26. Max
MAX
A elindor shrugged off his silver coat and wrapped it around me.
The assembly grew even quieter than it had been when the fire stripped me bare. A prince of the Zodiac Covenant draping his uniform coat over a naked, questionable cadet. Caspian and Nikolai were already unbuttoning theirs, but the Fae prince had beaten them both without rushing.
“Everyone face the wall!” Drakken bellowed, as if suddenly remembering.
Every cadet and officer in the library turned to face the walls. But they’d all seen my naked body before the Fae heir’s uniform settled around my shoulders, its length reaching my thighs.
Possessive, isn’t he? The demon snickered. For someone who claims to hate us.
At the reminder, the last flames covering my nipples and sex extinguished. But not before each one licked my skin a final time, as if the fire were savoring a goodbye .
“Dismissed!” Drakken barked.
Just like that, the ceremony ended abruptly. No closing address. No final formation. But what else could he or the other heirs say after I’d derailed the Sorting with such an unexpected, unorthodox performance?
The aftermath blurred into noise. My head buzzed with thousands of bees trapped behind my skull, drowning out everything. I wasn’t sure if I was too shocked to function, too ashamed to think, or too terrified that Drakken would do worse than expel me.
Fragments. That’s all I retained.
Drakken didn’t look at me again after seeing what I was.
I didn’t dare lift my gaze to the other heirs. I’d been publicly stripped in front of their entire command. Associating with me now would taint them. I wouldn’t do that to them.
Harrow—Drakken’s aide—or Frost—the Fae who’d brought me boots on the track—or both escorted me back to the barracks.
They carried the trunk that held my uniform and meager belongings and led me to the women’s barracks on the third floor.
I trailed after them like a sheep, but I had no strength or courage to let out a meehh now.
In my new setup, I got an upgrade: a top bunk bed. A step up from the conspicuous cot Drakken had assigned me on the men’s floor.
Frost wanted Aelindor’s coat back. I went to the women’s bathroom to change into casual wear and handed back the coat without a word. I was still numb. As soon as the aides left, I climbed to my bunk .
I lay there with my eyes closed, trying to shut down instead of process.
What’s a little shame to us? The demon snorted. It can’t kill you. It can’t break your ribs. A thousand stares are just an itch from a bug bite. Duh.
What did the duh mean? I didn’t respond. I wouldn’t engage, even at my lowest low.
Besides, it continued, warming up to its own argument, you don’t have to hide that you don’t have a dick anymore. No more binding your chest until you can’t breathe. No more dodging showers like a criminal. No more stuffing socks in your boxers like a lunatic. Wear your sex proudly, girl.
It paused, obviously preening over its own savvy. When it spoke again, the smugness returned.
And let’s not forget we wore the dragon’s fire like lingerie in front of the four powerful, eye-candy heirs and their entire army. The fire didn’t burn us, Max. It dressed us. Let that sink in before you feel sorry for yourself.
I almost forgot my rule of not engaging with the demon and begged it for silence.
But the creature was right. The fire hadn’t burned me. My loyalty wasn’t in question. So maybe it would be enough to stop Drakken from wanting me dead.
“Hey, Max.” Bryn’s voice floated up from below my bunk.
I sat up, legs crossed, and looked down at her. “Yeah?”
“You rock.”
“What?”
I expected her to berate me for my deception. But her face was alight with the manic energy of someone who’d witnessed the most spectacular thing of her life.
“You went out with a bang!” She laughed. “You gave the Sorting a climax nobody saw coming.”
I thought I’d sabotaged it. Turned the glorious dragon’s fire into a bikini in front of the entire assembly. Drakken must have taken it as a personal insult, since he could barely stand to look at me afterward.
And Thane—he’d been left on the wrong side of the door when the fire abandoned its post to follow me.
The Sorting was a one-time event. He’d never get another chance to demonstrate his loyalty in front of the heirs and the crowd.
I’d stolen his moment. That explained the high-voltage glare he’d given me when I passed him in the corridor.
There was nothing I could do for him. But Drakken himself had vouched for the newly promoted sergeant. No one would question Thane’s loyalty. Unlike mine.
I dropped my head back to my pillow. The demon said shame wouldn’t kill me, but I felt it just might.
“Come on, rise and shine,” Bryn said, grabbing the frame of my bunk and giving it a shake.
