When I open them again, I’m in Shade’s arms, hugging him as tightly as I can. He hasn’t cut his hair yet, and his chin-length brown hair tickles the top of my head. As I press myself to his chest, I wince. My ear stings sharply and I pull back, seeing drops of red blood on my brother’s shirt. Gisa and I pierced our ears again, with the tiny gift Shade left us. I guess I did it wrong, as I do everything wrong. This time, I feel the shadow before I see it. And it feels angry.
It drags me through a parade of memories, all raw wounds still healing. Some of them are even dreams. No, they are nightmares. My worst nightmares.
A new world materializes around me, forming a shadowed landscape of smoke and ash. The Choke. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard enough to imagine it. The land is flat, pocked with craters from a thousand falling bombs. Soldiers in stained red uniforms cower in each of them, like blood filling a wound. I float through them all, searching the faces, looking for the brothers I lost to smoke and shrapnel.
Bree appears first, wrestling with a blue-clad Lakelander in a puddle of mud. I want to help him, but I keep floating until he’s out of sight. Tramy comes next, bending over a wounded soldier, trying to keep him from bleeding to death. His gentle features, so like Gisa’s, are twisted in agony. I will never forget the screams of pain and frustration. As with Bree, I can’t help him.
Shade waits at the front of the line, beyond even the bravest of warriors. He stands on top of a ridge without regard for the bombs or the guns or the Lakelander army waiting on the other side. He even has the gall to smile at me. I can only watch when the ground beneath his feet explodes, destroying him in a plume of smoke and ash.
“Stop!” I manage to scream, reaching for the smoke that was once my brother.
The ash takes shape, re-forming into the shadow. It engulfs me in darkness, until a wave of memories overtakes me again. Dad coming home half-dead. Kilorn’s conscription. Gisa’s hand. They blur together, a swirl of too-bright color that hurts my eyes. Something is not right. The memories move backward through the years, like I’m watching my life in reverse. And then there are events I can’t possibly remember: learning to speak, to walk, my child brothers passing me between them while Mom scolds. This is impossible.
“Impossible,” the shadow says to me. The voice is so sharp, I fear it might crack my skull. I fall to my knees, colliding with what feels like concrete.
And then they’re gone. My brothers, my parents, my sister, my memories, my nightmares, gone. Concrete and steel bars rise around me. A cage.
I struggle to my feet, one hand on my aching head as things come into focus. A figure stares at me from beyond the bars. A crown glitters on her head.
“I’d bow, but I might fall over,” I say to Queen Elara, and immediately I wish I could call back the words. She’s a Silver, I can’t talk to her that way. She could put me in the stocks, take away my rations, punish me, punish my family. No, I realize in my growing horror. She’s the queen. She could just kill me. She could kill us all.
But she doesn’t look offended. Instead, she smirks. A wave of nausea washes over me when I meet her eyes and I double over again.
“That looks like a bow to me,” she purrs, enjoying my pain.
I fight the urge to vomit and reach out to grab the bars. My fist clenches around cold steel. “What are you doing to me?”
“Not much of anything anymore. But this—” She reaches through the bars to touch my temple. The pain triples beneath her finger and I fall against the bars, barely conscious enough to hold on. “This is to keep you from doing anything silly.”
Tears sting my eyes but I shake them away. “Like stand on my own two feet?” I manage to spit out. I can hardly think through the pain, let alone be polite, but still I manage to hold back a stream of curses. For heaven’s sake, Mare Barrow, hold your tongue.
“Like electrocute something,” she snaps.
The pain ebbs, giving me enough strength to make it to the metal bench. When I rest my head against the cool stone wall, her words sink in. Electrocute.
The memory flashes across my mind, coming back in jagged pieces. Evangeline, the lightning shield, the sparks, and me. It’s not possible.
“You are not Silver. Your parents are Red, you are Red, and your blood is red,” the queen murmurs, prowling before the bars of my cage. “You are a miracle, Mare Barrow, an impossibility. Something even I can’t understand, and I have seen all of you.”
“That was you?” I almost screech, reaching up to cradle my head again. “You were in my mind? My memories? My nightmares?”
“If you know someone’s fear, you know them.” She blinks at me like I’m some stupid creature. “And I had to know what it is we’re dealing with.”
“I am not an it.”
“What you are remains to be seen. But be thankful for one thing, little lightning girl,” she sneers, putting her face against the bars. Suddenly my legs seize up, losing all feeling like I sat on them wrong. Like I’m paralyzed. Panic rises in my chest as I realize I can’t even wiggle my toes. This must be how Dad feels, broken and useless. But somehow I get to my feet, my legs moving on their own, marching me toward the bars. On the other side, the queen watches me. Her blinks match my steps.
She’s a whisper and she’s playing with me. When I’m close enough, she grabs my face in her hands. I cry out as the pain in my head multiplies. What I would give now for the simple doom of conscription.
“You did that in front of hundreds of Silvers, people who will ask questions, people with power,” she hisses in my ear, her sickly sweet breath washing over my face. “That is the only reason you are still alive.”
My hands clench and I wish for the lightning again, but it doesn’t come. She knows what I’m doing and laughs openly. Stars explode behind my eyes, clouding my vision, but I hear her go in a swirl of rustling silk. My sight returns just in time to see her dress disappear around a corner, leaving me well and truly alone in the cell. I barely make it back to the bench, fighting the urge to throw up.
Exhaustion comes over me in waves, starting in my muscles and sinking into my bones. I am only human, and humans are not supposed to deal with days like today. With a jolt, I realize my wrist is bare. The red band is gone, taken away. What could that mean? Tears sting my eyes, threatening to fall, but I will not cry. I have that much pride left.
I can fight the tears, but not the questions. Not the doubt growing in my heart.