13. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
A History of Magic and Dragons didn’t prepare us for the future. It didn’t teach us everything we needed to know. It was exactly what it claimed to be. A history. Not a primer. Thus, it is necessary for a more useful book for future generations. The dangers to Nyth will not end with me, and my knowledge of the world must be shared.
~Maeve Arden, A Future of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
I step out of the shadow and realize that I’m completely naked. In a heartbeat, I recreate the midnight dress I’d worn for so long before the Shade or my Da realizes.
My father slowly stands up from the fetal position I’d found him in. Still wearing the simple farmer’s outfit he’d worn so long ago, he doesn’t look like he’s aged a day. After fifteen years, his thinning brown hair should have thinned more. There should be wrinkles on his forehead and along his lips. But there aren’t any.
There, in the afternoon light streaming from the cottage window, I stare at the man that I’d believed was dead. Even Vesta had been sure of it. He’s not, though, and part of me feels more whole. I’d gone into the void feeling like the Queen of Earth.
The woman that stepped out of the shadows can’t be that, though. The Queen of Earth is calm, and tears stream from my eyes.
“You sound like Maeve, but you can’t be her. She’s eight,” he says. “Yet, you sound so much like her…” He runs his hand over my face and shakes his head. “You can’t be her. You can’t be. My Little Star is only eight, and you’re a young woman. But your voice… Your eyes… Maeve?”
I try to blink the tears away, but it’s futile. They refuse to stop running down my cheeks. “Da, it’s me. I’m so sorry.” The apology gushes out of me without thinking. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so young and…”
He frowns again, his confusion coloring his movements. “Sorry for what? For growing up?” A sharpness crosses his face, and he looks at the Shade—no, at Cole dressed in the Shadowed Cloak. “Your mother never told me about a magic that could make someone age like this.”
Even with how surprised and worried he seems, he lets out a deep yawn, like he’s just waking up from a long nap. “Please, Little Star, tell me what’s going on? Did your mother come back?”
I close my eyes and let the memory that Vesta had hidden from me as an eight-year-old girl play through my mind. “I tried to hurt you, father,” I whisper. “A long time ago, I got angry and I did a terrible thing.” My eyes snap open, and I see him taking me in, not as a little girl all grown up, but a High Fae with shadows rolling from my fingertips. “I’m like Mother, and when you told me that Mother was Fae, I thought you were lying, and I tried to hurt you.”
Da’s frown deepens. “Why would I lie? I love your mother more than anyone other than you.”
Little motes of dust float through the air behind him, sparkling between Da and the window. The little room that we’re in is so similar to the cottage I’d grown up in, and yet it’s nothing like it. It’s the same size. It’s built similarly.
Yet, it bears none of the love that built our family. It is not a home. It’s simply a place to sleep. My mother didn’t instill our home with love, but stories of her did. I knew of the woman my father loved as well as I knew how to hunt rabbits. Her existence in those stories had been a part of what had built our home.
I know exactly how much he loves my mother. He always has. “I… I was eight. I hated being called a Wyrdling.”
He looks at me, a clarity in his eyes that I don’t remember. “What happened, exactly, Little Star?”
“You’ve been in the void for fifteen years,” I whisper, worrying that he’ll hate me for what I did. “I used revulsion shadows to send you there when I was eight, and Vesta thought you were dead. There was nothing she could do.”
He’s silent, but I don’t see anger in his eyes. I shuffle my feet nervously and try to breathe normally, but I can’t. What if he hates me for what I did?
He shakes his head slowly. “Was it really all a dream? Brenna came home, and we raised you together. It felt so real, but it was all just a fantasy? Or was she really there in the dark place?”
He’s not mad at me. Gods, he’s not mad at all. “It was a dream, Da. She wasn’t there, or I’d have found her.”
Da stares at me for a few moments, and I see the tears welling up in his eyes. “Fifteen years? I’ve missed fifteen years of your life?”
