19. Chapter 18
Chapter 18
I sought the Book and the Cloak. I crossed the Unending Sea. I met The Darkness. Years passed before I saw the light again, and yet, they were right there. To think I’d believed they would be in Kaelith’s Realm. To think I’d believed I could find his world. I was a fool.
~Brenna Morvyn, A Future of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
There was no magical weapon forged by a dragon waiting in that tiny temple dedicated to Veris, god of good luck. All we found were piles of coins and some very startled priests. They kept insisting it was lucky we’d shown up, practically falling over themselves with gratitude. I can’t help but wonder—do they say that every time something good happens? Do the priests of Veris always credit him for every fortunate event and curse his twin, Taldor, the god of bad luck, when misfortune strikes?
What a miserable way to live. You’d never be responsible for your own choices—every victory and every failure would be because of divine interference. Then again, judging by the sheer amount of wealth tucked away in that temple, Veris seems to have been exceptionally kind to his followers.
Now it’s time to go. I glance at Cole and see him smiling and staring around himself at the village that’s still standing. “This was good,” he says.
It’s true. What a simple idea after months of complicated decisions and plans? Today, we stopped soldiers from coming in and murdering an entire village.
When we talked to the priests, they opened their doors and said that we were welcome to search the entire temple. I used my House of Earth powers to search for any hidden places, and there weren’t any. No, we didn’t find the relic, but we saved this village. A hundred people will have a tomorrow because of what we did today.
It feels good even though we’re nowhere nearer to stopping Gethin. “It is,” I agree. “Are you ready to go back to Stormhaven? Or are we going back to Aerwyn?”
“I don’t see why we’d go back to Stormhaven. Darian is busy with my father, and Lee is already on the hunt for Vesta. I would prefer to stay far away from Darian and my father.”
I nod to him. “To Aerwyn it is, then. I’ll enjoy spending some more time with my Da. I feel like I need it.”
Cole smirks a little. “I already told you that you need it. You may feel better today, but you’re not healed, Maeve.”
He’s right. When he takes my hand, his warmth reminds me of just how broken I still am. Physical touch is still strange. It makes me shiver a little. I take a deep breath as I wrap my fingers around his hand. “Ready?”
“I’m always ready for you, Maeve,” he whispers, and the shiver that rolls through me is hard to ignore. Flirting. More things that still make me nervous.
And yet, I can’t help but remember those times when flirting had been as easy as breathing. Those days in Draenyth when I smiled so sincerely, when I’d woken up to him shirtless beside me, his hands on my body. The idea of such an intimate touch makes me want to retreat from him, to hide behind the stony mask of the Queen of Earth. I don’t let myself go there, though.
Instead of responding, I step through the world, pulling Cole behind me into the void. I breathe in the darkness that surrounds us and let it fill me up. That darkness and my Da are the reasons I’m not cold like that. They’re why I can smile.
I don’t know what would have happened if Cole hadn’t brought me to the void that day to let me taste the darkness.
The moment is over too soon, as I feel Cole tensing. He’ll never be like me here. He’ll never find solace hidden in the oceans of emptiness. The darkness will always be a pressure on him rather than freedom. Instead of forcing him to feel it for longer than he wants, I reach out to the shadow under my bed in Aerwyn and pull us into the physical world again.
We travel hundreds of miles in a moment, and this time, I feel a little bit of the exhaustion that I know other shadow walkers feel every time they travel long distances. We’ve been shadow walking more than normal, and it’s taking a little bit of a toll on me.
I step forward, my boots tapping a soft rhythm on the white oak floor covered in dust. “Da, we’re home,” I say, announcing our presence in case he’s in another room. There’s no need to scare him.
He doesn’t respond. I shrug and look at Cole, who’s just shaking off the effects of the void. I pause then. Something’s different. Something’s wrong .
It’s quiet. No, not quiet. It’s silent .
Even to my High Fae ears, it’s silent. No birds. No crickets or rabbits moving in the grass outside the cottage. No wind. No branches rustling against the walls of the cottage.
True silence and an overwhelming stench of salt and citrus.
My eyes open wide as Cole notices it, too. In a flash, we’re running out the door. The hinges break behind me as I slam it open. It’s been more than a week since we paid any attention to the Nothing. That’s plenty of time for it to move across Nyth.
“Gods damn you,” I whisper as I see the white mist surrounding everything. Aerwyn is covered in it. Bog. Rivertail. Lirael. Duncan. Everyone.
