Max
Every eye in the room pinned me, waiting for the cadet with frosting on her lip to perform.
I swallowed the last of the donut, rolled up my left sleeve, and unwrapped the armguard.
The heirs had seen me turn the recovered metal into a bracer that fit snugly under my fatigues. Invisible unless you knew to look.
I laid the armguard flat on my palm, then blew a kiss to the dark metal, just to fuck with the dragon general. A thought later, I activated the drop of Coldiron.
The sentient metal warmed, humming through my bones. I pushed my intent, and it rippled—liquid iron shifting. In three seconds, the bracer was gone. An arrow lay across my palm. Shaft, fletching, a wicked head gleaming dull black under Stormglass light.
Gasps rose around the table.
“What kind of dark magic is that?” Commander Lee demanded.
“A new type of witchcraft, perhaps.” Colonel Karrik leaned forward, chair groaning.
“Alchemy,” Caspian said, pride warming his voice like he’d invented the discipline. He sat back, arms folded, savoring their shock.
“With respect, Your Highness,” Major Adrian said, “no alchemist could reshape metal by thought. Metal whisperers sense ore, temper alloys, improve a forge. They don’t turn a bracer into an arrow in three seconds without tools or heat.”
Aelindor smiled, coffee untouched, winter-blue eyes alighting on me. He looked like a man who’d already done the math and was waiting for the room to catch up.
“Only Cadet Max can manipulate this metal,” Drakken said and turned to me with an order. “Pass the arrow.”
I handed it to Aelindor. The Fae prince held the arrow by the shaft, turning the dark gleam of Coldiron in the arrowhead under the light.
“This metal is called Coldiron.” His voice filled the room without effort, simply the voice everyone had learned to listen to.
“It surfaced after the Rupture. Myth traces its origin to the fall of Lucifer Morningstar, or to the heart of a dying star. What matters is that it’s sentient, and it answers to Cadet Max alone. ”
He set the arrow on the center of the table between the two donut boxes. “Feel free to touch the arrowhead, but know it burns skin.”
Commander Lee snatched the arrow first. Her fingers closed around the Coldiron-fused head for half a second before she yanked her hand back with a hiss.
“Son of a—” She shook out her hand, the blister already shining on her palm.
The arrow went around the table. Colonel Karrik grazed the tip with his thumb and jerked away.
Lieutenant Colonel Reeves touched it with one finger and pulled back, rubbing the welt that bloomed across her skin.
Every officer who tried came away with blisters or burns, some worse than others.
Commander Marco recoiled so sharply that his chair scraped backward across the concrete.
“Fae are particularly vulnerable to such a metal,” Aelindor said mildly.
“Iron-Coldiron compound in a Fae’s bloodstream is fatal.
Some of you might’ve heard that an archdemon shot at me with this arrow on the rooftop of the train.
Cadet Max intercepted it. Without her intervention, the Coldiron would have ended me. I owe her my life.”
The room absorbed that in silence. Several officers nodded at me, not the perfunctory nod you gave a subordinate who’d done well on drills, but the kind that said they were reassessing everything they’d assumed about me since I walked in.
Prince Aelindor was beloved in the Covenant.
Saving his life carried weight that rank never could.
I flushed. I wasn’t used to approval. In the mines, the best you could hope for was not getting beaten up too badly.
Aelindor handed the arrow back to me, arrowhead first, and gave me a small nod.
I wrapped my palm around the arrowhead.
Coldiron glowed at my touch, the dark surface brightening.
Max! Max! I did a good job. As you asked!
Coldiron’s voice chattered gleefully in my mind.
Good job, I said, and set the arrow back on the table.
The officers stared at my unblistered hand, then at the glow, then at my face.
“The strategic implications extend beyond combat.” Drakken set his hands flat on the table, pulling the room’s attention back to him.
“Cadet Max has reported that Coldiron has been contaminating Stormglass shipments out of Crimson Ridge for the past decade. Approximately half of all Stormglass distributed from the mine contains dormant Coldiron, embedded at the molecular level. The metal is inactive until commanded.”
He paused to let that land.
“Cadet Max demonstrated this capability en route to your outpost by shutting down a military bus running on tainted Stormglass. One thought. The engine died. Lights went dark. Every Stormglass cell in the vehicle drained in seconds.”
The silence that followed was different from the silence after the arrow demonstration. That had been surprise. This was closer to fear.
“Every kingdom has received tainted Stormglass,” Drakken said. “The Pallid Court, the Haven, New Columbia, and approximately one-third of our own fortress. No one else knows about the corruption. No one else can detect it. And no one else can activate it.”
His gray eyes swept the table.
“Except for Cadet Max.”
The room erupted. Not in chaos—these were disciplined officers. But the murmurs that broke out carried a voltage I could feel in my teeth. Chairs creaked. Pens scratched on notepads. Major Adrian’s fingers flew across his tablet.
