35. Max
MAX
“ Y ou’re late to the party, Captain Carroway,” Drakken told the reinforcement leader as she saluted the heirs.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Captain Carroway said tightly.
“We were down on manpower. The garrison soldiers tried to hold the line, but the demons were too powerful. We lost twenty-one soldiers.” She paused.
Grief flashed across her face. Then she steeled her voice.
“The demons razed two villages, then took off after your train. We were delayed helping the surviving civilians.”
“Twenty-one,” Aelindor said quietly. He let the number sit. “What else?”
“Most villagers reached underground shelters when the outposts sounded the warning bells.” She glanced toward the DarkVeil.
“If their objective hadn’t been the train, they’d have done more damage.
I don’t think they came to occupy, though.
” She met Aelindor’s eyes. “It’s fortunate Captain Holt’s intelligence reached Your Highnesses in time, sir.
If more hostiles emerge from the Veil, we’ll lose the eastern corridor without Spartan reinforcement. ”
We looked down the empty track. The train had pressed eastward toward the border outpost, two or three miles out. The Spartans who’d disembarked during the chase now filed into the military bus heading in the same direction.
“Something’s shifted,” Caspian said, gesturing at the DarkVeil. “We just don’t know what.”
“Someone’s directing them. And I’ll get to the bottom of it.” Drakken’s jaw set like a steel trap.
He loved saying that, didn’t he? He’d vowed to get to the bottom of who I was in that interrogation room, back when I still wore my stinky miner’s uniform, coated in blood and dirt. He’d tried sleep deprivation to weaken my defenses.
As if he could read my thoughts, he flicked a quick glance at me. I stood still beside Aelindor, face blank, eyes forward. Looking at no one. Everyone here outranked me by a mile anyway.
“One more thing, sirs.” Captain Carroway’s posture tensed.
“A linguist with First Response overheard the demons’ communications before the settlement fell.
They were searching for a lost heir. One who surfaced recently, they said.
If accurate, this suggests one of Your Highnesses was the primary target.
The demons reached your train by design, not chance. ”
Dogshit. This better have nothing to do with the creature in me.
Aelindor’s cool manner didn’t change. His face remained unreadable. But a dangerous suspicion flitted through those blue eyes, faster than a mortal eye could follow. I caught it. His gaze cut to me. Half a second. Then away.
“The demons we fought said something guttural,” Caspian said, hitting his fist against his palm. “We need to round up every demonologist and anyone who understands the fucking demonic tongue. We need to know the shit they’re saying.”
I held myself still and tried not to look relieved. They’d heard the demons talk to me, but they had no idea what was said. I was safe for now. But for how long?
My palms were slick, but I stopped myself from wiping the cold sweat on my thighs.
“Bring that linguist to the outpost for debriefing,” Drakken ordered.
“I’m sorry, that isn’t possible, Highness.” Captain Carroway exhaled. “He didn’t make it. He succumbed to his wounds shortly after he shared partial intel.”
Captain Carroway’s column rode escort beside our jeep. She’d surrendered one of her vehicles for the heirs. Frost went with the escort.
Aelindor wanted me in the jeep with the heirs. Captain Carroway’s eyes lingered on me when I climbed in beside the Fae prince, but she held her tongue. No one dared question Aelindor.
Drakken beat Caspian to the driver’s seat. The shifter prince growled. But when he saw me settling in the back, he grinned and pivoted to slide in beside me .
“Passenger seat, please, Caspian.” Aelindor didn’t look up. “First line of defense if they hit us again.”
The shifter wasn’t having a good day. He shook his head in distaste but vaulted into the front. The jeep lurched onto the cratered road.
I sat rigid, the Coldiron arrow in my fist, knuckles white against the shaft.
My blood still ran hot from the fight. And I knew what was coming—the inevitable questions.
They’d watched me catch an arrow bare-handed that would have killed the fastest Spartan.
I’d barely finished my first week of training.
False heir now knows about true heir, Coldiron whispered.
Who’s the false heir? I pressed. Who’s the true heir?
Search. Kill. False heir says.
That was all Coldiron could give.
“You disobeyed a direct order, Max.” Aelindor’s voice remained cool, but strain bled through.
“You put yourself between me and those arrows. In the line of fire.” Each sentence landed hard.
“This will not happen again. I appreciate what you did. But I would have handled them. It’s my responsibility to protect you. Not the other way around.”
