Red Ruse

Chapter Twenty Six

Mare

I wake, not for the first time, in tears.

My vision clears with a blink, and I fumble for a tissue. I've taken to leaving a box at my bedside, but there's little I can do about my sweat-soaked skin, still shivering from the latest string of nightmares.

No, something inside me hisses. Memories.

I shiver.

This one was crisper than the last, a photograph before it falls onto a flame. Shade's death burns into my retinas, the twitch of dying limbs and seared flesh. The price of Cal's rebellion, the price of my progress, the price of Maven's refusal to yield any ground. I should have taken the Newblood's offer. Should have quit when I had the chance.

I grab a lamp and smash it without thinking, so close to taking the shards to my skin. Is this how it feels, to lose yourself to madness? Is this how it feels, to watch your life slip through your fingers?

Cal's face flashes before me, and my mind grows thick with fog. In my dreams, he throws the spike himself, burns him alive as he stumbles to the ground. It isn't real. But it might as well be.

I can still feel his hand around my wrist, tightening as the lights flicker at the start of the Sun Shooting. His fire. His explosion. How many died for it?

Screams ring in my ears, and I tremble. It's not real. Not anymore.

But it was, wasn't it?

The Scarlet Guard is next, Farley's voice echoing in the dark. Rise, red as the dawn. In my dreams, she stands on Shade's body. In my dreams, she tells me it was fine.

Change must come at whatever cost it needs.

So long as they didn't pay the price.

The uneasiness lingers as I join the newbloods in Training, urging them to push their abilities to the limit. Cameron glares at me from the sidelines, Lupa seated next to her. They make an odd pair, but they've grown closer since Corros. Close enough to shut me out whenever I draw near.

"What is her ability?" Anabel slides from behind me, pointing at Cameron. "She won't respond to me."

"Silence, but stronger." The words taste of ash, of broken promises and burnt bodies. He was just a soldier to him. Just another Red to use and discard.

"Hmm." She purses her lips. "And what do you call this new ability?"

"A smother." Cameron had refused to name it. "She doesn't like to use it."

Anabel tuts. "How inconvenient."

"I don't blame her." A risky maneuver, one that might cost me her favor. "She's here against her will."

She sighs. "Aren't we all?"

I don't have an answer. Nor do I find one come nightfall, when I wake to a bedpost marred with ash. The sheets lay scorched beneath me, ash flaking in branching patterns like lightning scars.

Things. Not people.

Not yet.

My foot finds purchase on the wooden floor, swimming with memory and delusion alike. A wedding gift, he'd said, but I want it now. Want to do it myself, even if it kills me. Which it will, almost certainly, no matter how much Maven stacks the deck.

Perhaps that's why I keep shivering, pacing until marks are seared into the floorboards. I can't stay in this room.

Where I'll go, I don't know. I find a path somewhere in the chaos, a path of distant footsteps and my own ragged breathing. There is a door, the slide of a lock, wood giving beneath me as I sprawl onto the floor. No one watches. No one helps. I might as well not exist.

Several sobs later, I peel myself from the ground, rising to a mess of cluttered shelves and fallen papers. I know this room. I know these papers. They speak of borders and military strategy, of pawns pushed across a board for glory and conquest. They make me sick.

Sicker than they should.

I shiver. I, too, have made battle plans. I, too, have made meaningless sacrifices.

Shade.

Myself.

In the future . . . who knows.

Yet my ends were different. I cared enough to risk the wrath of court, to help a people long cast aside by whatever means necessary. He never reached for more than his ancestors gave him, and condemned me for using him as my stepping stone.

His eyes flash before me, brimming with hurt. How does it feel to be used, Mare Barrow?

I burn, sparks crackling from my palm. They spread without command, lapping at the papers and games until they, too, start to burn. There is no stopping their rampage, not without help.

"Maven!" My words are weak, lost in the wind. The flames rise higher, and the door creaks. Elara stares at me, head cocked, hands stroking a knife as she leans against the wall. I grit my teeth. "Help me!"

She chuckles. "What an interesting development."

Ash gathers at my feet as I flail, and the sprinklers go off. Somewhere in the haze, someone hands me a knife. And I look up from the floor to find a carving in the wood.

M for Mare.

M for Murder.

M for Madness.

The knife sticks in the wood as I let go, sensation ebbing in and out. Sometimes I'm on the floor. Sometimes I'm on the bed.

And sometimes, I'm in the sky, crying through it all.