Chapter Text
As he fell, he saw nothing but flames; they were everywhere, meeting him, crackling and sizzling as they destroyed all the memories they had managed to build before reaching the front. He was sure that not even a charred mush would remain of him, that his bones would turn to ashes, and there wouldn’t be a grave where people could cry for his loss. He bang his head against something, and in his field of vision appeared a thousand shiny stars. In fact, they weren’t stars but sparks. His uniform caught fire, carbonized, began to smoke, but it didn’t happen to his skin, and he felt no pain but the sparks’ heat, as if they were going through his body, as if they were tickling his nerves. It wasn’t a bad feeling to try before he died: he felt alive like never before, like a blind man who finally came back to see after a long time. He sensed something moving inside him, but it was no longer just the sparks: it was the whole flame, which slid over him, blackened his clothes leaving the skin intact. The flames were trying to kill him without succeeding. It was all wrong, obviously; he shouldn’t have been alive, he wouldn’t have to get a big cloud of black smoke around him, the floor wouldn’t have to start crunching and the walls wouldn’t have to crack. The fire became clearer and more aggressive, but after a while, it weakened, making Thomas feel stronger. It didn’t matter that he was falling again, that three floors of that area of the building had been destroyed, or that he was almost naked. It didn’t matter because he landed on a pile of dust, or perhaps ashes, definitely battered, with sore muscles, but undoubtedly alive. He stood up with difficulty, the clothes that continued to fall apart. Above him, inside the building, in the areas that hadn’t been touched by the explosion, someone was looking at that havoc. How many had died because of Maven? Then he turned, sensing other looks, this time pointed at him, a red boy who had escaped that ruckus. Watching him, there were two guys: one was taller and thinner, and the other more sturdy and stocky, but the differences between the two seemed to end there. They definitely had to be brothers. Both had wide eyes. One seemed angry, the other confused. Then their expressions changed: the biggest seemed scared, and Thomas wondered how it was possible. He was thin and pale, nobody feared him.
“He’s one of us.” instead said the taller, the look drawn by a small scratch on the back of his right hand. Then he didn’t fully understand what else happened, he only knew that the boy approached and in a moment he found himself very far from there, in a place that with time he would’ve learned to define a house, among people who for those like Maven had envisaged only one destiny: death.
Farley left him in a corridor, to ruminate on her words: he had always thought that there was only the distinction between reds and silvers, kings and slaves, and instead he discovered that there was much more, a range of nuances that he didn’t understand, in which he had precipitated unwillingly. He grew up wondering if he could have dinner every night, like any other red, and now he found himself in a place full of red with full bellies and enough energy to be able to fight against the silver. He had to choose and he had to do it quickly. Would he join the Scarlet Guard, ready to sacrifice himself and everything he wanted to reach the infamous common goal, or would he continue a life that he no longer had? Thomas knew that, after all, there was no choice: he couldn’t go back to the front, he couldn’t go home, and he wouldn’t even be able to live far from there, because when the silvers are on you, there’s no far enough place. So he accepted that same evening, certain that he had just launched himself into a business that would’ve eaten him alive.
He realized he wasn’t wrong only three years later, when Farley dragged him around midnight into a greenhouse in the Royal Palace. She didn’t explain anything to him, only that they had found new, important members for the Guard. They hid in the greenhouse in four: Thomas, Farley, Kilorn, a new recruit who seemed ready to sell his soul to please someone important in the Guard, and another girl, who carried a big assault rifle with her. She had to have little aim.
“Excuse me if I don’t do the reverence.” Farley said, emerging from a grove of magnolias where she was hidden with Thomas, upon the arrival of two figures. One was Walsh, he had heard of her and had even seen her, sometimes, and the other was a girl younger than him, not so tall, thin and definitely not silver. It didn’t take a genius to understand it, yet he noted that someone had given her special care. She had to be Mareena, the one everyone talked about. Her real name was Mare, and she was like him.
“Farley.” she said, greeting the Scarlet Guard’s captain. Therefore, they must have already met. He suspected it. Farley didn’t return the greeting, asking Walsh where the other was. Thomas had originally believed it was some red, someone who worked in the palace, but no one had ever been so excited for a simple recruit. Was him a newblood that had managed to stay hidden all that time?
“What does that mean? Who else joined?” Mare asked, too loudly, for Thomas’s tastes, but not wrongly. He didn’t like all that secrecy and certainly wasn’t excited at the idea that someone else would arrive there at any moment, with the possibility of a betrayal.
“Maven.” Thomas heard his own voice whisper. He had grown up, but it was undeniably him. He didn’t know whether to scream with joy, to see him alive, or run away, because the last time he was next to him, he almost risked dying. He was a prince, a silver, the enemy, and yet here he was, along with Farley. Thomas felt his heart burst with joy. He had stifled his love for Maven long ago, had abandoned those stupid fantasies of a kid when he had taken the oath of the Guard. Holland, his companion, a red servant of a certain age, with many years of service behind him, seemed to burst with pride.
“Mare, I told you you’re not alone.” Maven said, and his voice was so different, that Thomas almost felt a stab in his stomach. He kept his hands on his hips and contracted them: he seemed nervous, probably because of Farley. Not that it was difficult to understand why: the girl had approached with a gun in her hand, almost as nervous as he was, but her voice was firm and decisive. Thomas remained hidden, even though he was sick of being just a spectator. He wanted to tell him that he was proud of him, he wanted to tell him that he remembered everything they had said six years ago, yet he stayed still, to keep his place in the Guard, because he was too used to taking orders. Farley, however, didn’t move an inch, causing Thomas’s blood to freeze in his veins. Weren’t his words enough? What did she want more? Then, as if he had always known, Maven started talking again. He spoke of when he was twelve and his father sent him to the front, to temper him, to make him look more like Cal. Thomas felt a lump in his throat as he pulled out secrets that had only revealed to him, feelings that a prince should never have felt. Farley, however, snorted. Thomas never shared this abrupt and mean way; he believed there were better ways to inspire trust and loyalty, he believed that reigning through fear was something silver do, but he would never say it. He knew that she had lost so much, but Thomas hadn’t really been a privileged in life, yet his heart hadn’t dried up like that.
“I don’t need a jealous kid.”
“It’s not jealousy that pushed me here.” Maven corrected her, and Thomas smiled. He hadn’t changed so much, after all. “I spent three years in a camp to follow Cal, the officers and generals, watching the soldiers die and fight a war in which no one believed.”
Thomas closed his eyes, trying to shake off the nightmares. There was no honor or loyalty, whence he came, only madness and destruction, rivers of blood poured from both sides of the border.
“And our people have given so much more,” Maven continued, implacable. He spoke like a river in flood that can no longer be dammed, and he spoke of a boy who was only seventeen, red and came from the cold north. He was speaking of him.
“You should have told me!” thundered Thomas, on the way back. Farley didn’t even deign to look back at him.
“You knew everything, I told you everything!”
His anger was unstoppable, but fortunately, no one tried to use any kind of power in the vicinity, or he wasn’t sure he would be able to restrain himself, once he started his revenge against the captain.