33. Max
MAX
“ T he wards aren’t holding,” Caspian shouted. “Those fuckers are getting through.”
The train rocked. Another impact slammed the carriage sideways.
Metal groaned. Stormglass lanterns swung wildly overhead.
The engine hadn’t been breached—the train kept speed—but the demons had latched onto the hull, clawing at the armor.
Cracks spidered across the windows. At this rate, they’d breach in minutes.
Or the train would jump the tracks and roll.
Advisors gripped the table’s edge. Pale faces. Tight jaws.
My heart rammed my ribs. I gestured urgently at Frost for a weapon. The Fae aide had already pulled me behind him.
“Away from the windows, cadet.” He drew a dagger from his hip sheath and offered it hilt-first. He watched me grip the blade with a wary expression, as if unsure whether I’d use it on the enemy or my own foot.
“Rooftop,” Aelindor said to both heirs .
Caspian’s answering howl punched the windows and vibrated through the steel floor. He shrugged off his fatigues. Tactical gear underneath: breakaway seams, minimal fastenings, built for mid-combat shifting. Fur was already rippling across his shoulders.
“Everyone else stays in the cabin.” Drakken was already moving. “Aelindor, Caspian, and I go topside. Spartans in the other carriages are moving.”
Every officer volunteered to join them.
“The roof can’t hold a platoon. And most of you aren’t trained for high-caste demons.” His voice killed the argument before it formed. “I won’t burn lives for nothing.” His gaze flicked to me involuntarily before darting away.
“There are thirteen of them!” I shouted.
Every head turned. I didn’t care what this would cost me. Thirteen dark signatures burned in the magical matrix of my mind. Each one a dark dot pulling at the surrounding light.
“Stay down here, cadet,” Drakken ordered. Then he was through the roof hatch.
Caspian leapt after him—legs elongating, claws extending, his body reshaping mid-jump.
Aelindor locked his fiery gaze on mine. What I saw in those blue eyes was a man who wanted to stay between me and every threat in this world.
But he had a battle waiting on the roof.
He nodded at Frost— she’s your charge —drew his longsword from the scabbard at his back in one fluid motion, and flew through the hatch.
Graceful. Lethal. Gone.
I stared at the empty square of gray sky. The anxiety in my chest compressed into fear. Not for myself. For them.
I wanted to follow. Every instinct screamed it. But I wasn’t ready. Going up uninvited would make me a liability in a fight that couldn’t afford one.
Before the hatch swung closed, Commander Marco shot through it in a blur of vampire speed.
“I’m a Spartan,” he called. “Fighting on behalf of Prince Nikolai.”
The hatch sealed.
The demons clawing at the windows peeled off and leapt upward. Heavy, multi-legged impacts shook dust from the ceiling as they landed on the roof.
The battle raged above us.
Steel on something harder than steel. The shriek of a blade skating off a surface.
Bodies slamming into the roof—rolling, rebounding—each impact rocking the carriage.
Caspian’s snarl vibrated through the ceiling, animal and furious.
Drakken’s roar shook the walls. The sharp hiss of Aelindor’s magic: wind and earth turned into cutting force.
I mapped the fight through my matrix. The heirs’ signatures blazed, three brilliant points locked in combat with dark masses pressing from every side. On top of the other carriages, less bright yet disciplined signatures moved in formation. Spartans.
But three demon signatures had wedged themselves between the Spartan carriages and ours, blocking reinforcements.
The heirs were isolated. By design.
Something massive hit the roof so hard the ceiling buckled inward an inch. Caspian howled. A wet crunch followed—claws meeting flesh. A demon screamed, the sound hurting my eardrums. Drakken’s dragon roar was full of violence. More screams came down to our cabin.
Then the wrongness hit. Gut-deep and bleeding. Cold dread fogged my vision, freezing my veins.
I needed to be up there. With them.
But going topside could distract them. Even get them killed.
Murder the Fae. Murder the Fae!
Coldiron.
The sentient metal’s chanting rang in my mind, unmistakable.
One of the demons carried it. And not just any demon. The darkest of the thirteen. The signature that seared deeper than all the others combined.
He could command Coldiron like I did.
Rage burned through me. Coldiron belonged to me. A decade of history—speaking to it in the deepest tunnels of Crimson Ridge, persuading it into Stormglass shipments, weaving it into my escape. It should answer to me alone.
No demon had the right to weaponize it against Aelindor.
Against my people.
I knew what Coldiron could do when commanded. It didn’t miss. Once loosed, it tracked—adjusting, following, relentless. Aelindor wouldn’t know. No one on that roof would know except that demon and me.
Iron was harmful to Fae. Iron infused with Coldiron was fatal .
Fear for Aelindor hit boiling point. The force locked inside me erupted from my core. Its shockwave blasted the hatch open, ripping it from its hinges. The steel door spun into the sky like a coin.
Everyone in the cabin froze for half a second. Then everyone drew their weapons, ready for demons to charge down.
I surged toward the opening.
“What are you doing?” Frost seized my arm. “Stay here! Aelindor will have my head?—”
I shoved him. The Fae warrior skidded back two feet. His eyes went wide. I’d just shown him how strong I was.
