22. Max
Max
The barracks smelled of boot polish, soap, and cold concrete. Same as always.
I stood in the doorway longer than I needed to. First place that ever took me in after I got out of the mine.
The class was gone, swallowed by the afternoon. Drill or lectures or that obstacle course they all pretended to hate. Hundreds of bunks in long rows, squared and empty, dust turning slowly in the light from the high windows.
My boots came down loud on the floor.
I was here to pack. Spartans didn’t bunk with cadets, and Missy and I had rooms waiting in Elenmoor, Aelindor’s mansion.
Caspian had wanted to come and carry my trunk.
“It’s a box, sweetheart. I’ve lifted boxes.”
Nikolai had offered aides instead, in and out before anybody noticed. I shot them both down.
Some goodbyes didn’t want witnesses.
I picked up my trunk. Set it down again, because my eyes went where I’d told them not to go.
Bryn’s bunk. Stripped to the ticking, name card pulled off the frame. Every trace of her cleared out like she’d never signed in.
Gone. Laughing beside me one second, and the next, nowhere in the world. Nowhere I could ever go looking. Not a barracks, not a battlefield, not a club on a weekend. Not until whatever waited past the Veil.
I got my hand around the bunk frame and squeezed until the edge bit into my palm.
Soldiers live and die by the sword. I knew that going in. But I could’ve spared her. I’d wanted her with me because I was afraid of the two of us drifting, so I’d asked the heirs to send her along, and I’d known whatever I asked, they’d never tell me no.
The pressure built behind my eyes until my breath stopped coming, and I let it stop.
“Spartan on deck!” somebody hollered from the doorway, only half joking, and the bay filled up around me.
I dragged in a breath and blinked until my eyes were dry.
They came grinning, fist bumps and shoulder claps, all the rough affection of the barracks turned up loud.
Shouldn’t they be in class?
“Spartan Max.” Cadet Oka said the rank like she was tasting it. “First one up out of our class. Ever. You know what that means?”
“Means it’s possible.” Reyes shouldered in beside her. “Means the recruiters were lying about the years of battle experience and the death wish.”
“You’ll need the death wish,” I offered.
“Club. This weekend.” Oka grinned. “We’re all off duty, first round’s on the barracks, and you tell us everything.”
“If I told you everything, I’d have to kill you.”
“See. That.” Reyes pointed at me and turned a slow circle for the room. “That’s why she’s the only one who made it.”
Only one. Bryn made it too. Bryn just wasn’t here to hear it.
I put it away. I had an audience.
“Give us tips,” a first-year piped up from the back. “What do the Spartans actually test for?”
Delia strolled in, flanked by her minions, and the room pulled tight like a stitch.
She stopped at the end of the aisle, cornflower-blue eyes taking inventory. Me. My trunk. The Spartan blade on my hip. She priced all three at nothing.
“Careful, ladies,” she said. “We’re in the presence of a big shot now.”
“Big shot?” The minion on her left snickered. “Big question, more like. Who fast-tracks a nobody?”
“Somebody she’s useful to, obviously.” Delia tilted her head, birdlike, and pitched her voice sweet.
“I was at the ball, ladies. Guest of honor’s table, full view.
Ask her who she danced with. Wrapped up in his arms like a ribbon on a gift.
” She let the bay catch up. “Cheek to cheek with Xander. The enemy king. Days later, look at that. A Spartan blade. But sure. Nothing to see.”
“Danced.” The other minion looked me over, then went back to her nails. I’d never bothered learning her name. “Is that what we’re calling blow jobs these days?”
A few cadets chuckled, and a few made a low sound in their throats and left it at that. Delia’s crowd had teeth, and everyone in this bay had learned to walk wide around them.
I wanted to put my fist through her face. But petty was a tax on my energy, and I’d stopped paying it a long time ago.
If I were new to this, I’d be impressed by how low she’d dig. All because she’d decided I was stealing Drakken from her.
For a second I asked myself. If some woman moved on one of mine, what would I do?
Fury came up so fast at the bare idea that my eyes stung and the floor tilted under me. I’d put her on the ground.
No. I shook my head. I wouldn’t.
I’d leash it with everything I had, and then I’d take it to the man himself. If he was a cheater, I was done with him, no matter how he groveled. And if he chose to walk, he’d never been mine to keep.
Easy to say, standing where I stood, wanted beyond any question. Delia was fighting over scraps and calling it a war.
Losing side, too. I could’ve felt sorry for her. I didn’t give a fuck.
“Have you ever considered this?” I flicked two fingers at Delia and her army. “If all you come up with is shit, then you’re full of shit, and it’s a shitty way to live your life.”
