34. Max
MAX
A rrows tipped with Coldiron streaked toward Aelindor. His shield was down, lost in the chaos of the melee. Once Coldiron entered his bloodstream, it would turn to poison.
Thought fled. Instinct took over. I launched high and threw myself between him and the arrows. My foot swung up, kicking the first shaft.
Down, I commanded the Coldiron.
The impact jarred through my ankle and up my shin, but the arrow spun wide and dropped onto the roof.
The second arrow sailed straight for my neck.
“No! Max!” Aelindor screamed.
The other heirs saw me in the arrow’s path too. None of them could reach me in time. If they tried, they’d be dead.
Caspian howled, the sound raw with terror. Drakken roared—disbelief, fury, or relief?
No dodge. No time.
They thought they’d lost me .
But Coldiron was mine to command. And I didn’t take kindly to imposters.
I slapped my palms together and caught the arrowhead between them.
The impact should have punched through my hands and out the back of my neck.
Instead, the Coldiron recognized me. The rigid iron infused with the sentient metal shifted at my touch.
Softening, flowing, reshaping like warm clay.
Not liquid, not solid. Something in between. Something that obeyed.
The true heir! Coldiron chirped. Not the false one!
I wasn’t an heir. But I was master to any metal. My element.
Whatever that meant.
True heir commands us!
I cocked my arm and hurled the reformed Coldiron back at the archdemon.
Go get him, I commanded.
The molten metal hardened mid-flight into a spike. It crossed the distance in a heartbeat. The archdemon’s expression cracked—ancient arrogance splintering. His flaming horns guttered. He barked a command in guttural demonic, clawing at the air, trying to reassert control.
Coldiron ignored him. It had a new master.
The spike drove for his throat. He threw up his armguard at the last instant. Coldiron punched through armor plate, through flesh, and out the other side of his forearm. That saved his life.
Got him! Coldiron cheered.
The archdemon howled. The hell beast beneath him buckled, wings beating wildly. Black blood streamed from the wound and sizzled where it struck the beast’s hide.
His burning gaze locked on me.
“Who are you?” he demanded in a demonic tongue.
I glared at him. Wind whipped my hair. The train rocked beneath my feet.
“Who are you?” He shifted to a common tongue. Louder. “Answer me, female! How can you command Coldiron?”
“How about I show you, demon?”
I dove for the first arrow I’d kicked away. It hadn’t fallen off the train but clung to the edge of the carriage, wedged against a rivet. Coldiron gripping the steel on its own.
I grabbed it. The metal sang warm in my fist.
The archdemon gave me and the arrow a look. Then he barked a retreat. The hell beast wheeled and launched skyward. In a blink, his burning silhouette shrank against the churning dark of the Veil.
The remaining demons broke away. Some leapt from the train in tumbling rolls and sprinted for the Veil. Two rushed me instead—not to attack. To grab. To take me with them.
Kidnap us? Ha, ha, the creature in me snickered. Then it started to instruct me: open them from navel to throat. Let the insides trail.
I blocked it out. If I let the creature take the wheel, the frenzy wouldn’t stop at enemies. I could never let anyone know what lived in me.
It chuckled. The blood excited it.
I shook my head. The shit I had to deal with .
The first demon came from my left—gray-skinned and hulking. He lunged with both arms spread. I dropped low and drove an elbow into his knee joint. He staggered, but that didn’t stop him from charging me again, intent on throwing me off the train with him.
Drakken materialized beside me. His ebony broadsword came down in a vertical stroke that split the demon from collarbone to sternum. Black ichor sprayed across the roof. The creature folded and rolled off the edge, trailing steam.
The dragon prince didn’t look at me. Didn’t pause. He was already pivoting toward the next threat, broadsword dripping, his powerful frame cutting the wind.
He’d shown up to save my life. But I knew he’d rather choke than acknowledge it.
From the right, a green-scaled demoness dashed toward me, her yellow eyes locked on mine. Caspian closed from behind, claws out. But she feinted past his reach and bore down on me.
Her claw swiped for my face. I jerked back. The tips missed my cheek by an inch, close enough to feel the displaced air. I drove the Coldiron arrow into her gut with both hands.
“Take this,” I shouted. I didn’t like to call anyone bitch .
The arrowhead sank through her bone armor. Coldiron had been told to kill, and it followed orders to the letter.
She looked down at the arrow buried in her stomach. Her yellow eyes went wide, pain and recognition in them.
Got her! Coldiron chirped.
“This can’t be,” the demoness whispered.
Dark flame erupted from the wound and consumed her from the inside out. Scales blackened. Flesh charred. I yanked the arrow free—I needed it back. The demoness opened her mouth to say something more, but dark fire poured out instead. Three seconds. Ash.
Aelindor arrived at my flank. His longsword sang a horizontal arc that took the head off the third demon coming for me. The head spun into the wind. The body stood a full second before it toppled.
Four surviving demons abandoned the train and fled across the plain toward the DarkVeil. The heirs and Spartans leapt from the slowing train and gave chase. I jumped off too.
A roar split the sky. A dragon of black and gold rose above us, wingspan so vast it blotted out the churning clouds. The downdraft flattened scrub grass and nearly took me off my feet. Drakken had shifted from the roof of the train.
Staggering sight. Always was. But I didn’t have time to admire it. I kept reminding myself: both the man and the dragon were assholes.
I followed the chase on foot. Flat terrain. Cracked earth. Skeletons of pre-Rupture buildings. The DarkVeil filled the horizon ahead.
Frost caught up, breathing ragged.
“Let them handle it, Max. You don’t need to run like your life depends on it. ”
“I like to see things through.”
“You’re making my life hard, cadet.” He panted.
“You’ll get over it, Major.”
The dragon dove. Fire poured from its jaws and hit a fleeing demon. The demon kept running even as it crumbled into ash. The wind scattered the pieces before they touched dirt.
Note to self: Drakken’s elemental fire couldn’t kill high-caste demons. But dragon-form fire could. Different source. Different magnitude.
“Take one alive!” Aelindor called, still leading the chase.
The Fae prince could run, each stride eating ground with centuries of practice. Even sprinting, he looked like he was gliding.
Caspian flicked his wrist. A dozen runed death cards sailed in a lethal fan and struck a hairless demon in rapid succession, each detonating on impact. The demon yowled and crashed to the dirt, skidding half a dozen feet.
“Got one!”
The demon rolled onto its back, a dagger already in its claws.
“Watch out!” I shouted out a warning.
The demon stared at me and grinned. “Princess.” Its voice slithered in an ancient demonic tongue. “They’ll come for you. Now we’ve found you.”
Again, I understood it perfectly.
My heart rammed into my ribcage. My palms went cold and clammy. I was no princess. But I couldn’t discredit the creature in me. What if it was a demon princess? The true heir?
Hot shit. That was why it was hiding in me. It was being hunted!
I had to kill that demon before it could reveal more. Before it outed me. Not to protect the creature inside. Self-preservation.
I raised the Coldiron arrow to strike. But the demon dragged the blade across its own throat. The grin stayed fixed as the light left its red eyes.
Aelindor caught a short-horned demon seconds later and tackled it from behind. The demon drove its own claw through its chest and went limp in the Fae prince’s grip.
The enemies refused to be taken alive.
The last two sprinted for the DarkVeil. One bellowed a command. A massive hellhound phased into existence, its jaws trailing smoke. Both demons scrambled onto its back. The hellhound dashed into the Veil, crossed the threshold, and vanished.
In the distance, two army jeeps and a military transport raced toward us across the plain.