“If I don’t go up, you might not have a prince to answer to.”
I leapt through the hatch. The jump carried me higher than it should have, five feet of clearance. I landed in a crouch on the speeding train. Wind slammed into me. The world blurred: gray sky, dark plains, the distant wall of the DarkVeil shifting against the horizon.
Frost followed. I didn’t look back.
One purpose burned in me: protect Aelindor.
Only I could.
Murder the Fae! Coldiron chanted.
No, you won’t! I answered.
I planted my feet wide, crouching low against the wind and the rocking momentum. I’d filled out, denser than in the mine. My size anchored me to the steel.
The rooftop was a war zone.
Aelindor engaged two demons at the front of the carriage. His longsword sang, star-steel cutting precise arcs through the wind .
The first demon was fast. Faster than anything that size should be.
It ducked the Fae prince’s opening slash and drove a barbed fist at his ribs.
Aelindor twisted. The barbs shredded his sleeve and opened a red line along his forearm.
He answered with a diagonal cut, faster than a flash, and sliced off three fingers from the demon’s left claws. The demon hissed in pain.
The second demon used the opening. It slammed Aelindor from the flank, driving him toward the edge.
His boots skidded. Half his body hung over the rushing ground.
Then he planted a foot, torqued his hips, and wrenched the sword free in a rising slash that opened the first demon’s throat.
He reversed the blade and drove it through the second’s chest. But the demon seized the steel as it entered, refusing to die.
It dragged itself along the length of his own sword to reach him.
Aelindor put a boot on its sternum and shoved.
The demon slid off and collapsed, fingers still twitching toward him.
Caspian fought mid-carriage in his nine-foot warrior form.
He had Demon A by the throat, claws deep.
But the foul thing wasn’t dying. It hammered the shifter’s ribs with concussive fists, each blow vibrating through the roof.
He wrenched sideways and tore flesh free.
The demon raked its talons down his flank.
Four deep furrows. Red blood hit the steel.
Demon B locked both arms around the prince’s torso from behind and lifted him off the roof.
Caspian threw his head back. His skull cracked against the demon’s face.
The grip broke. He dropped, spun, and drove both sets of claws into its chest. Three strikes before the creature buckled.
Even falling, it tried to drag Caspian’s warrior form over the edge.
Drakken held the rear against a demoness and a bull-horned demon fighting in tandem. One pressed. The other flanked. They rotated with the discipline of soldiers. His palms blazed with dragon fire. The bull-horned demon met it with hellfire, black and red against gold. Neither yielded.
Watch this, girl. The creature in me demanded my attention. Fire demons fear no dragon fire. They’re led by an archdemon.
The demoness closed the distance while the fires canceled each other out. She was enormous, taller than Drakken, armored in fossilized bone. She moved at high speed. Her claw caught the dragon prince across the brow and split skin. Blood poured into his eye.
Half-blind, he staggered. The bull-horned demon charged through the dissipating fire and drove a shoulder into his chest. Drakken skidded backward, boots carving grooves in the steel.
He abandoned his flame and drew his ebony broadsword. Met the demoness head-on. The impact jolted up his arms. She pressed down with her full weight. The dragon prince held against a force that should have driven him through the roof.
Then he redirected her momentum sideways, stepped inside her guard, and buried the broadsword in her shoulder. He ground through bone until she shrieked and reeled back.
The bull-horned demon came again. Drakken tore the blade free and split its armguard in a two-handed swing.
Sulfur and burnt metal choked the air. The train took every curve at full speed, rocking beneath us. The DarkVeil swirled in the distance—shadow hanging from sky to ground, as if the world ended at its edge.
Seeing the heirs bleed hurt me on a profound level. Rage brimmed in every fiber of my being. But I hadn’t come here to join the battle. I’d come to stop it.
My gaze snapped upward.
The archdemon stood at least ten feet tall, riding a hell beast—smoke and sinew, its wingspan blotting out the churning sky.
He wore obsidian armor. Flaming horns curled from his skull like a crown of fire.
His face was ancient ruin—angular, carved with sigils that glowed ember-red. In his hands, a massive war bow.
Two arrows notched.
Both aimed at Aelindor.
Murder the Fae!
True heir! True heir!
The arrowheads were iron infused with Coldiron.
I could feel the sentient metal thrumming in them, straining against the archdemon’s command.
Under his control, they would track Aelindor.
Dodging wouldn’t save him. The arrows would adjust, hunt, follow until they struck.
Iron laced with Coldiron in a Fae’s bloodstream was fatal.
I didn’t understand how the archdemon could also command Coldiron. Fury possessed me—Coldiron was mine . No matter how deep this demon’s power ran.
The arrows flew.
One after the other. The archdemon staggered the release, doubling his odds. Two iron-tipped bolts screaming toward Aelindor. He was locked in combat with a demoness, a newcomer, his back half-turned to the sky.
The Fae heir spotted me.
“Get Max out of here!” he roared, kicking the demoness off the train to reach me.
He saw the arrows, but he wouldn’t be able to dodge them.