“Soon?” she says, turning her head. “We fly tonight.”
Without thought, I force her to look back at Lory, my fingers pushing her jaw. “Forget about that. See how long you can hold without hurting her.”
“Full blind!” Lory shouts, her voice too loud. Full deaf, too, I think.
“Whatever you’re doing, it’s working,” I tell Cameron. “You don’t need to say what it is, but just know, this is your trigger.” Months ago, Julian told me the same thing, to find the trigger that released my sparks in the Spiral Garden. I know now that letting go is what gives me strength, and it seems Cameron has found whatever enables hers. “Remember how this feels.”
Despite the cold, a bead of sweat rolls down Cameron’s neck and disappears into her collar. She grits her teeth, jaw clenching to keep back a grunt of frustration.
“It will get easier,” I continue, dropping my hands back to her shoulders. Her muscles feel tense beneath my fingers, wiry and taut like cords drawn too tight. While her ability wreaks havoc on Lory’s senses, it weakens Cameron as well. If only we had more time. One more week, or even one more day.
At least Cameron doesn’t have to hold back once we get to Corros. Inside the prison, I want her to inflict as much pain as she can. With her temper and her history in the cells, silencing guards shouldn’t be too difficult, and she’ll carve us a clear path through rock and flesh. But what happens when the wrong person gets in her way? A newblood she doesn’t recognize? Cal? Me? Her ability might be the most powerful I’ve ever seen or felt, and I certainly don’t want to be her victim again. Just the thought makes my skin crawl. Deep in my bones, my sparks respond, bursting into my nerves. I have to push them back, using my own lessons to keep the lightning quiet and far away. Even though it obeys, fading into the dull hum I barely notice anymore, the sparks curl with power. Despite my constant worry and stress, my ability seems to have grown. It is stronger than before, healthy and alive. At least some part of me is, I think. Because beneath the lightning, another element lingers.
The cold never leaves. It never ends, and it feels worse than any burden. The cold is hollow, and it eats at my insides. It spreads like rot, like sickness, and one day I fear it will leave me empty, a shell of the lightning girl, the breathing corpse of Mare Barrow.
In her blindness, Lory’s eyes roll, searching vainly through Cameron’s blanket of darkness. “Starting to feel it again,” she says loudly. The hiss of her words betrays her pain. Though she’s tough as the salty rocks she was raised on, even Lory can’t keep quiet against Cameron’s weapons. “Getting worse.”
“Release.”
After a moment too long for my liking, Cameron’s arms drop, and her body relaxes. She seems to shrink, and Lory falls to a knee again. Her hands massage her temples and she blinks rapidly, letting her senses return.
“Ow,” she mutters, angling a smirk at Cameron.
But the techie girl has no smile in return. She turns sharply on her heel, braids swaying with the motion, until she faces me fully. Or, I should say, she faces the top of my head. I see anger in her, the familiar kind. It will serve her well tonight.
“Yes?”
“I’m done for the day,” she snaps, teeth blinding white.
I can’t help but fold my arms, drawing my spine up as straight as I can. I feel very much like Lady Blonos when I glare at her. “You’re done in two hours, Cameron, and you should wish it was more. We need every second we can get—”
“I said, I am done,” she repeats. For a girl of fifteen, she can be disarmingly stern. The muscles of her long neck gleam with sweat, and her breath comes hard. But she fights the urge to pant, trying to face me on even terms. Trying to seem like an equal. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m about to be marched to a battle I don’t want to fight, again. And I’ll be damned if I die with an empty stomach.”
Behind her, Lory watches us with wide, unblinking eyes. I know what Cal would do. Insubordination, he calls this, and it cannot be tolerated. I should push Cameron harder, make her run a lap around the clearing, maybe see if she can bring down a bird with the pressure of her ability. Cal would make it clear—she is not in charge. Cal knows soldiers, but this girl is not one of his troops. She will not bend to my will, or his. She’s spent too long obeying the whistles of a shift change, the schedules handed down through generations of enslaved factory workers. She has tasted freedom, and will not submit to any order she doesn’t want to follow. And though she protests every moment of her time here, she stays. Even with her ability, she stays.
I will not thank her for that, but I will let her eat. Quietly, I step aside.
“Thirty minutes’ rest, then come back.”
Her eyes spark with anger, and the familiar sight almost makes me smile. I can’t help but admire the girl. One day, we might even be friends.
She doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t argue either, and stalks away from our corner of the clearing. The others in the yard watch her go, their eyes following her as she defies the lightning girl, but I don’t care a bit for what they might think. I’m not their captain, I’m not their queen. I’m not better or worse than any of them, and it’s time they started to see me as I am. Another newblood, another fighter, and nothing more.
“Kilorn’s got some rabbit,” Lory says, if only to break the silence. She sniffs at the air and licks her lips in a manner that would make Lady Blonos screech. “Juicy ones too.”