WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 46

For I've poured my heart and soul into this chapter, lovelies.

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Mare

Volo spins out of his chair, a blade in hand as my lightning rains upon the earth, illuminating the blackened sky in a terrifying purple. Bolt after bolt comes down in vicious, unnecessary punches, punches to my own gut. Violet veins against charcoal, dead skin.

Growling, as if he knew this kind of stunt-more than a stunt, really-was coming all along, he throws flashing silver towards me.

I grunt, but duck anyway, rolling away from my chair.

Behind me, the knife with a pretty wooden hilt is lodged perfectly into my chair. Maven eyes me dangerously in the second it takes me to get to my feet, put a hand forward in surrender. A warning.

"Stop," I say with force, lightning echoing in the background faintly. "I wouldn't if I were you."

But somewhere in the depths of my mind, I want him to throw another knife at my heart, just to try to kill me. I'd dodge him again, maybe strike at him myself with an off-kilter shot, to play with my food before I finish him off for good.

Before Volo can decide for himself, clad in those fancy lethal metals of his, I notice a slight twitch in his eye muscle. Then he collapses on himself.

The exact opposite of the remnants of good in the world, Volo sprawls on the ground, twitching like an angel whose wings were clipped off by the gods. His eyes remain open, watching, and his fingers move, intent on having his last word. I recognize the work of Tyton in an instant. They must be coming up from the tunnels now.

Volo swears in between his spasms, violent, hateful curses that would condemn me to Hell if his words had any value. And then he laughs, the same laugh that all the mad kings before him have used as they've died with their horrible and barely remembered legacies. "I'll say hello to the devil for you, little lightning girl," he says, louder than the rest of his slurs. His metal-clawed finger taps the cobblestone once, twice, before nothing.

The muscles in his body give out, his body jerking upward one last time before I know that his heart has stopped. Tyton.

Tyton's ability isn't messy and awful like that. He can make deaths happen in a tenth of a second, but Volo suffered for seconds. Seconds. He made it hurt. Shivering at the thought, I can't, don't want to imagine what Cal's death would be by his hand. Tyton might very well not bother with his brain, but go straight for the knives.

I don't dare look up from the king's fresh corpse, and I vaguely sense that Davidson has put up a force field around me, tinted a winter blue. Yet a thousand boots begin clomping anyway, not caring that I don't pay attention. Just stare at the cobblestone.

Screams. The unsheathing of knives and the gunshots of guns.

It's supposed to be peaceful. Or at least as peaceful as the annihilation of a five-hundred-year-old monarchy could be. To get them under control, we have to strike fear into them, get them to stop panicking, stop running, get them to sit down.

Maven still sits in his chair, shoulders slouched and relaxed. His fingers are tucked together at his lap, one ankle crossed over the other. But he smiles at me, a wicked grin that only somebody who has everything he ever wanted could own. He clucks his tongue, eyes flickering between me and the arbor, where Cal inevitably kneels, guns and steel made of Silence pressed to his face.

The scene before me is no better than Maven's psychotic, sadistic, and pathetic smile.

Anabel's limp form lies in her chair, Silver blood leaking from a wound carved into her temple. Another one of the gunshots, just another one of the victims that will get burnt later tonight. But the old queen was not any ordinary courtier. She had to go, and I knew that from the beginning. I don't bother to act surprised, even as she falls from her chair and onto the ground, her heels nearly connecting with Volo's skull.