WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 58

Mare

"Cal," I whisper his name as he glances at me from the doorway to the tunnels. How much of our conversation did he hear? His manacle is still firmly shut around his wrist, and he, too, picked up one of the blades from the dead soldiers in the tunnels. "Run."

He shakes his head. Tyton already taking steps towards him, spinning the knife he used to stab me. Cal doesn't have his abilities, but he can't be touched by Tyton either. Tonight, they're useless, plain, simple Reds. "Let me end it."

Tyton throws his gun to the floor, out of his reach, Cal's reach, and my reach.

I shuck off my jacket, leaving me in a bare black tank top to press the extra fabric to my leg, the blood coming too quickly for my liking. Not a lethal wound, at least.

"It wouldn't be fair to kill you with my ability, which I see you've taken precautions against. Neither would it be fair for one of us to have a gun-or a girl," Tyton sneers, looking at me and my bloody jacket, "when the other doesn't."

"I wasn't aware that you played by honor," Cal remarks, meeting Tyton in the center of the wide hallway. "A man for a man, a blade for a blade."

Before I can yell at one of them to stop, a new debilitating throbbing taking over, Cal slashes at Tyton, and the latter flings himself backward, Cal's blade slicing through thin air.

The pain in my leg won't let me move, hardly blink as Cal and Tyton waltz across the floor in battle, their figures becoming blurred images. Or perhaps it's the black at the edges of my vision, begging me to sleep. He cut my leg deep and added a twist at the end, narrowly avoiding the bone in the process.

I gasp when Tyton slashes, aiming for Cal's heart, but leaves a shallow cut to his shoulder instead, Silver blood mixing with my red on the metal. Cal merely grunts, returning the favor with a kick to the stomach that sends Tyton to the floor.

In the naked and bitter moonlight, the men are creatures of honed grace, yet savages all the same.

Underground, after Cal, Iris, and Evangeline went missing, the Guard lit up the tunnels with Silent Stone sconces, lighting up the tunnels in a warm way. But the moonlight, in many ways, makes both of them look like deviant wraiths, boots scuffing on the tiles, hair glittering.

With Tyton on the floor but quickly moving to get up, Cal glances at me, opening his mouth.

No words come from his lips, as his opponent, swift like a fox, leaps from the ground, throwing out a fist to Cal's face to land a blow.

Tyton's fist lands home on Cal's jaw, the Silver staggering backward as his blade whips through the air at his hand, trying to shiv Tyton's side. Tyton barely notices Cal's move on time, shifting out of the way so as to only suffer another shallow cut.

They both growl, annoyed at one another's skill. Silver and Red, but equals in every way when it comes to rudimentary fighting with blades. No brain lightning or infernos. It could go on for hours, I imagine, just watching them, awed, as they go back and forth, neither of them keeping an upper hand for more than a couple seconds.

I try to gain some semblance of control over something. My words, to scream down the halls to force them away from one another. If Davidson were here, he wouldn't allow it, not when one of his best soldier's life is at risk. But I can't speak to them, wanting to knock some sense into them, my face racked in sweat. My body won't do much either, my tired, beaten body that wants nothing more than to sleep. I force myself to keep sitting up, focused on them, to stay awake.

They're on the floor, Cal trying to beat Tyton into oblivion with his fist, while keeping Tyton's knife and hand on the ground. Tyton hasn't made a move to grab any of the other blades attached to his hips, and the Newblood looks worse for wear, but he throws Cal off him, going for Cal's chest with his blade.