Lights clicked off in sequence down the row. Thane’s footsteps receded into silence.
In the dark, Delia’s voice came through, just above a whisper. “Enjoy the ride down, Scarecrow. The landing’s going to hurt.”
I let her have it. She didn’t matter. None of them did.
I lay back, and the darkness handed me Missy.
Every night I’d tucked her in and waited for her to start our ritual: forehead pressed to mine, that small, ridiculous giggle, two notes, up and down. Her signal that the day hadn’t beaten us. Two people in the worst place on the continent, agreeing out loud that we were still here.
A month,I’d promised, the day I went over the fence.Two at most, and I’ll come back for you.
She’d be making the sound now, wherever the Collector kept her. Two notes, up and down. Waiting for me to give it back.
My heart broke all over again.
I’m coming, little viper. I’m coming.
Chapter 16
Max
Faint purple bled into gray on the eastern horizon. The air was cold enough to bite. The track was a wide oval of packed dirt, and by the time Bryn and I hit the first stretch, a dozen cadets were already on it.
Our boots struck the ground like rain on stone. Our breath fogged in pale columns. The fortress walls rose on three sides, banners bearing Zodiac signs slack in the still air.
Bryn kept up with me through the first two laps by sheer stubbornness, her breath coming in measured pulls. By the third, the gap between us opened, not because she slowed, but because I was getting faster. Stronger. Something had shifted in me since I returned from the outpost.
Cadets shot looks at me as I passed them. The ones already ahead glanced back over their shoulders, as if they could sense me coming, as if my presence unsettled them, until I passed them too.
I caught up with Bryn on the fifth lap and slowed to match her pace. We swung into the less crowded outer lane.
“I feel like we’re drifting apart, Max,” she said, breathing through her mouth.
“We’re still running side by side.”
“You know what I mean.” She cut me a look. “You’re no longer the lowest cadet. Not like me.”
“Look at my fatigues.” I gestured at the plain gray-and-slate. “I’m exactly where you are.”
“You wear the same uniform,” she said, “but you’ve been lifted above our station. The heirs hand-picked you for a deployment every cadet here would kill for. And it isn’t just that you’re good with metal. They want you by their side.”
I’d told Bryn about Coldiron. Classified, technically. I hadn’t told her everything. I was a soldier, obeying orders and loyal to the heirs, but I trusted her. Bryn knew how to carry a secret. She only talked freely about things that didn’t matter.
“Rank won’t define us, and it won’t separate us,” I said. “You’re my friend. We aren’t drifting anywhere. You got me?”
She nodded, loyalty clear in her eyes. “We aren’t drifting anywhere. I got you.”
The mess hallwas a long concrete building with long timber tables, and the ambient noise hit you like a wall when you pushed through the doors—thousands of cadets eating, talking, the clatter of trays and cutlery bouncing off hard surfaces. It smelled of bread, fried egg, cheap coffee, and the human-and-sweat baseline of a military installation that never fully aired out.
Every head turned when I walked in.
The whole room performed a slow, rolling pivot, table by table, like a wave moving outward from the door. Conversations stuttered. Forks stopped halfway to mouths. Someone dropped a cup.
I kept my face blank and went to the line.
Overnight, apparently, I had become interesting. A first-year cadet who’d deployed with the heirs to a combat zone, come back with a Spartan company in a vampire prince’s car. Rumor had a faster metabolism than any official dispatch, and I knew exactly what version of events was circulating by the way people looked at me—half hostile, half unable to stop looking.
I took my tray. The serving woman, who had iron-gray hair, loaded my plate without being asked. Oatmeal, two egg-and-cheese sandwiches, potatoes. Then she reached back and added another scoop of potatoes.