Glass Sword (Red Queen #2)(71)

A kick catches me in the stomach and I let it roll me. Over and over, until I’m facedown in the dirt of the garden, my face scraped and bleeding. The cool scent is a momentary balm, soothing me enough to let me see again. But when I open my eyes, I want nothing more than to go blind.

Maven crouches in front of me, his head tipped to one side, an inquisitive puppy with a toy. Behind him, battle rages. A very uneven one. With Shade incapacitated, and me in the dirt, only Cal and Farley remain. She has a gun now, but it’s little use with Ptolemus deflecting bullets at every turn. At least Cal melts whatever gets close, burning away knives and vines as fast as he can. It can’t last though. They’re cornered.

I almost scream. We escape one noose only to find another.

“Look at me, please.”

Maven shifts, obstructing my view of the scene beyond. But I will not give him the satisfaction of my gaze. I won’t look at him, for my own sake. Instead, I focus on the clicking sound, the one no one else seems to hear. It stabs with every passing second.

He grabs my jaw and yanks, forcing me to face him. “So stubborn.”

He tuts. “One of your most intriguing qualities. Along with this,” he adds, drawing a finger through the red blood on my cheek.

Click.

His grip tightens, sending a firework of pain through my jawbone.

The clicking makes everything hurt more, hurt deeper. Reluctantly, I meet familiar blue eyes and a pointed, pale face. To my horror, he is exactly as I remember him. Quiet, unassuming, a haunted boy. He is not the Maven of my nightmarish memories, a ghost of blood and shadows. He is real again. I recognize the determination in his eyes. I saw it on the deck of his father’s boat, as we sailed downriver to Archeon, leaving the world in our wake. He kissed my lips then and promised that no one would hurt me.

“I said I would find you.”

Click.

His hand moves from my jaw to my throat, squeezing. Enough to keep me silent, but not enough to stop me from breathing. His touch burns. I gasp, unable to summon enough air to scream.

Maven. You’re hurting me. Maven, stop.

He is not his mother. He cannot read my thoughts. My vision spots again, darkening. Pinpoints of black swim before my eyes, expanding and contracting with every awful click.

“And I said I would save you.”

I expect his grip to tighten. Instead, it remains constant. And his free hand reaches for my collarbone, one blazing palm against my skin.

He is scorching me, branding me. I try to scream again, and barely get out a whimper.

“I am a man of my word.” He tips his head again. “When I want to be.”

Click. Click. Click.

My heart tries to match the rhythm, beating at a frenzy I won’t survive, threatening to explode.

“Stop—” I manage to choke out, one hand reaching into thin air, wishing for my brother. Instead, Maven takes my hand in his, and that burns too. Every inch of me burns.

“That’s enough,” I think I hear him say, but not to me. “I said enough!”

His eyes seem to bleed, the last bright spots in my darkening world.

Pale blue, streaking across my vision, drawing jagged lines of painful ice. They surround me, caging me. I feel nothing but the burn.

That’s the last thing I remember before a white flash of light and sound splits my brain apart. And my entire world is pain.

It’s too much of everything, and strangely nothing at all. No bullets, no knives, no fists or fire or strangling green vines. This is not a weapon I’ve ever faced before—because it’s my own. Lightning, electricity, sparks, an overload beyond even my limits. I called up a storm once before in the Bowl of Bones, and it exhausted me. But this, whatever Maven has done, is kil ing me. Pulling me apart, nerve by nerve, splintering bone and ripping muscle. I am being obliterated inside my own skin.

Suddenly I realize —Is this what they felt? The ones I kil ed? Is this what it feels like to die by lightning?

Control. It’s what Julian always told me. Control it. But this is too much. I am a dam trying to hold back an entire ocean. Even if I could stop what this is, I can’t find a way past my own exploding pain. I can’t reach out. I can’t move. I’m trapped within myself, screaming behind my teeth. I will be dead soon. And at least this will end. But it doesn’t. The pain stretches on in a constant assault on every sense. Pulsing but never ebbing, changing but never stopping. White spots, brighter than the sun, dance across my vision, until an explosion of red squeezes them out. I try to blink it away, to control something in myself, but nothing seems to happen. I wouldn’t know if it did.

My skin must be gone by now, scorched away by the surging bolts.

Perhaps I’ll be given the mercy of bleeding to death. That will be quicker than this white abyss.

Kill me. The words repeat, over and over. It’s the only thing I can say, the only thing I want now. All thoughts of newbloods and Maven, my brother and Cal and Kilorn are gone entirely. Even the faces that haunt me, the faces of the dead, have disappeared. Funny, now that I’m dying, my ghosts decide to leave.

I wish they would come back.

I wish I didn’t have to die alone.

SEV E N T E E N

“Kil me.”

The words sear in my mouth, slashing past what must be a throat burned raw from screaming. I expect to taste blood—no, I expect nothing at all. I expect to be dead.