Page 66 of The Monster You Made
Chapter 32 - Vera
The valley’s smoke trails us like a curse, clinging to hair, clothes, and lungs. Even after the hills flatten and the air grows sharp with winter, I can taste ash on my tongue. The rebels around me call it the smell of victory, but it is nothing of the sort. It is the stench of half-won battles, of chains rattling in the distance, of Declan’s laughter rising louder than any cheer.
He bled again. They saw it, and their belief clings to that wound more fiercely than any truth of his strength. But I hear his laugh still. I see the light in his eyes as he vanished back into the smoke. That was no retreat. That was a promise.
***
Back at the military compound, life surges with a fever I cannot share. Songs ring out across the courtyards, voices hoarse but fierce. Villagers bring grain, livestock, even their children to fight beneath our banners. The air smells of sweat, steel, and a hunger so desperate it almost frightens me. They think themselves part of history already. They think the Crown falters. They do not know what I know—that Declan does not falter; he coils.
Elira thrives in this fever. She drills the young with an energy that defies her scars, her jaw set in grim pride as she bellows commands. “Again! Strike as though his chains are on your throat!” Her breaching axe crashes against the practice posts until splinters fly. Sweat runs down faces too young to have seen true battle. They mimic her, hungry, determined, already chanting her name, already chanting Lucian’s louder: The Wolf. The Breaker of Chains.
Lucian doesn’t answer those chants. He walks the walls at dusk and dawn, silent, his shoulders wrapped in shadow heavier than any armor. The crowd sees a leader; I see a man breaking under the weight of their belief.
***
Rumors come faster than supplies. Scouts stumble into the military compound with tales of villages burned, wells poisoned, banners torn down overnight. Those who swore to us vanish in the dark, their names swallowed by silence. Meanwhile, in the towns we cannot reach, the Crown spreads its poison: Lucian the savage, Vera the liar, Marta the traitor. Truth turned to venom on the tongues of soldiers paid to whisper. I clutch Marta’s satchel tight, but its weight feels thinner every time I read her words. Each time I stand in a square and shout her truths, I am drowned by murmurs carrying his lies.
One evening, the council gathers. The hall reeks of smoke, sweat, and damp leather. Maps sprawl across the table, their edges curled from constant handling. Elira slams her fist onto the wood, rattling mugs and ink pots. “The Crown gathers in the south,” she says. “They move slow, but they come in numbers. We must strike first.”
Rourke leans back, flask in hand, laughter bitter and sharp. “March into their teeth and you’ll choke. That’s what they want, us spread wide, ripe for the picking.”
Lucian studies the maps, saying nothing. His silence draws the room tighter than a noose. I watch his face, shadow carving hollows beneath his eyes. At last, he speaks. “We strike, not their ranks. Their chains.”
The words ripple like fire through kindling. I lean forward, clutching the satchel. “Yes. Marta wrote of the camps, of prisons swelling with those who spoke truth. Free them, and we show the world what he hides.”
Elira bares her teeth in a grin. “Then we march at dawn.”
***
The march chills to the bone and marrow. Frost crunches under boots, and breath fogs the air. No one sings. Instead, they mutter names—fathers, mothers, sisters—dragged into silence. Abigail rides in one of the supply trucks, her doll strapped across her back like a soldier’s pack. She waves when she catches me watching. I wave back, though my chest knots with fear. She believes in us more fiercely than any of them, and that belief feels heavier than chains.
By dusk, we see it: a sprawl of fences across the hills, crowned with barbed wire and watched from towers bristling with rifles. Shadows cluster behind the fences, gaunt faces pressed to steel. My stomach turns to ice. This is what Declan builds with silence: cages.
Elira’s jaw clenches. “We break it tonight.”
Lucian’s voice is iron. “Fast, before they sound the horn.”
***
Night descends, black and thick. The signal comes with Lucian’s raised hand. We surge from the tree line, storm into firelight. Arrows slice the dark. Rifles thunder. Elira cleaves a tower into splinters, its guards tumbling. Rourke fires until smoke blinds him, then curses and swings his rifle like a club.I hurl myself at chains, hatchet biting rust and iron until locks snap. Hands reach for me, clawing, trembling. I grip them, drag them through the gap. Some weep. Some flee. Some fall to their knees whispering prayers too old for me to know.
Lucian roars, his sword a storm. He cuts a path so wide it looks like vengeance more than freedom.
The night stretches endlessly. Screams mingle with gunfire, with the crash of timber, with the thunder of boots. And still his laughter follows me, slithering between sounds of victory and loss.
***
Dawn crawls over the prison with a light more red than gold. Smoke coils from collapsed towers, drifting low over the hills. The fences gape where iron once snarled, locks lie shattered in heaps, and bodies litter the ground, some ours, some theirs. The rebels stagger through the ruins, their voices raw from cheering, their eyes lit with a fire that borders on frenzy.
Elira stands tall in the yard, her breaching axe planted in the earth. Blood streaks her arms, but her scars gleam like victory itself. “The Crown’s prisons fall!” she bellows. “Their chains break before us!”
The crowd answers with a roar that shakes the dawn. Captives, gaunt and trembling, add their voices. For a heartbeat, belief surges louder than grief, and I almost feel its heat in my bones. Almost.
But then my gaze finds Abigail. She sits by a broken fence, clutching her doll, eyes wide at the ruin. She is silent, notcheering. Her innocence feels heavier than the satchel of Marta’s words pressed against my ribs. I kneel beside her, brushing soot from her hair. She leans into me without a word. That silence says more than shouts ever could.
***
By midday, the freed captives are gathered in the courtyard. Some cannot stand, their limbs thin as reeds. Others still carry welts from whips, chains biting red into their wrists. They look at us with awe and terror both, as though we are saviors and monsters at once.
