Chapter 36
Things Get Broken
MAX
Luther lets go of me with a start. “Reds have no standing here. You’re trespassing on Summer ground,” he says, his tone haughty, almost bored.
His piercing gaze finds mine as he walks past me, showing no hint of humanity. No mercy.
He’d gladly cut these women down.
He leaves me behind, though I’m still bound by his magic, and strides toward the Red Queen with the casual guile of a younger, unruly sibling, reminding his elder of the house rules.
Lillivere’s gaze slides over him, dismissive and cold. “I’ve had enough of your lot stealing away my slaves.”
“I’m the commander of this army, and once again, you are trespassing. This is the Summerlands, and I’m perfectly within my rights to destroy you if you attack first.”
He sounds as though he’s bluffing, but I’m not sure he is.
What is he playing at?
The Red Queen draws the katana strapped to her back, the edge of the blade catching what little light remains. Her power drums through the air, almost as drugging as Luther’s, but not quite.
Her mouth curves. “You’re no King of Summer, and your master, the Lord of the Tides, isn’t here.” Her gaze sweeps over the camp at our backs with obvious contempt. “This rat’s nest needs sweeping.”
Luther smiles from ear to ear. “I’m not above killing foolish women—or overconfident queens.”
But the women are not alone. Twelve knights in white cloaks follow behind them, swords in hand, clad in gold helmets, plated armor, and fine chain mail.
Lillivere eyes Luther up and down, then slowly licks her blood-red lips. “Surrender the witches, and I will let you go. Fight for them, and you will learn what it means to serve a Red Queen.”
“Color me intrigued,” Luther chuckles. “But there’s no universe where you manage to catch me, Janina—let alone kill me.”
A woman gasps and steps out from the rear of the formation, breaking rank.
“My Queen,” she says sharply. “The witch behind him is Sierra Morgan’s daughter.”
Riley.
Her voice hits like a slap.
The Red Queen’s nostrils flare. “Maxine Morgan? Are you sure?”
Riley nods, one hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of her katana, her eyes burning. “Without a doubt.”
It’s so easy to see her for what she is here.
Not long ago, she was wearing sweats and a too-big hoodie, pretending to be a first-year university student.
She roped me in with her awkward smiles and harmless questions, playing at friendship across cafeteria tables and library desks like she was just another exhausted mortal girl surviving on caffeine and sheer panic.
I told her my secrets. Laughed with her. Trusted her enough not to question why she wanted to meet my family.
The girl I thought was my friend is now guarding the wretched woman who stepped over my mother’s body on her way to the crown, standing by her side in crimson leather and blood-red silk.
“Hello, Max,” Riley greets me with a delighted chuckle. “It’s been a while.”
My fists curl, and flames lick my knuckles. I can only snarl in response.
Lightning splits the sky overhead.
“Well, as fun as family reunions are…” Luther chimes.
His rebels have used this little chat to get ready for the fight. I’d say there are fifty of them to twenty, which aren’t terrible odds. Given the choice, I’d rather stick with the Tidecallers.
“Kill him if needed, but the witch must be taken alive,” Lillivere barks, and the Reds surge forward as one.
The Tidecallers charge to meet them, steel crashing against steel.
The magic holding me captive wanes as Luther collides with the Red Queen in a savage blur of steel and magic. He fights like a storm given flesh, all reckless charisma and raw force, while Lillivere draws a colder, steadier power from the earth, her movements quick and lethally precise.
“Max!” E shouts from somewhere to my right.
I zero in on his voice and run toward it, but five Reds are coming for me, Riley among them.
Nick roars into the fray, both daggers drawn.
He’s been aching for this moment all his life. Training for it. Dreaming of it. The chance to sink steel into the Reds who stole everything from us.
And he’s good—Gods, he’s good.
He moves with ease, ducking beneath one Red’s strike to drive a blade toward her ribcage, spinning in time to parry another attack with his off-hand dagger.
He’s incredible, but there are too many of them.
The Red warriors converge on his position, moving with inhuman speed and discipline, their katanas flashing through the rain so quickly my eyes struggle to track them.
One forces Nick back. Another cuts off his escape.
A third joins the circle, and suddenly, my brother isn’t attacking them, but surviving.