“This. Changes. Everything!” Colonel Karrik said, his voice carrying the weight of forty years on the front line. Now he stared at me as if I’d materialized out of thin air, as if I were a legend. “We can disable the Pallid Court’s Stormglass infrastructure—”
“And render their entire operation useless!” Lieutenant Colonel Reeves, barely containing her excitement in front of the heirs, stopped just short of pounding the table.
“Transport, communication, arcane power, weapons systems—everything runs on Stormglass. Take it out, and the White Witch is done.”
And now every officer in the room was looking at me with the focused, calculating interest of military minds that had just identified a weapon capable of winning a war.
Shit.
I wasn’t just any weapon but the weapon.
The word formed in my head and sat there, cold and heavy.
I darted my gaze to Aelindor. I could accept that Drakken saw me as a weapon—that was how he saw everything, a piece on the board, a resource to deploy. But Aelindor? Caspian? Nikolai?
Was that why they’d been kind to me? Why they’d carried me from the Scorched Wastes, kissed me, tucked me into a bedroll and said sleep, you’re safe? Because I was useful?
An ache opened in my chest.
But they’d taken care of me long before I’d revealed anything about Coldiron.
Before they’d known what I could do. Caspian had carried me in from the desert when I was nothing but a half-dead, smelly miner.
Nikolai had fed me and offered me a place to shower while asking nothing in return.
Aelindor had ended my interrogation and extended his hand when I had nothing to offer him, not even the truth.
And still, a shadow of doubt remained, and it had teeth.
“Max is more than an asset.” Aelindor’s voice cut through the noise.
He wasn’t loud. He never needed to be. Every officer at the table stopped talking.
His blue eyes held mine. Not the room’s but mine.
“She means more than that to me. To the heirs.” He paused, letting the words settle with the full weight of a man who chose every syllable with care. “A great deal more. But her true role is not the topic of this briefing, and it never will be.”
My heart kicked so hard I felt it in the base of my throat.
He’d announced how important I was to him and all the heirs, in front of the high-ranking officers. In front of Drakken, who was staring at the Fae heir with a conflicted expression. In front of Caspian, who nodded at Aelindor with something close to gratitude.
This wasn’t strategy. This wasn’t a prince protecting a valuable asset for the war effort. This was Aelindor telling a room full of soldiers that I mattered to him. As a person. Not as a weapon.
I blinked hard, then locked my jaw. I was not going to cry in a military briefing. Not after last night.
Commander Lee had my arrow again. She must’ve slid it off the table while every eye was on Aelindor. Now she traced its shaft with the possessive focus of an officer already drafting the requisition form.
My stomach clenched. I’d already lost my Coldiron dagger.
This arrow, with its invisible runes etched along the shaft, was more valuable than anything in any kingdom’s armory.
I hadn’t told the heirs about the demonic script.
Wasn’t ready to explain how a mine slave could read a language that predated human civilization.
Shit. Me and my layers of secrets.
“I’ll need the arrow back, ma’am,” I said.
Commander Lee’s fingers tightened on the shaft. “This arrow should be catalogued as property of the Zodiac Covenant. An artifact of this significance belongs in the armory under proper security protocols.”
“It’s mine!” I nearly snarled.
Every officer’s head snapped toward me. I might be an asset after this briefing, but I was still the lowest-ranked cadet.
“Give it back to Max,” Caspian growled. Gold bled into his green eyes, just for a second, but enough to remind the room the easygoing wolf prince had a predator’s temper when it came to what he’d claimed.
Commander Lee’s jaw flexed. She released the arrow and slid it across the table.
I scooped it up. Coldiron’s warmth flooded me. Good job! Good job!
I flattened my palm over the arrowhead and pushed. The metal softened, flowed, reshaped. In seconds, the armguard sat snug against my wrist. I rolled down my sleeve.
“Sit down, Cadet Max,” Drakken said.
I dropped into my seat and tried not to roll my eyes.
The man had a gift. If anyone in the four kingdoms could ruin a donut, it was Drakken. He’d timed that “Attention!” for maximum embarrassment—mid-bite, frosting on my lip, colonels watching.
I was developing a reflex to hearing my name in his voice. When I heard Cadet Max in public, my spine snapped straight, stomach dropping like a child hearing the boogeyman scratch at the closet door.
The briefing rolled forward. The officers shifted from Coldiron shock to logistics—patrol rotations along the DarkVeil, supply lines to damaged villages, reinforcement schedules. Holding a border against an enemy that might emerge again at any moment.
One pink-frosted donut remained in the corner of the second box. I wanted it with an embarrassing longing, given I’d just been the centerpiece of a classified briefing.
But Drakken’s gaze kept finding me. If I reached for that donut, the consequences unfolded with perfect clarity: he would wait until my fingers touched the frosting, then— “Cadet Private Max, do you believe your rank entitles you to a second serving before senior officers have had their fill?”
I pulled my hand back.
In the mines, people fought over moldy bread. The Rupture wasn’t kind to excess. The continent was a patchwork of protected cities and lawless zones where mutants roamed and people scavenged.
I was grateful for the coffee and the one donut, and skipping a second donut was no tragedy.