4. Chapter 4
Chapter 4
The soul is more fragile than the body, capable of being wounded and scarred from a handful of words or injuries to another person. There is a difference between a soul wound and mere sadness. The first can be so disastrous that it can lead to death, while the second will be healed in time.
~Calyr the Gold, A History of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
This has been a week of nothing but existing. In the morning and evening, I would leave my tent to find food for us, a purely utilitarian experience. The animals are all too slow, and now that I’ve realized the extent of my Earth powers, tracking them isn’t even enjoyable.
It feels like I should enjoy the process more. As I run through the forest, I expect to touch a tree and feel something. As I scent my prey, my body tenses as if there was going to be an emotion. Each time, I’m surprised and let down by the lack of it.
There aren’t feelings anymore. At least not like there once were.
I’ve begun to explore my Earth powers more and more, but unlike shadows, I don’t need to practice. They make sense to me, almost like I’ve been doing most of them my entire life.
The only problem is that we’re supposed to go to Stormhaven, and when I look down at my hands, I realize I can’t bring us there. No shadows rise from my fingertips, even when I want them to. I try to imagine the drumming of my heartbeat. I picture the nights with Cole. I even think about the night before everything changed.
Nothing works, though. I can’t feel the desire that I once had. There have been problems with desire since that day, but now, Revulsion shadows are just as lost to me. The darkness seems to have fled me entirely. Those emotions aren’t there any longer.
“I need you to wear the Shadowed Cloak,” I say to Cole as I step into the meeting tent. “I am Queen of the House of Earth, and it seems I am no longer capable of shadow walking.”
Cole looks different from a week ago. The days and nights of rest have helped him to recover. His gambeson is clean and very striking on him. His silky black hair is just as sleek as the day I met him. Bloodshot eyes have been replaced by ice-blue eyes that are filled with thoughts unsaid.
He nods to me. “As you command, my Queen.” He says it with complete submission. Not an ounce of hesitation or argument in him any longer. That’s the way it’s been since that dreadful day. Before then, he made every decision. If I questioned him or disagreed, he was as stubborn as a mule. It was always his way, whether someone thought differently or not.
Now he doesn’t even offer his thoughts unless they’re asked for. He told me he’d be a tool, but this lack of thought or will surprises me.
“You have enough power to take us to Stormhaven?” I ask.
He nods. “Yes. I feel nearly as strong as I was before we went to war with the Nothing. Stormhaven is only a two days’ flight from here.”
I take one more look around our little camp and say, “Then get your things together and we’ll go. We’ll be back, but only after we get what we need out of your father.”
He turns and goes to his tent to gather his few belongings. I look down at the armor that I created from stone a week ago. It fits me perfectly, and yet, it feels wrong. Where are my shadows? Where are my traveling clothes? Where is the soft linen that I spent months in?
The stone feels natural, but it doesn’t feel like me. Nothing does anymore.
It doesn’t matter. Peace flows through me like water, filling me and pushing away any doubts. The Queen of Earth wouldn’t wear linen, and she certainly wouldn’t wear shadows. This is right. The questions fade away just as easily as desire did.
I close my eyes, and just like when I was young, I let myself get lost in my mind. That calm rhythm that I’d felt when I’d climbed the trees. My steady heartbeat. The peace I’d found where no other human could have found me. High in the air, hidden from the world. The place I’d gone after I’d used revulsion shadows on my own father.
I don’t need to be in a tree to feel like that anymore. To feel peace flow through me, I only need to close my eyes and separate myself from the world.
It’s just like stepping into the void when I’d shadow walked.
I can feel every ridge of every surface now. It’s the strangest change since becoming full-blooded High Fae. The wooden cup in my fingers has two small notches which would have been imperceptible to a Wyrdling along the bottom rim. My fingernails slide over them, the unnatural sharp spots irritating me as I absentmindedly grind down the wood with a soft scraping sound.
Stormhaven is our first stop, but then we’re going to Draenyth. I should be nervous about going there. I should be terrified since the most powerful beings in that city want to kill me.
I’m not. I’ve been fighting something no one believes is defeatable for months, and we’ve shown that eventually we could beat it. The Immortals that had terrified me for my entire life are nothing compared to that.
My thoughts overwhelm me until I smell Cole walk into the tent. Except it’s not just Cole’s spiced amber scent. No, overshadowing it is the unmistakable scent of salt and cedar. The memories that I associate with that scent are some of the strongest memories I have. When I turn to him, a shock runs through me. It’s not Cole. It’s the Shade. The same worn black linen cloak, his hood down, with shadows covering his face. A constant swirling darkness around his feet makes him look like he blends in with the ground, never completely in this world or the next.