E tackles the one closest to him and steals her blade. The katana hangs in mid-air, too big to be swallowed by his invisibility. The intensifying rain allows me to make out the vague outline of him, his footprints marking the wet soil as he joins the fight.
Riley strides toward me empty-handed. Rain slicks her crimson leathers to her body, her dark hair plastered to her face. She moves with the confidence of someone who doesn’t need a weapon to ruin my day, and the smug smile curling her lips boils my blood.
Even armed to the teeth, I’d be no match for her, but I ache to stab her anyway. I want to make her bleed and get revenge for the hurt she caused me. The humiliation. The tears I never wanted to cry over her.
“Still drawing fairies in your notebook, Max?” she taunts.
A sharp kick slams into my ribs before I can get my flames under control, sending me staggering sideways through the mud.
Bitch.
My throat tightens around all the hate I harbor for Riley.
And for the first time in my life, I want to kill.
I blast fire from both palms, hitting her stomach hard enough to melt the red silk and leather there.
Riley glances down at her burnt clothes and slightly-singed skin and laughs. “Oh, we’ve got so much to catch up on.”
She goes on the offensive with martial precision, every strike designed to disable, not kill. Elbow to my throat. Knee to my stomach. Palm strike to my nose.
I manage to block the first two, but the third lands.
Blood fills my mouth.
She sweeps my legs out from under me with terrifying efficiency, and I hit the mud hard enough to see stars.
She straddles me and pins my wrist. “Oh, come on,” she says breathlessly. “We survived Anatomy 101. We know where it hurts.”
I scream and unleash fire point-blank.
Her skin burns under my touch, but E tears her off me too soon in an attempt to free me. Still, her pain-filled curses are deeply satisfying as we scramble back to our feet.
Nick is panting heavily, kneeling over the body of a fallen Red. He’s hurt, shallow wounds decorating his arms and legs, one hand clamped over his stomach. A shimmering blue light hovers just above the corpse.
A soul.
The remaining Reds snarl, as though they’ve only just realized we can hurt them. The sight of the blue light makes me feel all warm inside, and I step forward out of instinct. The rain and mud under my boots are tinged scarlet, blood mixing with rainwater.
The dark pool of blood under the dead body swells, and I gawk as the crimson puddle begins to thin, dripping down the flat earth toward my feet like it’s being swallowed by my gravity.
A cold trickle of fear engulfs me. The few odd times I lost a patient on the operating table, that unbearable sinking feeling when I saw their souls rise and pretended not to notice because my colleagues couldn’t see it, those horrible moments when I stood there with my gloved hands drenched in their blood, were always followed by that same empty, hollow feeling of cold.
Exactly like this.
Riley sneers at the phenomenon. “What do you think you’re doing, witch?”
I remember the sensation before it even happens: icy claws sinking into my skin, the terrible, intimate certainty of a soul being extinguished—eaten, engulfed.
By fate?
Or by me?
The Reds fighting Nick and E turn their attention to me.
An orb of light, similar to the one E used to save me from the Mist King, blooms to life, but the shimmering shield struggles to grow, each bout of rain eroding it.
There are too many angles to cover.
Too much steel.
“You should’ve stayed in Scotland, Max,” Riley chimes.
One katana kisses my forearm.
Another stabs my shoulder.
A third drives me backward, poking my rib—
Pain explodes.
Suddenly, I’m wreathed in crimson flames.
I become them.
Heat detonates beneath my skin, my body unraveling into fire. One moment I’m flesh and panic and pounding blood, the next I’m heat and motion.
Rain never even reaches my skin, vanishing on contact, steam exploding outward in a violent hiss as Riley’s blade swings for my knees.
The steel cleaves the shape of me apart, scattering sparks instead of blood, and for one impossible, breathless second, I am nowhere and everywhere at once.
Fire doesn’t mind being cut.
Riley gasps, her eyes wide, what’s left of her blade raining across the earth in a wave of liquid solder. The handle glows red-hot, and she shrieks, dropping it into the mud.
Smoke and fury vaporize the air as my fire engulfs her. It doesn’t burn in bursts of orange or gold, but in the richer, deeper red of fresh arterial blood. The color is so intense it burns white at its core.
My serpent flames don’t simply catch her clothes or melt patches of skin this time.
They consume her.
She ignites in a single ravenous rush, the flames stripping away shape, substance, and identity. It lasts only a second before the storm wind tears through the space where she stood, carrying a fistful of gray ashes off.