Snorts broke out down the row, and somebody laughed outright.
Delia’s face went blotchy red.
“At least I don’t get my friends killed,” she said, savoring it. “How’s Cadet Bryn enjoying the promotion? Oh. She’s ash. She trotted off after her precious Max to play hero, and they carried her mutilated corpse back in a sheet. Some best friend you turned out to be.”
She knew exactly where to hit.
I had enough grief stockpiled for a lifetime without her rubbing salt in it. It came over the wall anyway, all of it in one wave, and the guilt rode in on top.
Then the rage, hot and murderous. I could put Delia through the floor of this barracks and not fucking care what Drakken thought of it after. How he tolerated her at all was beyond me. She must be spectacular in bed.
That didn’t help.
I took a step toward her. Delia smirked, so certain nothing could touch her, so certain I wouldn’t dare.
Let’s see about that.
“That blade should have gone on your pyre,” she spat, “not Bryn’s.”
“Fuckin’ shove it, Delia.”
The voice came from the doorway, and Thane came with it, officer’s uniform, jogging into the bay.
Thane. Promoted after he handled the Slade mess, then robbed of the shine when I took the Sorting out from under him. He’d glared at me in every corridor since.
More cadets crowded in behind him, drawn by the smell of drama, until the bay was standing room only.
“Spartan Max Morning outranks you.” He came up the aisle without hurry, stopped at my shoulder, and stared Delia down.
“She outranks me. She outranks every fucking one in this room. She could have answered that with the blade on her hip, put it in your gut and walked out, and not one heir, general, or commander would have blinked at your funeral. She knows it. She held back anyway, because she doesn’t count you as an enemy. Not yet.”
Delia opened her mouth.
“Keep at that shit,” Thane said, “and you pay for it. Not with your feelings. With your life.”
Cadets nodded along. Somebody thumped a bunk frame, and three more picked it up. The first-year behind Oka breathed, “Damn!” and the ones behind Thane didn’t bother keeping it under their breath at all.
“Raise your hand if you’ve stood in a real battle.” Thane turned, taking in the whole room. “Any of you. Go on.”
Not one hand. The first-years found their boots very interesting.
“When the mutants came, you were in the shelters. Protected, because you weren’t ready, and there’s no shame in that. I wasn’t in that fight either. I was the man herding you down the stairs. Spartan Bryn was on the wall. Spartan Max rode the dragon into it.”
Nobody moved. Nothing in the bay but breathing and the creak of somebody shifting his weight on a bunk frame.
Delia’s face went from flushed to curdled. That one hit a nerve. She could believe Drakken was hers all she liked. The dragon never would be, and she knew it.
“Nobody rides that dragon into a fight. Nobody but Prince Caspian and Spartan Max.” Thane wasn’t finished. “And Max killed more of our enemies than this whole academy put together. She can kill any one of us with her bare hands. That’s who you’re calling names.”
“They say she’s a witch.” From the back, more nervous than hostile.
“And you can prove it?” one of Thane’s men shot back. “Even if she is, Max isn’t the White Witch.”
The sweat went cold under my collar.
They had no idea who I was.
Half the continent knew I was the lost heir of two houses.
Only the heirs, Xander, and Lady Vaelith knew whose daughter I was.
And only the heirs had read the contract Xander unrolled that night.
Not even Aelindor’s spymaster knew the White Witch had signed me away in her own blood.
One day it would come out. Nothing stays in the dark forever, as the old saying went.
One step at a time. I breathed in and breathed out.
“We’ve got witches, mages, warlocks, even druids fighting under our banners,” Thane said. “What we are doesn’t fucking count. Loyalty counts. Start carving ourselves up and the enemy never has to march. We’ll do the work for them.”
“Max was one of us!” Reyes shouted over the noise.
“Spartan Max is one of us!” More cadets picked it up.
I nodded to them. I didn’t need anybody fighting my battles. Didn’t mean I wasn’t glad they had.
Thane was right. A house divided falls.
I bent for my trunk. One of Thane’s men beat me to one end, Oka took the other, and they swung it up between them like it weighed nothing.
“Thanks, cadets,” I called. “Club. Saturday. Twenty hundred. I’ll bring Prince Caspian and Spartan Enna, and probably the whole Nightingale crew with them. I’d bet money the prince picks up the first round, but you’ll have to laugh out loud at every one of his jokes.”
I’d have covered it myself. I had a salary now. But Missy needed clothes, shoes, school supplies.
“We’re in!” The whole room laughed.
I wasn’t alone. Letting your friends carry a load with you was its own way of holding the line.
Something else I’d learned since I came to the Zodiac Covenant.