Page 22 of Under the Iron Sky

“Ah, ah, ah.” Ma’varea waved a gauntleted finger in front of her face. “First things first, you made a real mess the other night. I told you to be careful. You almost got yourself killed blowing up that nest.”

Anger flared across Soraya’s chest. “My mess? The team followed your instructions.”

“I gave you the location of the nest, the time of the shift change, the size of the group. I told you destroying that thing was going to be difficult. If your team failed, it’s on you.”

Soraya couldn’t help but flinch—something Ma’varea was all too quick to notice.

“You lose one of your own?”

Soraya kept her mouth shut, but her knuckles were near white on the handle of her gun. Noah’s death was still too fresh, like scratching an open wound, and her knee-jerk reaction was to lash out.

“Why are you even doing this?” she snapped, an acidic lilt creeping into her voice. “Isn’t it a little late for redemption for you? How much blood is on your ledger?”

Ma’varea chuckled, the sound distorted into a deep growl that vibrated in his chest and slid down her spine like icy water. She suppressed a shudder.

Ma’varea sidestepped the gun and began to circle her the way a wolf circles a baby deer. “Oh, I lost count a long time ago, but I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. I know what I am, what I’ve done. But do you know who you are?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He made another pass, dissecting every move and twitch of her hand. “How much blood is on your ledger, human?”

It was a test if she’d ever heard one. A challenge. An open invitation for execution. He knew the effect he was having on her, and he wanted to see if she would play. It would’ve been so easy to kill him right then and there. Her gun was already there, finger around the trigger.

The Dar’rak were strong, but she doubted even he could survive a shot at such close range.

She wanted to. Wanted to tear his eyes from his skull and shove them down his throat just to shut him up. He always seemed to know how to get under her skin, rile her up to the point the rational part of her brain dulled and she was a slave to her impulses.

That couldn’t happen tonight. She couldn’t risk pissing him off and losing their only advantage, and she couldn’t kill him right there on the spot like a dog no matter how much she wanted to.

He was too valuable; his information too important. So Soraya did the thing that she never dreamed she’d do, the thing that every instinct in her body was screaming against. She took a deep breath and lowered her gun. “More than I would like. It keeps me up at night, as it should. But this is war. We don’t have time to be gentle anymore.”

He came to a stop in front of her. Much, much too close. Their chests were almost touching.

Soraya stared up into that helmet. It took every bit of training that’d been carved into her not to raise her gun again. She was dying to know who was beneath it.

Ramapheal had started ranking his generals a few years after the invasion, rewarding loyalty and devotion by ensuring that different levels of his army wore different helmets to clearly distinguish not only their worth in his ranks but also their lethalness.

At the bottom of the pile were the Irons, the cast-iron helmets that had given Soraya nightmares on Invasion Day. They were nothing to her now. The majority were freshly trained and new to the ways of war. They were still lethal, but most of the time they were impulsive and eager to show their worth so they could progress up the ranks—it made them easy to manipulate.

Next on the hierarchy were the Crimsons. All highly trained and immeasurably dangerous. Their helmets resembled shiny metal skulls dipped in blood. They were incredible on the battlefield, vicious killers who spared no one.

And then, the top of the pile. The Demons. Ramapheal’s right hands. Their helmets were grotesque but incredibly detailed: a pure black skull with large protruding fangs and two huge, elaborate horns made from the darkest metal that curved out from their temples to cast the most sinister shadow.

There were only two: one Dar’rak man and a fairy woman with gray wings. Not much was known about the latter, but the man … Reports said that he was relentless. A lethal monster who left a sea of corpses behind, and that was without the nightmare he rode.

Black Shadow, the Vordellians had named his dragon, an exceptionally terrifying creature that’d earned its name from its gargantuan size. The only warning the beast was ever present in battle was the giant, demonic-looking shadow on the ground before the field was eclipsed in searing heat.

Theron had survived an attack by it once. He had the common sense to hide under a pile of bodies when the creature had flown overhead a final time to check for survivors. He’d said its scales were black as night, and its breath was like hellfire that’d melted their jets right out of the sky and disintegrated bodies to ash.

But Ma’varea wore a simple iron helmet. Nothing unusual or fear-inducing about it. It was so obviously a lie it was almost laughable. He had to be a Crimson. Soraya suspected one who’d turned out of spite for not being deemed worthy or dangerous enough for a pair of horns. He wouldn’t have known half the information he’d leaked if he wasn’t high-ranking.

So many lives saved and battles won because of him.

But no matter how much intelligence he leaked, he was still a monster. He’d probably killed many of her friends. Probably murdered hundreds and slept like a baby at night.

“Is this new?” Ma’varea ran a finger over the protective plate on her chest, tracing the scuffed bronze and green beneath her collarbone until she batted his hand away. “It’s pretty, but I preferred the white-and-gold you lot used to wear. Shame that it’s changed.”

“It’s a shame you lot didn’t stay beneath where you belong.”