37. Max
MAX
W e camped three blocks from the DarkVeil at night.
The high-ranking officers were still in a battle brief at the outpost compound, two miles behind us. The demon invasion loomed as a grave threat. I figured a permanent Spartan garrison would be posted here to protect the mines, farms, and the satellite towns along the eastern fringe.
Our jeep had passed through two razed villages on the way in.
The damage was heartbreaking. Walls of houses stood intact on one side of a street, only to be reduced to rubble on the other, as if the demons had destroyed only what they needed to flush out the inhabitants.
Scorch marks blackened the facades of what had once been a general store and a small clinic.
A hand-painted red cross was still visible above the clinic’s door.
Broken glass littered the storefront. A child’s shoe sat in the middle of an intersection .
Two-thirds of the villagers had survived by reaching the underground shelters in time.
The heirs had stopped at both villages to check on the survivors.
Aelindor spoke to the village leaders while medics treated the wounded.
Caspian helped clear debris from a collapsed shelter entrance with his bare hands.
Drakken stood at the perimeter, scanning the terrain, rage pouring off him.
These villages had been suburban once. In the age of the Rupture, the metropolitan centers were destroyed: skyscrapers toppled, infrastructure gutted, cities reduced to skeletal ruins.
But many suburbs still stood, at least in part.
Old streets. Squat brick houses with patched roofs.
People had rebuilt with what they had; the result was a patchwork of old-world bones dressed in new-world skin. Battered. Functional. Stubbornly alive.
Now I sat by a campfire with the Spartans, three blocks from the wall of eternal shadows.
They drank and laughed, passing a flask around the circle.
Nothing stood between us and the DarkVeil but flat, empty ground.
The warriors weren’t afraid. Instead, they were eager.
The Spartans who’d been stuck in the carriages during the train fight—the ones who’d missed their chance to get to the roof—were itching for demons to pour out of the Veil so they could collect what they were owed.
Those who had fought were treated by healers and medics, bandaged and stitched.
Now they sat by the fire, nursing their injuries and their grudges and wanting another match.
I sat among them. Their jokes were cruder than Caspian’s. Their campfire tales were worse, stories of past missions that involved creative violence and improbable survival. I kept my mouth shut and listened.
With my superior sight, I could see into the DarkVeil.
When the shadows shifted and lifted for a fleeting second, they offered a glimpse of the landscape near the entrance: deep chasms dropping into an eternity of night, jagged rock formations barely visible against the black.
Then the Veil would settle again, and it was just a wall of frozen darkness.
The Veil had split the North American continent in half. Radio silence between east and west for eighty-one years. No one had made it through and come back to tell what lay on the other side.
I didn’t know if anyone else could see through the shadows the way I could.
So I kept my mouth clamped. I didn’t need another label—witch, freak, demon-touched—even though these Spartans seemed like a different breed than the cadets in my barracks.
Best of the best. Every cadet’s dream was to earn a place among them.
This close, I could hear the DarkVeil. A low, persistent hissing, as if the shadows themselves were breathing.
Or something lurking inside them was. The sound set my nerves on a high wire.
I wasn’t as relaxed as the Spartans appeared to be.
But as I studied them closer, I realized they weren’t that relaxed either.
Every one of them sat with a weapon within arm’s reach.
Their laughter came easy, but their eyes never stopped moving.
They were just better trained than me at wearing calm like armor.
Scholars speculated that the Rupture had also brought Hell—literally the realm of Hell—onto Earth, with a Hellgate situated somewhere within the Veil.
That made this unknown territory sound even more sinister and terrifying.
But it might not be far from the truth. Demons had poured out of the eternal darkness for the first time.
Unease brewed within me. The pull I’d felt from the train was stronger here, an insistent tug behind my sternum, as if something on the other side of the Veil recognized me and was calling me home. Fuck, it was calling the demon princess in me.
I fought the urge to walk toward it, to cross the threshold, and to see what the fuck was inside.
I dared not ask the Spartans if they felt the same pull, or heard the faint hissing from the shadows deep within the DarkVeil.
Some of them glanced at me with curiosity.
For a change, there was respect in their eyes.
The tale of a first-year cadet stepping in front of the Fae prince to intercept a Coldiron arrow had spread through the ranks like fire through dry grass.
I wasn’t a soldier yet, just a trainee in academy fatigues, but I’d killed a demon on the roof of a speeding train.
The Spartans looked at me as if I could be one of them.
They probably assumed that was why the heirs had brought me along.
And the rumor had spread that I was an alchemist.
“Hey, Cadet Max.” A Spartan with a dimple leaned toward me, his tone deceptively innocent. “By any chance, did your ancestors come from an ice giant clan?”
The surrounding Spartans snickered .
He was poking fun at my height. Spartans were taller and stronger than regular soldiers. Yet every one of them still had to look up to meet my eyes—barely, but enough. And I was a woman.
“Yeah?” I arched an eyebrow. “And did yours come from our cousin clan? The shorter one?”
Several Spartans spat out their drinks. One choked. The laughter that followed was different from before, not laughing at me, but with me.
A female Spartan across the fire stood up. Short brown hair, broad shoulders, a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. She walked over and handed me a flask. The same flask everyone around the campfire had been passing around. She made me miss Bryn.
I took a swig.
The liquid hit my tongue and immediately declared war on every surface it touched. It burned past my throat, scorched my chest, and landed in my stomach like a lit match dropped into kerosene. I spat out what I hadn’t managed to swallow, coughing.
“What the fuck is this?” I demanded, wiping my mouth. “It tastes like piss on fire.”
The Spartans threw their heads back and roared. I winced and shoved the flask at the next person in the circle. I had no desire for more of that.
“If you want to join the Spartans, cadet,” someone called through the laughter, “that’s the first trial.”
An arm dropped around my shoulders. Warm, heavy, familiar, and delicious. Caspian had appeared out of the dark. He shoved the head-tattooed Spartan beside me sideways and claimed the man’s seat like he’d been sitting there all night.
“What did I miss?” the shifter prince asked with an easy grin.
“Piss on fire, Your Highness,” someone offered.