WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 50

Iris

The screaming begins just a hair before dusk.

Snared in between the driftings of my dreams, I jerk from the corner I neatly keep myself in when not arguing with Evangeline or staring at Maven's back, thinking about the boy and his mind.

I think I rip my dress as I come forward, my fingers desperately clinging to the bars. It is a woman who cries out, for sure, though her scream is animalistic and guttural, so loud it's as if she's trying to cut a hole through the Heavens themselves. "Is it Elane?" I ask, however reluctant.

"No," Evangeline answers, also having stood. I hear a slight exhale of breath from Cal's side of the room, and I let loose my own as well. She's barely told us anything about Elane and her location, let alone any plans they might've hatched before Evangeline willingly got herself captured. But Elane is out there regardless, and she needs to stay out there, rather than locked up here with us. "I would know if it's Elane, and I've never heard that scream before."

The woman screams again, this time closer; I flinch. "Well that hardly sounds like a victory whoop, so it certainly isn't anybody who has the intention of unlocking these cages."

"But I don't think an executioner would be making those cries either," Maven murmurs, having barely shifted since he heard the screams. As if he were expecting them, but that's impossible. Well reached as Maven is, he has no connections down here. Nobody comes to talk to him, just like how nobody comes to talk to us, unsavory Whispers the only exception.

"More than likely, it's a stray Silver who finally got caught," I say, backing away from the bars with the intention of sitting down again. Perhaps to unlace my intricate braids for the tenth time, count the seconds between the water drips, though I already know it's-

Sobs, sobs are between the heaved breaths and screams borne of anguish. And then, words.

"How could you?" the female asks, her voice too raw for me to identify if I've ever met her before. Still, I get anger; anger mixed with the deepest sadness that I've encountered in a long while. "I wasn't trying to hurt them any more than they deserved...they broke you and enslaved you...yet they merit our benevolence?"

Her sentences are fractured because of the violent sobbings. Like bits and pieces of shattered glass, most of the shards forgotten about and swept away.

"And I thought you were getting better," a second one says, snaps, actually. General Davidson, the man who keeps all the men and news inside of Archeon. "You promised us you were getting it under control, and Julian... Julian reported to us that you were getting stronger."

A demented laugh. "My power is not a curse, Davidson. It's a gift. Without me, Mare never could have made it out of Archeon when saving Gisa, and the wedding would have been more chaos than it already was. The minds of the men and women were angry and distracted. Without me...you wouldn't have gotten a word in, Mare."

The voices get fainter now, trailing down another passage toward another wing of the prison. The Whisper...the Whisper is a women, and she's gone insane. The other thoughts can come later, about the masquerade and the way that they took down all those guards before I came in, the way in which the sea of Silvers at Cal's wedding was so calm...

"How did your mother handle the power?" I ask. My voice is empty; confused.

Something tells me the others are stunned into silence as well, because neither Cal nor Evangeline erupt as they should. Just cold, friendly silence.

"I don't think that she did," Maven says, moving so that his back is a little straighter against his cage. "Samson was a psychopath. He took pleasure in ripping apart Norta's enemies. He always went farther than was necessary with prisoners. He left Mare incapacitated for days. I-" He stops himself. Very close to sharing something intimate, I'd imagine. I wasn't there for the first months of her imprisonment. "But while my mother put on a facade of calm and grace, she was no saner than her brother. Her insanity took a different form, though, something of a warm, simmering fury that ate at her for years. I don't know what made her like the way she was."