WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 60

Iris

All hell breaks lose in Archeon, Norta.

Davidson dropped his force field at dawn, minutes ago, and Rosalyn's troops-my troops-are filtering in, the Swifts already in Caesar's Square, coming at the Scarlet Guard without quarter. An explosion went off from the Treasury, and rain pounds down on the earth angrily. Violent and vindictive. 

"I'm going," I announce to Bart from the room Elane took us to. The window faces the bridge and the Square, and it feels as though I'm watching it all transpire through a television screen. "I'll find Rosalyn, and I'll tell her to call it off, once we've gotten Cal."

Bart quirks an eyebrow, sitting on one of the chairs at the tea table set off to the side of the room. "Call it off? How's Cal going to get his crown then?"

I bite my lip, having had the thought swirling at the back of my mind for hours. "He's not," I say, beginning to pace. "The people driving his reign are dead, and the relations between the Lakelanders and Nortans are volatile, at best. My sister won't fight a battle that isn't hers, and I can't persuade her otherwise. She's only doing this to get me back."

He knew it, somewhere deep down. Nonetheless, Bart's expression is heart wrenching. He looks up at me from his chair, jaw shifting as he chews on air. He might love me, but Norta is his country. The Calores have ruled over his family for generations, and even if the Scarlet Guard's idea of democracy is right, it'll never feel quite right to him, even if he's said otherwise. Maybe. Norta might be twisted and wrong, but Cal is far from it. 

"What's going to happen to the fire prince?"

The rain outside pounds in my blood and bones, a second heart that beats too quickly and overwhelms me. "I don't know. I'd like to say I could grant him pardon in the Lakelands, though my sister will never agree to it. She won't kill him, but she certainly won't let him live in peace among us, let alone wage war on the only army large enough to stand as a threat to her. Not when the Choke decimated our troops."

Bart nods slowly. "What a tragedy. From a boy who had the world at his fingertips to a man who has nothing."

"I-"

A deafening clap of thunder rattles behind me, shaking the very ground that I stand on. 

It shakes the world. And it does not stop.

Violet lightning begins her reign of terror on the earth but a second after, and I jolt away from the window, yet somehow unable to tear my eyes from it. 

The stocky bolts of electricity shower down in groups, blinding me in all white-hot fury. As tendrils of orange appear on the world's edges, Mare Barrow's lightning assaults the earth, not like any ordinary lightning I've ever seen. Not of the likes of the girl's usual lightning, either. Something new and different, deeper and darker. It comes from all over, birthed from the clouds of Rosalyn's creation. The far-off countryside, into the Capitol River, shadowed by night. Into Caesar's Square itself, where Red men fight with my Silvers. 

It's almost as though the lightning isn't interrupting this day, but rather this day is interrupting it. It is constant and relentless and speaks of unspeakable pain. The watery beginnings of dawn fade before my eyes, even as I focus on the orange horizon, squint at it, willing it to stay. 

"I thought you chained her up," Bart says, quiet under the sounds of thunder growling. 

A breathless tear leaves my eye. "We did."

But time slows, reverses as it grows dark and black thunderclouds roll in, bathing the room in creeping shadows. 

Until it is darker than night. Darker than Tiberias Calore VII's onyx black hair.