My heart sinks. Everyone that I know. Everyone that I’ve grown to love. Every person I’ve cared about, other than Cole, Darian, Lee… and my father .
“He’s there,” Cole whispers from behind me, as though he’s reading my mind. There, across the clearing, Da stands with his back toward us, a foot away from the white mist. Everywhere else, the white tendrils and walls of mist writhe and move, shifting and devouring the clearing.
Where he is, though, nothing moves. He stands as if mesmerized by whatever he’s seeing through that mist, and the Nothing seems just as mesmerized by him as it doesn’t swallow him up. It’s perfectly still, like the surface of a lake at dawn. Like clouds turned into glass.
I stare at him for a half second, but then I’m moving. “Wait!” Cole shouts, but it doesn’t matter. We both know this is a trap for us. We fought it, and we were winning, so now it’s come back to get its revenge. It’s trying to catch us by using my Da as bait just like it used that little boy the first time I saw it.
Except I’m not that stupid Wyrdling anymore. I’ve fought the Nothing, and there’s no way it’s going to catch my Da. The darkness under my feet turns into revulsion shadows, and as soon as I touch the void, I’m reaching out for one near him.
But when I reach for them, they refuse to become mine. It’s like someone else already controls them. When I’d stolen the Shade’s shadows, it had felt like this, but no one should be able to keep them from me. I wear the Painted Crown. Each time I try to control shadows, they resist. Every single one near my Da is uncontrollable.
I don’t have time for this, so I retreat to where I fell into the void, and as soon as I hit the physical world, I’m running.
Cole is already in the air, riding on black raven wings. Shorter than the enormous eagle wings that he usually uses, these are meant for aerial acrobatics rather than long distance flying. I’m running, and he can’t keep up with the power of Earth propelling me forward in long strides, my legs a blur of movement below me.
“Da!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “Da! Come to me!”
It’s as though he can’t hear me. A smile crosses his face, the same smile he gave me when he was telling the story the other night. It’s one of pure happiness.
Then he walks into the mist.
“NO!” I scream, and I try to lash out. I am not the Wyrdling that couldn’t protect that little boy. I am the Queen of Nyth. I am the most powerful person in the world, and I will not let my Da die.
Shadows explode from me, but as soon as they get close to the Nothing, they evaporate, almost as if Cole was using fire against them.
As if on cue, he lands beside me, and we run to the spot that my Da walked into the Nothing. His flames explode against the mist, opening pockets of it up while his sword cuts into it, carving small sections out.
My shadows refuse to work, and I’m left feeling completely useless.
No matter how quickly Cole pushes, I know he won’t be fast enough. Unlike when the Nothing had caught Hazel, I can’t sense Da. He’s not dead. There’s no corpse to sense. He’s just… gone.
Da is gone. Aerwyn is gone. Bog and Rivertail and Duncan and Lirael are all gone.
For the first time since that day in the Keep of Flames, when I received the Painted Crown, I let the anger truly overtake me. I give into that deadly emotion that I can’t control. It’s the bottled lightning that I’ve refused.
I have nothing left to lose now, and I stop resisting. My midnight armor disappears, but every step I take has stone climbing my legs, liquid and just as fluid as shadows. I slam my hand against the ground, and the dirt in front of me explodes upward, columns of stone climbing into the sky, ten feet taller than the highest point of the Nothing.
Another column appears next to it, and another. One by one, they climb into the sky. Ten feet separate them, a simple command. Then I’m running. A single leap takes me to the top of the first pillar, an impossible jump for a human or even an Immortal, but not impossible for the Queen of Earth. I look out with my Earth senses, scouring the Nothing around the pillar with each leap.
There’s no one. Each leap, and each pillar that I land on is ten feet further into the mist, and there’s no sign of anyone. Minutes pass as I continue to move deeper, the rage still boiling inside me as I hunt for anyone. A villager or my Da. I cannot let them all be dead.
Each leap leaves me with more and more doubt that anyone is here. I see the trees that I’m passing. The houses that I know so well. This is the village where I learned to accept myself as more than human. These were the first Immortals that I really got to know.
This may not have been my home, but it was close. It was the first step to becoming more than a Wyrdling.
I can’t find anyone . Revulsion shadows lash out, but they disappear before ever touching the mist.
I scream in frustration, and stone materializes over the mist and falls to the ground. It creates a tiny hole in the mist. A shriek explodes from the Nothing, something I’ve never heard even in all those months of fighting.
Agony courses through my body, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, and everything goes black.