“With all due respect, sir, protection isn’t one-way,” I countered. “Yes, I disobeyed, and I’ll take whatever discipline you give me. But I’d do it again. If I hadn’t intercepted those arrows, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.” I held his gaze. “You’d be dead, sir.”
The word detonated in the jeep like a grenade. Even Drakken went quiet—no demands, no yelling. Powerful supernaturals could sense a lie the way a dog sensed fear. They sensed none in my statement.
“Why do you believe I’d be dead? Explain, please,” Aelindor asked softly.
Another secret was about to be stripped away. I wondered how many I’d have left by the time the heirs were done with me. But I had to tell them about Coldiron.
I ran my thumb over the arrowhead. The sentient metal hummed under my touch—the way a cat purrs when it recognizes its person.
“The arrowhead is iron infused with a sentient metal—Coldiron.” I turned the shaft so the metal caught what light there was.
“Once Coldiron is given a target, it tracks. It doesn’t miss.
You could dodge a spell, but not a weapon guided by Coldiron under an archdemon’s command.
” I let that sit. “And iron laced with Coldiron in a Fae’s bloodstream doesn’t wound.
It kills. No healer knows how to counter it. ”
If he’d died, a part of me would have gone with him. I couldn’t explain this deep connection. I just knew it lived in my bones.
Aelindor drew a long breath through his nose. “Coldiron.” Not a question. As if it was the word he’d been chasing for decades, finally spoken aloud by someone who held the thing in her hand.
“No one in the known world understands this metal except me.” I met his eyes. “Seeing a demon wield it was a shock. But he couldn’t command it the way I do. When I seized control, the metal obeyed only me. That’s why I was able to fling the arrow back at him. ”
“I heard him ask who you are.” Drakken’s hard voice came from the driver’s seat.
“I wasn’t going to introduce myself to an enemy,” I said, brushing off his implied accusation.
“He didn’t want your name, Max.” Drakken’s gray eyes found mine in the rearview mirror. “He wanted to know what you are.”
“What I am?” I held his reflected stare. “You mean like ‘warlock’—the label you’ve been welded to me since I got here? Should I expect another round in the dungeon, Highness? Three more days of interrogation until I confess to something I’m not?”
The dragon growled. Smoke leaked from his nostrils.
“That won’t happen again, Max. I promise.” Caspian’s voice was firm. “I’m sorry I didn’t put a stop to it earlier.”
“Keep coddling her,” Drakken snapped, “and she’ll be running this Covenant within a month.”
He was a drama king. But running my mouth and sneering at one of the highest-ranking officers would only land me another twenty laps. Or worse.
“Drakken, please,” Aelindor sighed. He turned to me, warmer now. “May I?”
He extended his hand. Long fingers. Open palm. I laid the shaft across it.
Caspian and Drakken watched in the mirrors.
Aelindor turned the arrow slowly, studying it the way he’d study a rare text—with the reverence of a scholar and the caution of a soldier. Then his fingertips brushed the arrowhead before I could stop him.
He flinched. His hand snapped back. A bright welt already rose across his fingers.
“Don’t make contact with the Coldiron arrowhead,” I warned. “This one’s been activated with killing intent. Most Coldiron stays dormant. But once it’s forged with purpose, even touching it burns.”
I doubted the archdemon had done the forging. That kind of craft required someone with a deeper connection to the metal. Someone more powerful. The thought churned in my gut.
“My turn.” Caspian twisted between the seats, swiped the arrow from Aelindor’s palm, and grabbed the arrowhead bare-handed.
Again. Before I could stop him.
“Don’t let it break your skin!” I shouted.
“Fuck!” He dropped the arrow into his lap, shaking his hand. Blisters bloomed across his palm.
“You should know better than to touch the tip after His Highness Aelindor did.” The chiding slipped out before I could mince my words.
Caspian’s wince turned to a grin. “Noted.”
Drakken’s hand left the wheel. Dragon fire sheathed his palm in gold, and he wrapped his fingers around the arrowhead, using his own element as armor.
It didn’t matter. He jerked back, staring at the blisters forming through the fire.
“Fuck. Burns like ice,” he said. “This metal is unholy.”
Something protective flared in me. I didn’t like anyone calling my metal unholy.
“Coldiron is sentient.” My voice came out cold, clipped. “It’s not unholy just because it’s beyond your understanding.” I turned to Caspian. “My arrow. Please.”
“You sure you want this thing back?” He grabbed the shaft mid-point and offered it nock-first.
