WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 52

Perhaps the song in no circumstance relates to this chapter, but I love it nonetheless. I listen to a little bit of Queen from time to time, and I was just reminded of this song over the weekend. Have a great week everybody! 

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Evangeline

The tunnels beneath the palace are odd, almost alive, breathing things, against the torches each of us hold.

We don't run, but Cal's pace ahead of mine carries urgency, and sometimes there's a spring to his step that makes me think he's about to launch into a sprint. I can't blame him, not with the people marching through the halls above us; the bodies of the guards we left behind.

Father, amid my years of training, taught me to have a tolerance for blood and guts, the unsightly parts of the art of war.  The cuts I made to the guards were clean and merciful, though they hardly deserve it. Iris's kills could've been kinder, but water takes time to suck a soul. But for the glance I spared at Cal as we ambushed those Red guards, the sight I saw turned my stomach over. And Cal, not armed with anything but a nearby sconce.... I know by the look in his eyes that he didn't do it out of spite or to prove a point, but out of necessity. He brought flames at three of the guards without relent, until he was sure that they wouldn't be getting up, wouldn't see sunlight again, die in a lonely prison.

The tunnels beneath the palace transition at random from modern white to ancient sandstone, and now we enter a new passage in the system that looks older than the other ones we've been in, branching off from one that was already desolate and cobweb-covered.

And the torches we carry hardly help underground, darkness on each and every side of us, the flames glowing dully. We don't need to lead our hunters right to us.

"Every moment that we stay down here is another moment wasted, Cal," Iris hisses storming through the tunnels behind me. "You heard what they said. The tunnels anywhere besides for right under the damn palace are gone. They've probably found the corpses by now, or else noticed that Jon woke from his coma. We need to leave."

Cal doesn't stop, and at first he doesn't respond. Then he sighs. "Of course they've found the corpses by now. It wouldn't take long, not when guards are always changing rotations in the units. It was luck that we came up when there wasn't a rotation going on." Not luck. Jon. "But we don't have armor or any weapons to use if they bring Silencers down on us. I need a set of flamemakers, and we need time away from the Silence to regain energy. Trust me when I say it won't matter if we leave now or in a week. The window for element of surprise is already gone."

My gaze skips around through the passage that seems to narrow as Cal speaks. At first it was wide, wide as a palace corridor, but now it's grown smaller, so that Cal, Iris, and I could barely walk shoulder to shoulder if we desired. The walls are more craggy than before, jagged rocks sticking out at various angles. Wherever he's taking us isn't a glamorous path towards the royal libraries or the King's rooms.

If only because Iris has to be thinking it, I ask, "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere that Maven and the bastards upstairs don't know exists."

I can't do much more than blink at his back. I charge forward anyway, leaving Iris to the rear.

Cal has this...militant expression on his face when I look at him now. A soldier with the sole motive to survive, to kill. Or else a scared boy who's learned how to distract himself. I should tell Cal that, whisper in his ear, asking what Mare will think of him when she sees those he killed for herself. Not that she should judge, with all the people she's murdered. I've seen the corpses she's left behind, horrible, terrifying bruises from her lightning all across their bodies.