WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 61

Mare

I cannot breathe. Cannot think or move. 

Maven stands at the turn in the hallway patiently, not moving. He doesn't say anything, keeping silent while I struggle with myself. 

But I can't look at him, can't look at Cal, for the irrational fear that he's already begun to change in the worst ways possible. Instead, I look at the marble floor, cool on my red and silver hands. My breaths come too fast even as each heave of air feels like I'm lifting a cement brick. 

It's not... no. 

I wanted to destroy the world with my lightning. Turn back time, make it so that it was night again, when I was walking through the hallways, Cal and Iris and Evangeline hiding in its alcoves waiting to ambush and take me away. Yet even more than that, I wanted to kill them all. Evangeline and Elane and whoever else I can place the tiniest bit of blame on for this. Maven, perhaps. He's wanted his brother dead for a very long time. 

And in the end, after those minutes of glorious lightning crawling through my skin and ricocheting around my eyes, a feeling of chaotic control, he was the one who talked me down from my high. Oh yes, I would've been just fine killing myself and the rest of the world had he not come around, the embodiment of all my fears woven into the body of a boy. 

"But you weren't bluffing, were you? There was no backup plan had I done what you said, destroy the world and myself. Everybody else in the palace is gone."

Maybe dead, because of me.

"I may be a liar, but I don't bluff. And I can't say that I was confident my words would calm you down, either. They usually don't," he murmurs, as if to himself. "I don't particularly give a damn as to whether or not we all die tonight."

What is left? He has nothing left, nothing and nobody left to live for. I close my eyes at the irony, feeling Maven's glimmering blue eyes on my face, half turned to him. 

Somebody will come, and soon. My storm was like none other, sent and inspired by the Gods themselves. The power I felt as a different part of me took over was devastating and vast, making my ordinary lightning the shores of a very large sea. I only saw purple after the world faded to black, Cal's form warm and stiff beneath my hand. Then I only felt power, infinite and addictive. Something that I certainly would not have given up had Maven and Iris not come around, their voices the sole indicator they existed at all. 

Nobody would've stopped me. Nobody could've stopped my black clouds. 

I force out his name, looking at his blurred figure from the corners of my eyes. "Maven," I say, shivering. While once I might've thrown myself over the cliff edge that was Tiberias Calore, now Maven pulls me back from the ledge of a far more dangerous canyon. He anchored me, made me realize that it wasn't worth it. Not to destroy everyone, let their deaths be in vain. 

I don't speak again, a sob coming out from deep inside of me.  At first it was animalistic screaming and tears, and for awhile there was a yawing, numb quiet. 

Now I cry, putting my bloody hands over my eyes again. My breathing is offbeat and cries are high and low, short and long things. "I- I-" I stammer, trying to say something to explain myself to him, what's happened, though with Maven's mind, he's already figured out exactly what has happened. 

"Not now. There will be time for everything tomorrow, and the day after that." His words are startling, making me want to stay here, never let time pass again. But the sun has risen, painting the walls in an inviting orange. "Right now..." he seems tentative to say whatever's on his mind, like he doesn't know what to do. I doubt he does. "We should leave. I'll take you back to your room, or wherever you need to go. And I'll be quiet the whole way."