“It’s mine.” I reached past the shaft and wrapped my fingers around the arrowhead.
The metal went quiet at first. Then a reddish-gold glow seeped through my fingers as it recognized me, the same way it had always responded in the deepest tunnels of Crimson Ridge.
Three heirs stared at my glowing hand. None of them spoke for a few seconds.
“I’ve studied the texts on Coldiron for decades,” Aelindor said.
“I once thought it was myth. The rarest metal forged in heaven, buried in hell. But it surfaced after the Q-bomb tore the barrier between the immortal and mortal realms.” He looked at the glow between my fingers.
“And here it is. Cradled in your hand. I saw you reshape it on top of the train, Max. As soon as the arrow hit your palms, the metal changed. How?”
“I’ve always had a way with metal. Any metal.” I met his gaze. “It’s more so with Coldiron.”
“So you’re an alchemist now?” Drakken snorted.
“If I am, I wasn’t trained,” I said. “I don’t need training.
I was born with the ability to find Coldiron, hear it, speak to it.
” My voice thinned before I could stop it.
“I first encountered the sentient metal when I was sent into the mine at age eight. Two days after my parents were killed in a drift collapse.”
The old pain surfaced like acid. I drew a breath against it .
Aelindor’s elegant fingers curved around mine.
My hand still gripped the arrowhead, knuckles white.
His touch didn’t just steady me. It reached into the raw, ragged place the memory had opened and held it shut.
My body hummed. I fought not to bury my face against his chest and let someone else carry the weight.
Let someone else hold my pain for five seconds.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Max,” Caspian said. He turned fully in his seat, his gaze warm and supportive. No lighthearted jokes. No charm. Just a man who recognized the shape of a grief he carried, too.
“It was a long time ago, sir.” I tried to get a grip on myself.
“The pain never goes away,” the shifter said quietly. “You just learn to carry it. Every second. Every day.”
He would know. Caspian, Drakken, and Nikolai had lost their parents to the White Witch. Aelindor had lost his home. We shared that wound like a bond forged in ugly, brutal reality.
“Coldiron recognized me before I even knew what it was in the mine,” I continued, pulling myself back together. “It spoke to me—fragmented words, impressions. Once I started working the tunnels, mining accidents almost stopped. Our Stormglass output surged.”
“That lines up.” Caspian’s brow creased.
“About twelve years ago, our eagle network flagged that Crimson Ridge’s production had tripled overnight.
No explanation. We sent Bastien, one of our best operatives, back into the mine to find out why.
” He paused. “He was compromised and killed before he could report.”
I never met Bastien. Still, grief tugged at me at the loss.
“Coldiron made it possible,” I said. “It’s a sentient metallic contagion. It can change the nature of any ordinary metal and reforge it—but only under the command of someone it recognizes.”
“Like a metal whisperer?” Caspian ran a hand through his tousled wine-red hair. “There’s horse whisperers, whale whisperers… lots of whisperers, you know.”
“I’m more than a whisperer.” I smirked. “I’m a maven when it comes to metal. That’s how I caught the arrow and sent it back. The archdemon might have launched the weapon,” I hissed, “but he’s nothing but an impostor.” The metal shivered in my grip. “Coldiron is mine.”
I swallowed back my birthright just in time.
What had gotten into me? I blinked. Was this the creature inside me? It had gone uncannily quiet, but I could feel it pricking its ears, listening to every word. Its presence burned at the back of my skull like a dark flame pressed against glass.
“That’s why the archdemon ran.” Aelindor nodded, as if piecing together more of the puzzle. A beat passed. “He’ll return. And he’ll bring more friends.”
I bit my lip. Worry and guilt gnawed at me. When the high demon came back, he’d bring the one who forged the Coldiron into that arrowhead. And I’d probably meet my match. There would be a brutal duel.
False heir! chirped the Coldiron inside the arrowhead.
“Whoever comes for you,” Aelindor said vehemently, reading my fear, “will have to go through us first. I promise you that.”
Drakken didn’t object. Didn’t chew me out like I expected.
“Th-thank you, sir.” His warmth and protectiveness were going to make me cry. And I did not want to ugly cry in front of the heirs, or anyone. Aelindor always brought out my most vulnerable side.
“So, Max.” Caspian mockingly narrowed his eyes. “You just talk to Coldiron, and it just… listens?”
I turned the arrow in my hand. Its glow pulsed once, then dimmed.
“Well,” I said. “There’s a cost.”