People say that when you make a huge mistake you'll have time to heal. You'll realize that it wasn't entirely your fault and you will learn to forgive yourself. Or that maybe it was your doing, maybe you brought that misery on yourself and you'll learn to make yourself better so you don't make the same mistake again. You'll grow wiser, choose your friends morecarefully.

I know that what happened wasn't entirely my mistake, even though I played a great part in it. I know I was deceived, that I wanted to believe in something so badly I trusted the first ray of sunshine in a dark night, only to get sunburned. So consumed with rage and pitiful hate that I wanted nothing but revenge and I refused to see the good in my enemy, and the bad in my friends.

I realize my mistakes, but I also know I'll never grow old to make them right, to make myself better. I will die as I am now, slightly wiser but still pitiful, hateful, scared, so, so scared.

I stare at Cal from my cell, his back is pressed tightly against the cavern's walls looking to a place far off. My family, what it became of them I do not know, but at least I can still hope they are safe. In my head I see them happy, oblivious to me and away in a strange land having escaped this war and living a better life.

Cal doesn't have that luxury, he saw first handed what became of his family, and knowing that I played a part in it is what keeps me from reaching through the iron cage. I want to tell him how sorry I am, for what he went through, for what I put him through and for what it will come to both of us. I wished I could tell him that I was trying to do the right thing, I just didn't know what that was.

I wanted to say all of that and more but I didn't know how to do it without making it look as if I was trying to pin the blame outside myself. So I sat with my head against the wall watching him remember better times.

Mere seconds pass before we hear steps coming down.

"If you come to gloat again Mavey, I'm really not in the fucking mood." Cal tone is so even and calm I can't tell whether he is angry or simply resigned. His face is covered in shadows, a mask keeping him safe.

"What a dirty mouth you've got there kid." A familiar and impossible voice speaks and I throw myself against the metal bars, trying to will her into appearing.

Was this another trick? Was she in this too?

Farley steps into the torch's light, her pose smug, confident but her cloths are torn, her skin bloodied and dirty.

"But no," She takes a key out of her hand and now it's Cal and I against the bars, looking at her intently. "I'm not here to gloat." The key opens Cal's door easily and she grabs him by the collar of his shirt, throwing him out of the cell in a swift motion.

"Run, find Kilorn he'll take you away from here." Cal stands still as if in shock and for the first time we hear the shouts and cries up stairs. What the hell is going on up there?

"If you want to die here, be my guest." She shrugged as if his life meant nothing, as if she doesn't care if whathever is happening up there gets to him. Farley takes another key from her pocket and Cal just looks at me, still confused.

"RUN!" I yell and he bolts up stairs and out of my sight. I hope he goes somewhere good. "What are you doing here?" I ask Farley as the door finally opens.

"Just having some fun." And the smile she gives me is so real and so scary that I can't help but laugh and be afraid at the same time. "We saw a chance to hit them hard, and we took it."

"What did you do?" Is my family alright? Is Kilorn safe?

"Started the revolution." She grabs my arm and we ran upstairs my heart pounding with fear and dangerous hope only to be greeted by a massacre. Red and silver blood sheds the stones and walls as corpses are laid in awkward positions in every corner in the small war room. We go through two more rooms with the same scenery, all corpses and no livings but the yells are somewhere in the palace, close, frightened.

We run even though the tiles are slippery from hot blood and I can't see anything besides Farley's hand closed around my arm. I let her guide me through the maze of halls and rooms I had gotten to know so well but that now, in the middle of a revolution, are no familiar to me. The screams and blasts get louder the second we come near the garden and when we bolt to the open space, a marble fountain crashes only inches from our heads.

"This way." I don't stop to see if the Silver who threw that piece of décor is chasing us, instead I hold onto Farley tighter and run, spreading a net of electricity behind us for as long as I can so that anybody who might want to chase us will get fried. We have to duck, jump and twirl every now and then and I have no idea how we manage to get through and into the main hall.

All I get to see is the bright diamond glass walls before the light flashes at my side, the explosion throwing us against the hard floor and then all I see is black.

I feel the electricity before I open my eyes, loud and vibrant and everywhere around the room. From the camera on the left corner, to the device connected to my heart and the cables running deep into the wall.

I can also feel him, but it's not because of any gift. No, it's the instinct of running when a predator comes in. I open my eyes only to make sure he is really there before making the last witty comment of my life to a complete stranger and I find myself in a white, sterile room with a needle into my arm going to a tube pumping a reddish liquid into me.

Maven is sitting not far from me and gets up when he sees I'm awake. This is my chance and Itake it, opening my hand fast to send the ray that will kill him once and for all.

But nothing happens.

I can feel the electricity in the room but I can't muster it up from inside me. My whole body feels numb and heavy. I try again and nothing. Again, and I'm starting to get tired and desperate. The more I fail the worst it gets.

"It won't do you any good to try." Maven says and I try again just to get him to shut up. Nothing.

"What do you want?" It's the first thing I can articulate. Roth in hell and eat my shit are close seconds. But I want to know, in a sick twisted way I need to know what tortures they have ready for me.

A small smile forms in his lips, as if enjoying a private joke. "Your hand in marriage, of course."

"How sweet, and will you chop it off with your new sword or just an old, rusty knife?" I really should stop giving advices. "I'm in no mood to be fuck around." I repeat Cal's words, this time Maven can hear them. Is he here too? Was he captured or did he manage to get away? And Farley and the guard? Or was this all a lie? The thought scares me because I don't think I can ever trust anyone again.

"That's unfortunate to me, but not exactly in my plans Mare." Did he seriously just said that? "The palace was hit as you well know, and I will need my charming fiancé in this time of grief. My father died, you know?"

"Shut up," I muster the ray again but it won't come. I hate that he is doing this, that he's making me play his stupid game before he kills me but I really couldn't have expected anything less of him.

"I mean it Mare." He catches my hand and I freeze, expecting to be burned alive. Instead he holds it gently as his thumb rubs circles on my palm. I snatch it away.

"You have two choices, you can die as the nothing that you were, or you can live a long life by my side."

"Shoot me now." Is what I want to say but something in his eyes stops me. He seems… lost. But that must be another trick.

"It's a little bit extreme for this siblings rivalry, don't you think? Especially since Cal couldn't give less of a shit." Surprisingly enough, the words don't hurt. "Does Elara know that you are doing this? Oh! Is she watching?" I look up to the camera and force a huge smile. "Hi there!" I wave my middle finger at it in a courteous move worthy of a high house lady.

"My mother is dead, so I hardly think she can have a say in the matter." He says in a bored voice, waving a hand as if it doesn't mean anything.

Does he really think I am that stupid? Well, I certainly gave him reason to believe so.

"Bullshit." There is no possible way that Elara is dead, there is no way that Maven is asking me to be his Red Queen.

"Don't you think she would be here right now, searching through your brain to find my brother's location?" I can't help it, my eyes go wide with shock before I can control it. Could Cal really be alive, or is Maven just using it to get something out of me?

"Oh yes, he escaped." He answers my unasked question. "You'll find I can be a most loyal and honest husband." He walks closer, his face inches from mine as he studies me but I do not flinch.

"What do you say Mare? Do you live," he traces my lips with his fingers. So warm and soft they used to be now I can feel the blood he has shed covering my mouth, drowning me. "Or you die?"

I have always been a coward; I have run from danger since I can remember. This whole mess started because I was too scared to face my life. But I discover that, as I look into Maven's eyes, it takes a lot of courage to say the stupidity that I do. Because I rather die fighting for a little bit of hope than dying a senseless death.

"I live."