“When I missed you at the party, I came back to find you. You’re not wallowing up here.
Feeling sorry for yourself doesn’t suit you.
” She pointed at me. “You’re officially a cadet private.
Yeah, it wasn’t the entrance you pictured, but I’d die for that kind of glorious reveal.
So get your ass down here. We’re getting a drink.
You’re going to celebrate like there’s no tomorrow.
Wear your sisterhood like a badge of honor.
And if any asshole tries to give you grief, you’ve got me at your six.
” She grinned. “Let’s take on the world. ”
I had never run from a fight. But this was a different kind of battle than what I was used to—no fists, no weapons, just the weight of a thousand stares and the wreckage of a twenty-year disguise. Still, I wasn’t going to back down.
“What should I wear?” I eyed her uniform.
“Your best uniform.”
“They all look the same. I have three sets.” I paused. “Two sets. The dragon fire burned the third.”
“Then wear one of the two. Easy. Go change.”
I dropped from the top bunk and pulled a uniform from the trunk.
“You can just change right here,” she said. “No one’s around. I’ll wait at my bunk. We’re in the same barracks now. Woot!”
“I’ll change in the bathroom.”
“Suit yourself.” She shrugged. “No soldier’s shy about nudity. Now that you’re officially a woman, you can join us in the shower hall.” Her eyes widened. “Wait—where did you shower before? You definitely never showered with those dicks.”
“Uh. Somewhere else.” I darted out of the barracks with the uniform in my hand.
I changed fast, laced my boots tight, and returned. Bryn was waiting by the door, already bouncing on her heels.
She led the way toward the soldiers’ hub, the place where the entire base went to celebrate or forget.
Dustyard, the sprawling camp town a mile and a half outside the fortress walls, was a vast village unto itself.
It spread along the south road in a grid of timber-frame buildings, canvas-roofed market stalls, and repurposed shipping containers converted into shops, eateries, and bars.
Stormglass lanterns hung from poles at every intersection, casting light across packed-dirt streets.
After the Q-bomb rendered technology useless and razed skyscrapers, camp towns like this rose up in their place, especially around military bases.
Bryn said that the fighting rings, gambling joints, and pleasure district that was marked by rows of red lanterns were the town’s most steady business. She confessed that she’d visited the pleasure parlor that promised happy endings quite a few times. Well, I didn’t judge. We all had needs.
Cadets, soldiers, and officers poured through the streets, blowing off steam between deployments.
The officers’ haunts sat on the north end, cleaner, quieter, separated by an unspoken line that rank drew in the dirt.
The enlisted side was louder, dirtier, and alive with the desperate energy of people who knew tomorrow might kill them.
“This is what’s left of civilization,” Bryn said as we walked, her boots crunching gravel. “We inherited a broken world.”
“It’s still better than the mines.” I stepped over a drainage ditch. “The world was broken since day one anyway. ”
“Are you referring to the Adam and Evie story?”
“Adam and Eve,” I corrected.
“Yup. Broken since day one.” She warmed to the subject.
“Historians blamed the first woman for all of it. Come on. When the first real test came, it was the man’s weak knees that buckled.
Adam, the first man, threw the woman who’d built a life beside him under the wagon.
‘The woman you made for me to sleep with gave me the fruit,’ he told God when he was confronted.
Pointing the finger when he should’ve manned up.
And every man since has followed that playbook, blaming women.
Why the fuck not? Kingdoms didn’t fall because of women.
They fell because it was time, because of men’s greed and stupidity.
” She kicked a rock. “And what burns me most is that half the time, it’s other women helping to hold the rest of us down. ”
She talked a lot.
“People suck, all right,” I said, just to let her know she wasn’t alone in this.
At some point, we moved from the subject of humanity—good or bad—to religion. And went straight for the throat of the devil. He wouldn’t hear us anyway.
“In Genesis, it’s a serpent that tempts Eve in the garden. Is the snake Lucifer? The scripture never confirms they’re the same being.”
“The devil has many names and wears many faces,” Bryn said, as if she were a demonology expert. “And I’m one hundred percent sure that the White Witch is the antichrist.”
It was a luxury, this—having someone to talk philosophy and history with, even though I knew we both had it wrong. To pick apart the world’s wreckage while walking through it. I’d never had this in the mine.
A burst of laughter detonated inside my skull.