And there is nothing else left. No body, no charred bones, no blue shimmer of soul rising free.
No trace Riley ever existed at all.
I look down at my hands. My palms glow translucent with heat before flesh knits itself back into place.
Skin.
Nails.
Trembling, human hands.
By the Dark One.
I transformed. Not into an animal, but a pure, unadulterated flame.
And I killed her. I killed a woman with just my touch.
No—not a woman.
A Red Fae. A traitor.
The distinction does nothing to settle the violent churn in my stomach.
I am outside myself.
Do no harm.
The words hit me with nauseating clarity. I chose medicine to save lives. To heal. And I just burned someone alive.
The battle still rages on all sides, but I feel weak and lightheaded, as though I could collapse at any moment.
E clasps my hands and gives them a frantic squeeze. “Max! Max, we have to go! Hold on to me, and I’ll fly us out of here.”
I shake my head, my mouth parched. “We can’t. Not without Nick.”
First light breaks through the trees, bright enough to force tears to my eyes. It distracts everyone on the battlefield as we all turn toward it, hypnotized.
A violent shaft of sunlight punches through the black cloud cover, then another, and another, until the stormy sky fractures into impossible brilliance.
Ice crystals suspended in the rain catch the light at just the right angle, splitting it into glowing mock suns suspended on either side of the true dawn.
Sundogs—halos of fire and color—hang in the sky, the false suns watching the carnage unfold.
A winged figure descends through one of them, and gasps erupt from the nearby soldiers.
“The Lord of the Tides! Our Lord is here!” one man cries in relief.
The Lord of the Tides drops from the heavens wrapped in such ferocious light, I can barely make out more than the sweep of enormous wings.
My breath catches.
I’ve been tearing out my hair trying to figure out the identity of the winged man in my visions. Could it have been the Lord of the Tides all along?
If my mother was a Tidecaller…she served him.
The Red Queen has eyes only for the radiant figure, her forces shifting around her as the Tidecallers surge forward with renewed courage.
My brother stands with his daggers in hand, the Lord of the Tides glowing behind him like some wrathful deity.
Dozens of Reds and Sun Court knights pour through the broken perimeter. They were waiting for the leader of the rebellion to show up before revealing their true numbers.
We’re fucked.
“Max!” Nick’s voice barely cuts through the chaos. “Max, stay where you are!”
I spin and run, risking a glance over my shoulder.
Nick gives chase, but I don’t stop, even though I have absolutely no idea where the hell I’m going.
I’m not running toward safety.
I’m running because there isn’t any.
Not with the Reds.
Not with Luther ready to slit throats before asking questions.
Not with some winged savior that visited my mother in the dead of night.
I don’t know who killed her. Whether it was Lillivere or the Lord of the Tides or both of them working together, I can’t trust either side.
So I run.
Branches whip my face. Rain clings to my lashes, turning every blink into a smear of light and shadow.
The forest spins.
The Summerlands should be green.
Fern-covered.
Wild and lush.
But all I see is red.
A trail of fallen leaves carpets the forest floor ahead, vivid against the mud, leading deeper into the woods. I couldn’t tell west from east if my life depended on it, and I skid to a stop.
Footsteps echo behind me, heavy and familiar.
“Gods damn it, Max!” Nick shouts.
A Sun knight slams into Nick before he can strike, wrenching a dagger from his grip while two more seize his arms. The bright light pouring off their bodies and flashing off their armor lulls me into a dizzying trance.
Nick thrashes, feral, until he suddenly goes still, his unconscious body crumpling as the soldiers gag and bind him.
Rough hands clamp around my wrists and lock around my upper arm. My fire sputters uselessly beneath my skin, exhaustion and adrenaline crashing together, while that strange white glow from the soldiers presses in from all sides.
So many of them.
Shining so bright.
So close.
So beautiful…
Whatever magic I conjured earlier is spent now, and my lungs burn. Could I burn crimson again and free myself? I don’t want to kill all these people. I—
A leather gag with a wide circular bit is forced into my mouth, my hands now tied behind my back.
Lillivere steps through the parted ranks, cold satisfaction curling her lips. She plants her hands on her hips and appraises me.
“Maxine Morgan,” she says, her smile sharp as broken glass. “Finally.”