The questions die in the silence, and I just hug him. What do you say to that? It only makes me feel so much worse. I’m the reason he missed those fifteen years. He doesn’t push, though, and he hugs me back. He pulls back and looks at me, a single tear having made a trail down his cheek. “Well, you’ve grown into a beautiful young woman.”
I smile at him, not sure how to respond to that after the past months. Instead, I ignore it. “How did you survive?” I ask him. “You should have died.”
My father is a handsome man. He always was, and it’s not the dark brown hair that falls nearly to his shoulders or the soft smile he wears. It’s his eyes. They’re so kind and caring, and yet for all that kindness, he’s always had a kind of kenning to him. It’s an innate understanding of the world and the people in it. He’s always just… understood things. He is not a genius, and he is not a powerful High Fae, but he understands things that should be beyond him.
“I called for your mother,” he says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I followed the thread to her like she taught me before she left.” He frowns for a moment. “Did you really send me to the dark place?”
I nod. “I did. I’m so sorry.” He followed the thread? “Wait. Did you… did you and mother get married like Trevor and Prudence did? Or did you do something different? Something from her people?”
He smiles at me, those soft brown eyes laughing rather than crying like I am. “What we did was something out of a storybook, Little Star. We didn’t see a priest. Brenna—your mother—said we didn’t need one, and that all we needed was a night when the moon hung low. We held hands…”
“…and kissed. And magic happened,” I finish. He nods. “Your souls were bound. She… she could protect you from wherever she is.”
My father just shrugs. “I don’t know. I dreamed of her, of a life with her and you, and then you woke me up. Has it really been fifteen years?”
I nod to him again. “Fifteen years.” The words come out harder than they should. More serious. What’s happened to me in the past three months? This is my Da, not a military commander. “I’ve missed you so much,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment as he looks around the cottage. “I’m sure it must have been hard being alone. Vesta took care of you?” His eyes take in everything, one piece at a time. The simple oak beds and dressers. The handwoven brown and green rugs that the villagers of Aerwyn made since the last time I was here.
All of it is not home, and he knows it.
“Vesta convinced Uncle Trevor and Aunt Prudence to take care of me, and she continued to be my tutor.” He nods, his mind elsewhere.
Finally, he stops and takes my hands. He feels so warm. It’s been so long since someone touched me without a real purpose. “Little Star, where are we? I know it’s been a long time, but this doesn’t seem like home.”
“Somewhere safe.” I grit my teeth. “Blackgrove is gone, Father.”
The words drag him from his thoughts, and shock floods his face. “Everyone?” The word comes out as a whisper. “What happened?”
“The Nothing. A…” How do you explain it? “A mist that consumes everything. It swept through Blackgrove and killed everyone except me, Prudence, and Trevor.”
He frowns. “Hazel?”
I nod, and he pulls me in for a hug. Tight and warm and full of human emotion without a bit of power behind it. It’s just sadness, overwhelming and honest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers to me, his hands gripping tight against my midnight dress that’s become solid enough for him to hold. “She was a sweet girl.”
“The sweetest,” I agree. And, for the first time, I feel the ice around my heart cracking. The hardness I’ve built up around myself loosens. “I…”
The words won't come, but he doesn't let go. He holds me, steady and unshaken, just like I remember, and the tears break free from the icy dam I've created. For the first time, they fall unchecked, streaming down my face and soaking his shoulder. “There, there,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here for you.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry. You did nothing wrong. It was me. It’s all my fault you were gone. It’s my fault that Hazel’s gone, too.”
Father runs his hand through my thick brown hair. “I don’t believe that for a second,” he whispers. “You’re just as sweet as Hazel. Maybe more so. You have your mother’s kindness in you, and there is no one kinder.”
I blink and pull away from my father. “My mother is not kind. She… She manipulated everything, Father. Everything she ever did was a lie. I grew up not knowing that she was Fae. I didn’t know I had any powers.”
