the trees. But he’s not looking at the leaves. His gaze is in the past, to something more painful. “She killed my true mother as well. And she’ll kill all of us if we let her.”