Scarlet was there in a second, her elbows hooked under Winter’s arms, pulling her away. All around them, those who had fallen were recovering from whatever torment their masters had inflicted on them. Their faces were glazed from pain, but there was also a satisfaction when they noticed the dead thaumaturges.
Strom pushed himself into a crouch and gave his head a shake. His piercing gaze found Winter. She curled against her fiery friend, shivering.
Strom’s words were slurred when he spoke. “You have Lunar sickness because you cannot control people like they do?”
Winter glanced toward the thaumaturges, or what was left of them, and immediately regretted it. She looked down at her brittle fingertips instead. “Oh, I c-could,” she stuttered through her numb lips. “But I know what it is l-like to be controlled as m-much as you do.”
Strom stood, gaining his strength back faster than many of the others. He inspected Winter and Scarlet for a long while.
Finally, he said, “She will send more of her hounds to punish us for this. They will torture us until we are all begging before them like the dogs we are.” Though his voice was rough, a smile crept across his vicious mouth. “But to know the taste and smell of thaumaturge blood is worth it.”
One soldier howled in agreement and was soon joined by a chorus of howls, splitting through Winter’s ears and making the cavern tremble. Alpha Strom faced the regiment and there was a moment of celebration—fists clasping fists and howls that went on and on.
Winter forced herself to stand, though she was still cold and trembling. Scarlet stayed at her side, a pillar.
Winter’s voice was strong when she asked, “Are you now satiated?”
Strom turned back, and the raucous congratulations between his men began to fade. Their eyes still showed hunger as they raked over the two girls.
“Are your cravings filled?” asked Winter. “Is your hunger abated?”
“Winter,” Scarlet hissed. “What are you doing?”
She whispered back, “I am thawing out.”
Scarlet frowned, but Winter took a step away from her. “Well? Are you satisfied?”
“Our hunger is never satisfied,” one of the soldiers growled.
“I thought as much,” said Winter. “I know you still want to eat my friend and me, for what a juicy, tasty snack we would be.” She smiled, not as terrified by the prospect as she had been before. “But if you choose to help us instead, perhaps you will soon be feasting on the queen herself. And won’t her flesh be more satisfying than ours? More satisfying, even, than your dead masters in the doorway?”
A silence hovered over them. Winter watched the calculations behind their faces and listened to a few of them sucking on their teeth.
“Fight with me,” she said, when enough time had passed and neither she nor Scarlet had been devoured. “I will not control you. I will not torture you. Help me end Levana’s rule and we will all have our freedom.”
Alpha Strom met the eyes of a handful of the soldiers—the other alphas, she presumed—before fixing a penetrating look on her. “I cannot speak for the entire regiment,” he finally said, “but I will accept your offer. If you swear to never control us as they have done, my pack will fight for your revolution.”
Some of the men nodded. Others growled, but Winter thought it was a growl of agreement.
In response, she lifted her nose to the cavern ceiling and howled.
Fifty-Nine
Scarlet waited until this new round of howls abated, echoing off the cave walls, before throwing herself in front of Winter. “You understand,” she said, shoving a finger at Strom, “that by agreeing to help us, you can only attack Queen Levana and the people who serve her. No civilians whatsoever, not even those obnoxious aristocrats, unless they pose a threat. Our goal is to dethrone Levana, not slaughter the whole city. And we’re not giving you all a free meal ticket, either. We expect you to follow orders and make yourselves useful. That could mean training some of the people from the sectors in how to fight or use weapons, or it could mean carrying injured people out of the line of fire … I don’t know. But it does not mean you get to run rampant through the streets of Artemisia destroying everything in sight. Can you agree to that?”
Strom held her gaze, his ferocity once again turning to amusement. “I understand why your mate chose you.”
“I’m not looking for personal commentary,” she spat.
Strom nodded. “We agree to your demands. And when Levana is gone, we will be free men, able to pursue a life of our choosing.”
“So long as that life follows the laws of society—yes. That’s right.”
Strom surveyed the crowd. If it wasn’t for all the blood, it would look as if the killings of the thaumaturges had never happened. “Alpha Perry? Alpha Xu?”
One by one, he counted off the remaining Alphas, and one by one they accepted Scarlet and Winter’s terms. When it was done, Winter turned to Scarlet with a weary yet endearing smile. “I told you they would join us.”
Scarlet inhaled sharply. “We need to find out what’s happening on the surface. Is there some way to communicate with the sectors? To tell them the revolution is going to happen, even if Cinder…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. She had no idea what had become of Cinder, or Wolf.
Wolf. Ze’ev. Her alpha mate.
Thinking of him cut a hole in her chest, so she wouldn’t. She would believe he was alive, because he had to be alive.
“We have to head to the surface anyway,” said Strom. “These lava tubes don’t connect to the maglev tracks. Or—they do, but it will take us too far out of the way. Better to head up to the nearest sector and infiltrate the tunnels that way.”
“Which sector is that?” asked Scarlet.
“LW-12,” someone said. “Lumber and wood production. Dangerous work, lots of injuries. Doubt they’d be too sympathetic to Her Majesty.”
“We might have luck obtaining weaponry there too,” said another.
“How far is it?” asked Scarlet.
“This used to be the storeroom for LW-12.” Strom pointed at the ceiling. “It’s right over our heads.”
* * *
Once they were back in the caves, it took fewer than ten minutes before a man was prying open a metal door that led to a thin stairwell. It seemed like an endless amount of stairs. The confined space quickly become stifling and hot.
“Scarlet-friend?”
Winter’s fragile voice set Scarlet on edge. Pausing, she glanced down the steps and saw the princess using the ancient rail on the wall to pull herself forward as much as her legs were pushing her. Her breathing was labored, and not from the climb.
“What’s wrong?”
“I am a girl made up of ice and snow,” whispered the princess. Her eyes unfocused.
Cursing, Scarlet scrambled around a group of soldiers to get to the princess. Everyone came to a stop, and Scarlet felt oddly touched at the concern she saw in a few of the soldiers’ eyes.
Leave it to Winter to make a bunch of sadistic, hot-headed predators get all swoony over her. Though Scarlet didn’t like to think that what she and Wolf had was built on Wolf’s animal instincts, she couldn’t help but wonder if the same sort of instincts were at play here. Now that they’d persuaded these men to join their cause, were they shifting away from predator-killers to predator-protectors? Perhaps they’d lived with violence and darkness for so long, a single crack in their armor was all it took to have them craving something more meaningful.
Or maybe it was just Winter, who could make a rock fall in love with her if she smiled at it the right way.
“Are you hallucinating?” Scarlet asked, pressing a hand to Winter’s brow, although she wasn’t sure what she was looking to find there. “You don’t feel cold. Can you walk? Are you still breathing?”