He grins at me. “Was it such a terrible thing? Was it even a lie, or was it necessary for your safety? You just told me you tried to kill me when I told you the truth. Maybe you weren’t old enough for the truth?”
I pause. “But she hid the fact that I had magic.”
Da looks me square in the eye, and I can’t help but compare him to Vesta. Vesta’s word was law—unyielding and absolute. But Da’s? Da’s word was love. If it had been Vesta saying this, she would’ve called me insolent, scolded me for not controlling myself. And I would’ve been angry, defensive, and frustrated. But Da’s words? They make me feel like I’ve done something unforgivable, like I’m cruel for even thinking it. Da’s criticism doesn’t strike at my pride; it cuts straight to my heart. No matter how much I want to argue, I never can.
He wipes the tears from my cheek, his voice soft but steady. “Vesta and I couldn’t protect you if you used magic. No five-year-old listens to their parents, Maeve, so the best thing we could do was hide your powers from you. It’s been years for you—but not for me. I remember you being eight just yesterday. I remember you coming to me, heartbroken, just three days ago when those children in town called you Wyrdling. Maeve, we did what we had to do to keep you safe.”
He frowns, his expression darkening as realization takes hold. “But if you’re an adult, and you know about your powers…” His gaze shifts—not to my eyes, but to my forehead, where the golden-brown glow of the Painted Crown shimmers across my brow. His voice falters, edged with something between awe and unease. “You’ve claimed the Painted Crown.” He pauses, his words slow and deliberate. “Then where is your mother? She should be here. She should be teaching you… guiding you.”
I shake my head, struggling to absorb his words. I’ve been so angry at my mother—at Brenna, the Queen of Shadows—that I never stopped to think there might be more to her choices. She might have more reasons for the lies. I wasn’t supposed to send my father to the void, and I wasn’t supposed to grow up in the care of Trevor and Prudence. My Da was supposed to be the one to tell me everything when the time was right.
“You knew everything?” I ask, my voice trembling.
He nods, his gaze steady. “Brenna never lied to me. I’ve always known—about the bloodline that runs through our veins, the Painted Crown, and the Shattering. Whatever you think you know about your mother, Maeve, it’s only a fraction of the truth. She was someone else before she met me. A Queen. A warrior. A High Fae. All of that was her past.”
He smiles softly, the kind of smile that eases the weight in your chest. “You are your mother’s daughter, Maeve. Hard and furious and clever when you need to be. But you’re kind, too, in a world that doesn’t deserve it.”
Kind. The word feels foreign, like it belongs to someone I used to be. I shake my head, the cracks in me widening. “That… that was the old Maeve,” I whisper, my voice breaking under the weight of the truth. I’ve held myself together with nothing but force of will for so long, and now it’s all unraveling. I’m falling apart.
He takes my hands in his, his grip firm but warm. “Little Star,” he says gently, “you don’t have to act like that with me. Maybe you’ve had to harden your heart against the world, but that doesn’t make you cruel. That just helped you survive. Deep down, you’re still the girl I raised. You’re still your mother’s daughter.”
His words, the warmth in his hands, and the quiet certainty in his voice—they pull at me. It’s so similar to when I was a child. Back then, I didn’t run to him for protection. That was Vesta’s role. No, I went to my father when my heart hurt. I went to him when I needed to be reminded that there was still love in the world.
Somehow, he’s doing the same now. His voice, his touch, and the look in his eyes melt the ice I’ve packed into the cracks of my broken heart. Sandor Arden has done, with a single conversation, what I couldn’t manage in fifteen years.
“I love you, Maeve,” he says, his voice steady and unshaken. “Everything’s going to be okay. Things are hard, but they’re going to get better.”
Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. My father has never had the power to change the future, but right now, maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe, deep down, I already know I’m strong enough to protect myself. What I can’t do is heal the wounds in my heart.
But my father might be able to help. When he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close, I don’t resist. I’ve needed him for so long. Fifteen years of longing, and now he’s here.
And I’ve never doubted his love.