Chapter 60
CHAPTER SIXTY
FOX
Fox watched as another blast of ice and water streaked across the ground near his cage.
The icy mist sprayed against his face, and his body vibrated with some combination of anxiety and annoyance.
The blasts could at least hit his cage and allow him the chance of breaking the bars.
Sofia had disappeared into the melee, and he was desperate to escape and join her.
He searched frantically, seeing a large stone that the most recent blast had pushed just a few feet from his cage.
The bars were freezing through his torn shirt as he stretched his arm through them, his fingers just barely brushing against the rough surface of the rock.
He pressed harder, his shoulder aching as he wedged it as far between the bars as it would go.
His fingertips brushed the stone, his nails hooking onto the texture, pulling it ever so slowly toward him. He held his breath as it rotated.
The air rippled and icy water came shooting across the ground. He pulled his arm back just in time, but the stone went flying off into the distance, drawing out a string of curses that would make a man from the slums blush.
He let out an enraged scream, slamming his body against the bars of the cage.
They rattled with the impact. He let himself stew in it for only a moment, the helplessness rushing through him like water, his injuries temporarily forgotten.
And then he took a breath and scanned the area again, looking for another stone—another option.
He saw dark curls and a face splattered with blood, and it took him a moment to understand what—who—he was watching.
His mother was moving toward him through the fighting soldiers.
Even as he watched, she grabbed one soldier by his hair, pulling his head back with a sharp jerk and slashing her blade across his neck.
The soldier didn’t have time to scream as he crumpled to the ground, dead.
She was wearing the uniform of a king’s man, the simple dress she’d had on before gone.
He noticed a tear in the side of her tunic, stained with dark blood, and he didn’t have to question where she’d gotten the shirt, though he wondered at whose hand the soldier had fallen.
Then she stabbed another man in the side and twisted her dagger in and out so fast Fox thought perhaps he didn’t need to wonder after all.
His mother had never trained with them. His father would never have allowed such a thing. But she had been raised in a military family, and she had watched Leon’s training when he had been younger. Fox was beginning to suspect her attention had been more than an idle interest in her son.
She was at the cage in another two strides. Sweat clung to her skin and her curls frizzed from exertion, and she looked more alive than she had in sun cycles. Her eyes were burning with passion, her skin flushed.
“I need a key,” he said in the same moment she pulled a small silver key from her sleeve and slipped it into the lock, eyes darting around.
“Can you walk?” she asked, even as he stumbled out of the cage door, his knees shaking and legs aching.
“Just give me a moment.” He leaned on her, straightening himself up carefully, his body cracking with the movement.
His tunic brushing against his mangled back was less painful than he expected, and he wondered how much the adrenaline flowing through his blood was destroying any sense he had of the damage to his body.
The moment he was standing on his own, panting just a bit from the effort, his mother flew forward, wrapping herself around him. He let out a strangled cry as she brushed a particularly bad part of his back, and she jumped back again.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking around the battlefield. It was just registering that his mother was standing, covered in blood, in the middle of a battle.
“What does it look like? I’m getting you out of here.”
“I thought you hated me. You—”
Her hands were cold as they came up to grip his cheeks, forcing his gaze to hers.
“I will never hate you. I will never blame you for the things you’ve been forced to do.
I only wish I could have gotten you and Leon away from your father when you were still little.
Perhaps, that’s on me. But I had nowhere to go. No friends outside of Suvi.”
“None of this is your fault.” He covered her hand with his own, feeling the wet blood.
“We should get to the edge of camp.”
Fox shook his head, and her eyes darkened with the realization of what he was thinking.
“We’re not prepared to join this fight,” she said, voice earnest.
“I can’t,” he said, squeezing her hand in his own. He saw the resignation in her face as she stepped back and nodded. “You should get to safety, but I have to stay.”
She wrapped him in another hug, this time her hand was gentle on his back. She pressed her face into his neck, and he remembered how she’d do that when he was younger, breathing him in as if memorizing every piece of him.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said into her hair. “Go to the edge of camp. Tell any of the resistance fighters who you are, and they’ll keep you safe.”
She pulled back and looked at him. Her lips pressed tightly together, and he felt his stomach drop. She might have saved him, out of duty or even love, but she wouldn’t go to the resistance for help. She wasn’t on their side.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said. “If you fight, I fight.”
They weren’t the words he expected. Nor did he expect her to turn to the body she’d just dropped and start ransacking the dead man’s belt for weapons. She ripped off his vest and handed it to him.
“You should wear it,” he said, pushing it back toward her.
She didn’t argue, and he was glad for it.
He helped her slip it over her shoulders and tie the front.
It was only slightly big on her, but it would protect her well enough.
He didn’t want to think how little protection it was against dragon ice, though.
He took the sword she handed him without argument, satisfied with the weight of it.
The hilt was warm beneath his hand. He’d missed the feeling of a king’s man sword in his hands.
He swung it once, feeling the tightness in his shoulders and the pain that vibrated up his back.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but he’d do this. He had to.
With one last look between them, Fox and his mother entered the fray.