I listen to the groaning wind from the valley. My heels reach the end of the landing pad. There’s nothing but air behind me. Air and the shifting topography of a dark city on the valley floor two thousand meters below.
“He’s going to jump,” Aja says quietly to Cassius. “We need the body.”
“Darrow…don’t,” Cassius says, but his eyes are telling me to jump, telling me to take this way out instead of surrendering, instead of going to Luna to be peeled apart. This is the noble way. He’s putting his cape over me again.
I hate him for it.
“You think you’re honorable?” I hiss. “You think you’re good? Who is left that you love? Who do you fight for?” Anger creeps into my words. “You are alone, Cassius. But I am not. Not when I faced your brother in the Passage. Not when I hid among you. Not when I lay in darkness. Not even now.” I grip Holiday’s unconscious body as hard as I can, looping my fingers inside the straps of her body armor. Clutch Victra’s hand. My heels scrape the concrete’s edge. “Listen to the wind, Cassius. Listen to the bloodydamn wind.”
The two knights tilt their heads. And still they do not understand the strange groaning sound that drifts up from the valley floor, because how would a son and daughter of Gold ever know the sound of a clawDrill gnawing through rock? How would they guess that my people would come not from the sky, but from the heart of our planet?
“Goodbye, Cassius,” I say. “Expect me.” And I push off the ledge with both legs, flinging myself backward into open air, dragging Holiday and Victra into thin air.
We fall toward a molten eye in the center of the snow-covered city. There, among rows of manufacturing plants, buildings shiver and tip as the ground swells upward. Pipes crack and spin into the air. Steam hisses through ruptured asphalt. Gas explosions ripple out in a corona, threading lines of fire through streets that buckle and heave, as if Mars itself were stretching six stories high to give birth to some ancient leviathan. And then, when the ground and city can stretch no more, a clawDrill erupts out into the winter air—a titanic metal hand with molten fingers that steam and grasp and then vanish as the clawDrill sinks back into Mars, pulling half a city block with it.
We’re falling too fast.
Jumped too soon. I lose my grip on Victra.
Ground rushing up to us.
Then the air cracks with a sonic boom.
Then another. And another, till a whole chorus resounds out from the darkness of the clawDrill-carved tunnel as it gives birth to a small army. Two, twenty, fifty armored shapes in gravBoots scream up out of the tunnel toward us. To my left, my right. Painted blood-red, pouring pulsefire skyward behind us. My hair stands on end and I smell ozone. Superheated munitions ripple blue from friction as they tear through air molecules. Miniguns mounted on shoulders vomit death.
Amidst the rising Sons of Ares, a crimson, armored man with the spiked helmet of his father zips forward and catches Victra seconds before she impacts on the roof of a skyscraper. The howling of wolves babbles from his helmet’s speakers. It’s Ares himself. My best friend in all the worlds has not forgotten me. He has come with his legion of empire breakers and terrorists and renegades: the Howlers. A dozen metal men and women with black wolfcloaks kicking in the wind fly behind him. The largest of them in pure white armor with blue handprints covering the chest and arms. His black cloak is stained with a red stripe down the middle. For a moment I think it’s Pax come back from the dead for me. But when the man catches me and Holiday, I see the glyphs drawn in the blue paint of the handprints. Glyphs from the south pole of Mars. It is Ragnar Volarus, prince of the Valkyrie Spires. He tosses Holiday to another Howler and pushes me behind him so I can wrap my arms around his neck, digging my fingers into the rivets of his armor. Then he banks through the smoking valley city toward the tunnel, shouting to me: “Hold fast, little brother.”
And he dives. Sevro to the left, clutching Victra, Howlers all around, their gravBoots screaming as we plummet into the darkness of the tunnel’s mouth. The enemy pursues. The sounds are horrible. Screaming of wind. Rupture of rock as pulsefire rips into the walls behind us and weapons warble. My jaw rattles against Ragnar’s metal shoulder. His gravBoots vibrate at full burn. Bolts from the armor dig into my ribs. The battery pack above his tailbone slams into my groin as we weave and dart through pitch black. I’m riding a metal shark deeper and deeper into the belly of an angry sea. My ears pop. Wind whistles. A pebble slams into my forehead. Blood streams down my face, stinging my eyes. The only light the glowing of boots and the flash of weapons.
The skin of my right shoulder flares with pain. Pulsefire from our pursuers misses me by inches. Still, my skin bubbles and smokes, lighting my jumpsuit’s sleeve on fire. The wind kills the flames. But the pulsefire rips past again and boils into the Son’s gravBoots just ahead of me, melting the man’s legs into a single chunk of molten metal. He jerks in the air, slamming into the ceiling, where his body crumples. Helmet ripping off and spinning straight toward me.
—
Red light throbs through my eyelids. There’s smoke in the air. Meaty. Stings the back of the throat. Fat tissue charred and crispy. Chest hot with pain. A swamp of screams and howls and cries for mother all around. And something else. The sound of bumblebees in my ears. Someone’s above me. See them in the red light as I open my eyes. Screaming into my face. Pressing a mask to my mouth. A damp wolfcloak dangles from a metal shoulder, tickling my neck. Other hands touch mine. The world vibrates, tilts.
“Starboard! Starboard!” someone screams in the distance, as if underwater.
We’re on a ship. I’m surrounded by dying men. Burned, twisted husks of armor. Smaller men atop them, bent like vultures, saws glowing in their hands as they peel the armor away, trying to free those dying of their burns inside. But the armor’s melted tight. A hand touches mine. A boy lying beside me. Eyes wide. Armor blackened. The skin of his cheeks is young and smooth beneath the soot and blood. His mouth not yet creased by smiles. His breaths come shorter, quicker. He mouths my name.
And he’s gone.
I’m alone, far away from the horror, standing weightless and clean on a road that smells of moss and earth. My feet touch the ground, but I cannot feel it underfoot. To either side stretches the grass of wind-beaten moors. The sky flashes with lightning. My hands are without Sigils and drift along the cobbled wall that meanders on ahead to either side. When did I start walking? Somewhere in the distance, wood smoke rises. I follow the road, but I feel I have no choice. A voice calls to me from beyond a hill.