All Chapters of APOCALYPSE QUEEN: LEVEL UP OR DIE: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

The chalkboard was gone from the armory. Someone, probably Dutch, had taken it down. Tristan was still there, leaning against the workbench with a mug of coffee and that same unreadable half-smile he wore when he knew he’d crossed a line and was waiting to see what I’d do about it.I shut the door harder than necessary.“You put odds on me.”He set the mug down. “I did.”“You turned my bed into a public game.”“I turned the idle gossip into something with rules.” His voice stayed mild. “They were going to talk anyway. At least this way the numbers were honest.”“Honest.” I stepped closer. The anger sat hot and sharp under my ribs. “You made a betting pool on who I fuck next. You wrote it on a board and let half the keep put rations on it.”“And you walked into the laundry yard and told Mrs. Delaney you’d chosen four times.” His dark eyes glittered. “You’re not as angry about the bet as you are about the fact that they all know. That it’s not a secret anymore. That the Sovereign’s priv

I'd promised the ten dead that I'd learn their names by the end of the day, and I hadn't.It had been a week and a half. I'd been busy. There had been a vote, a drive, a quarantine, a harvest. I'd told myself the names could wait, that they'd keep, that the dead were patient. And I'd lain awake the night after the potato dinner, listening to Ronan's breathing, and realized with a slow, cold clarity that I'd lied.So I got up before dawn, took a lantern, and walked out through the north gate alone.The graves lay a hundred yards beyond the wall, in a shallow fold of the hill where Dutch had found the soil soft. Ten low mounds in two rows. Each one had a wooden stake at its head, driven in crooked, with nothing written on it. The frost had come in the night. It lay on the mounds like a thin white blanket, and my breath smoked in the lantern light.I wasn't the first one there.A woman knelt at the end of the second row with a bucket beside her and a rag in her hand, scrubbing at somethi

Hollis didn't come that night, or the next, and by the third day I understood that this was the weapon.Nothing happened. That was what made it unbearable. The sentries stood their rotations in the snow-dusted dark, double the usual number, and nothing came out of the trees. The blind spot on the north slope had two people lying in it every night, wrapped in white blankets, breathing into their sleeves, and they saw nothing but stars. Ronan walked the perimeter twice a shift. Terra and Tim split the ridge. Tristan, who had never in his life been patient, paced the armory like a caged animal, and on the second night, I found him cleaning a rifle that was already clean for the third time.By the fourth morning, the small things began.A snare line on the east trail, cut clean and curled on a stump. A single boot print behind the supply shed, with no trail leading to or from it. A tin cup upturned on the north rampart, set neatly on the stone like a place at a table."It's him," Mara sai

Tristan built the trap with water.He'd explained it at dawn, bouncing on his heels in the war room with chalk on his hands, and the rest of us had listened with the wary patience of people who'd learned to let him finish. The north drive ran downhill for a hundred yards to the gate, packed gravel, banked with snow on either side. Apex's water tower stood at the top of the rise. All it needed was a hose, a valve, and a very cold night."I flood the drive at dusk," he said. "Not deep. An inch. Two. It's thirty degrees now and falling. By midnight it's a sheet of black ice from the bend to the gate, and every man who walks onto it learns something new about his feet.""And the charges?" said Ronan."Under the ice. Buried in the gravel, wired to a single line." He grinned. "Anybody who comes down that road can't run, can't turn, can't dive for cover. They can only fall.""It's cruel," said Justin, mildly."It's physics.""It's both," I said. "Do it."He worked all day. I watched from the

He stood in the firelight like a man who owned it.The torch in his hand burned steady and orange. Behind him, the toolshed was a roaring column of flame, and the heat rolled across the snow in waves, bending the air around his shoulders. The bucket line had stopped. Forty people stood frozen in the yard, pails dangling, and I could feel every one of them looking at the gray-bearded man at the edge of the light.[HOSTILE: ONE. ARMED: TORCH. ADDITIONAL SIGNATURES WITHIN 0.5 MILES: NONE.]Alone. He'd walked through a battle to stand by my pantry with a torch."Hollis," I said."Sovereign." He inclined his head, courteous. "Forgive me for the hour."Dutch had come up beside me, rifle level, one boot planted on the back of the second sleeper. He didn't speak."Put it down," I said."I could." He considered the torch. "But then you'd have no reason to listen.""I'm listening.""No, you're aiming. There's a difference." He smiled, a little sadly. "I'm an old man, Sovereign. I have nothing l