When he speaks, it’s the soft growl of water over river rocks. The first sound that plagued my dreams… my fantasies.
I swallow hard. I fell in love with Cole, but I fell in lust with the Shade first. “My Queen,” he says deferentially.
I can’t respond. I can’t do or say anything as a memory replays in my mind.
His nails run over my neck, my vision covered in shadows, and his shadows press between my legs. I’m desperate for him. “See the effigy move,” he whispers in my ear, and the shadows between my legs become more solid, more insistent.
My body throbs in response, the drumbeat in my core beating so loudly that I wonder if anything in the clearing isn’t covered in shadows. “Make it move, or I’ll stop.” His nails trace my bare skin as more shadows run over my body, teasing my breasts and making me wish I could live in his touch. My mind can’t seem to focus on anything except that touch.
Then the pressure between my legs fades slightly. “No! Please don’t stop!” I visualize the effigy and feel it moving. I feel it as if it’s a part of me instead of just an image in my mind.
“That’s it,” he whispers in my ear, and the shadows become almost solid…
I shake my head, doing my best to come back to the present. That memory felt so real, and when I look at the shadows that cover the Shade’s face, I shiver. For the first time in a week, I feel the flicker of a drumbeat beginning in my core. It’s a dark and heady sensation that wakes up parts of me I hadn’t believed could come alive again. I’d asked for this. I’d commanded him to put on the cloak again.
I hadn’t expected my body to react this way.
The barest trickle of darkness pools on the table. Desire. I haven’t felt genuine desire in so long. I’ve been able to manufacture it, but this time it’s natural. Just seeing the cloaked figure, my body knows what should happen now. He should be stripping me bare and controlling my actions, pushing me and my need for him.
That was what every experience with the Shade was before I’d learned who wore the cloak. Now, even though I know his identity, it’s hard for me to think of them as the same person. The way the Shade had acted was always so different from Cole. The Shade… he wanted me to be free. Cole wanted me to train and be serious. The Shade was temptation personified from the beginning.
I turn my hand over and glance down at the smoky mark that still moves on my wrist. The little tally mark is the last debt I owe him. I’d expected Cole to come back wearing the cloak, and then he’d shadow walk us to Stormhaven. Now, I’m in no hurry. I feel… different, and I want to follow this feeling. I like it.
“Sit down,” I say. A command, not a request. Saying nothing, the Shade sits down at the table across from me. I stare into the shadows under his hood, and my Earth powers begin to piece together his face, more difficult than normal because the shadows protect him.
I stop myself. I don’t want to know what his smile or frown looks like. “Don’t take off your hood in front of me,” I say. “I…” I don’t finish that thought. I don’t need to. The command alone will be enough to make sure he doesn’t ruin the feelings that course their way through me.
“When we get to Stormhaven, I want you to continue to wear the cloak.” I rush to come up with a plausible excuse for the command. I don’t know why I feel the need to explain myself, but when I stare into those shadows, I feel smaller. Vulnerability overtakes me. “I may wear the Painted Crown, but humans don’t understand what that means. They can’t feel our powers, and they have no comprehension of the difference between the two of us and Darian and Lee. To them, we’re all just Fae. But they know the Shade. That cloak is going to terrify them more than anyone else.”
The Shade nods to me, not speaking. For several moments, I just stare at him, and he doesn’t flinch. I stand up, the Shade’s unwavering calmness getting to me. I can’t help but feel unnerved, just like when the power imbalance was reversed. Dealing with the Shade always makes me less confident, and that hasn’t changed since I received the Painted Crown.
He makes me feel like a stupid Wyrdling all over again. Even though I know it’s Cole under the hood, I can’t keep from feeling nervous.
“Then let’s go. No need to put it off any longer. I’m sure that Lee and Darian are tired of waiting for us.”
“As you command,” he says, and a shiver runs up my spine. That voice that haunted my dreams for so long affects me in ways that I never imagined. He stands up and glides toward me. Every move is as smooth as a boat on a waveless lake.
Then he takes my hand in his. Shadows wrap around his skin and create a barrier between us, just as they always did before. There’s no hiding the darkness that trails from my fingertips now. I look into the blackness under his hood, and he stares back at me. Then I nod to him, and we’re falling through the world.