22. Chapter 20
Chapter 20
A steel crossbow bolt is your best friend. It may not kill a Fae, but it will damn sure slow it down. Shoot first, and then ask what the bastard is doing.
~Sir Alistair Hawking, Magical Combat for Humans
Cole
She’s still sleeping. It’s been six hours, and she’s still unresponsive. Flames flicker along my fingers, and their burn against my skin grounds me as I stare at my betrothed, my Queen, and more than anything, the woman I love.
This is not a good sign. When I’d brought her to this clearing, I’d done it to keep her from breaking. I didn’t want her to see anyone or anything that would give her memories of Aerwyn or her father. I needed to keep her safe from every possible new pain. Seeing Darian or Lee would remind her of Aerwyn, since that’s where she met them. Seeing Stormhaven would make her blame herself for leaving her father after he’d been out of the void for less than a week.
I wanted to keep her soul from breaking, but the more I sit and stare at her, the more I question whether she’s already shattered.
The flames climb my arm, singeing the skin and bringing blisters to the surface. Pain keeps me aware of everything. It keeps me from letting myself fall into the hole of doubt. Destiny would not play this terrible trick on us. There has to be a way out of it. I have to fix the broken pieces of the woman I love.
But when I reach out for her through our bond, it’s confusing. The world that I’d looked in at—that dark forest filled with shadows—isn’t the same. I can’t feel Maeve’s presence anymore. Everything’s different , and it’s utterly terrifying.
Mental landscapes don’t change suddenly like this. They evolve as a person grows, but they don’t just change.
It only drives home the probability that the woman I love is gone, and I just can’t accept that.
I let the flames on my arm expire, and I take a deep breath. There’s no more time to postpone. I cannot allow Maeve to be lost to her own shattered mind and soul. Giving it time won’t help her come back from this.
I focus on the bond between us, following it to her, and I close my eyes. I feel myself in darkness, and I recognize it for what it is. The void. It’s the only place that she’s felt comfortable in. The only difference is that this isn’t the real void. This is just Maeve’s mind recreating it. She’s never experienced that overwhelming pressure that threatens to swallow you whole, and so I don’t either. For Maeve, it’s always been a temptation rather than a fear.
And it calls to me now, just like it calls to her. It whispers of letting go forever, of drifting in the silence forever.
There’s more to this place than the void. Maeve is here too—somewhere. The void fractures her, scattering pieces of her soul across this shadowy sea. I swim toward one of them, drawn like a moth to a distant flame. It’s invisible in the darkness, but when my hand brushes against it, it feels solid. Real.
Sand grits against my fingers. Using it as an anchor, I haul myself out of the void and onto a small island within Maeve’s mind. Black sand stretches out beneath me like any other island’s beach, just as dark that it’s indistinguishable from the void at first glance. Jagged rocks rise from the shore, their surfaces just as dark, but their cores twist and shimmer like crystallized shadows. They remind me of the obsidian tower in my own mental landscape.
The island is dark, but it’s not like the void. It feels like twilight. The moon hangs low in a purple sky, and the sun is gone. “Maeve?” I call out.
A low whisper reverberates through the air. “Cole?” The voice is Maeve’s, but it’s… off. Lost. Confused. It’s as though she isn’t sure it’s really me.
“Maeve!” I shout, my voice cracking. “Talk to me. Please don’t hide like this.”
There’s a pause before a hiss cuts through the stillness. “Hiding? Why would I hide, Prince Cole?” The words are sharp and brittle, nothing like Maeve. “I’m not afraid for myself. No, I always survive. It’s everyone else—everyone I care about—that suffers. You told me once that Darian and Lee were your weaknesses. You said that seeing them hurt would break you. You would have let yourself die before letting them be harmed. I know what that’s like now. They’re gone. I couldn’t protect my weaknesses, and now they’re gone. All of them—except you, Darian, and Lee. And I refuse to let you die just because you’re connected to me.”
Shadows slither across the beach, misty tendrils spilling like smoke. They twist and writhe, coalescing into images. At first, it’s a wall of impenetrable darkness, so like the Nothing, until a boy appears, chasing a ball that rolls ahead of him.
A scream tears through the stillness as the darkness surges forward, swallowing the boy. This time, unlike in reality, I see it all. The shadows part, revealing the boy as his screams are cut short. His skin peels away in ribbons, his body flayed until there’s nothing left but silence and stillness.
Then it’s gone, vanishing in an instant—but only for a moment.
The shadows shift again, forming the figure of a woman I recognize immediately. Hazel. I only saw her for a few moments, but her face is unforgettable. Even now, made of swirling shadows, the effigy smiles, her eyes alight with happiness. This is how Maeve remembers her cousin.
The Nothing looms behind her. There’s no hesitation. It sweeps over her, consuming her in brutal, agonizing detail. It’s slow and deliberate. Hazel’s form crumbles, ripped apart piece by piece. My stomach twists, and I finally understand why Maeve nearly broke. She had to go cold to survive this. Not only losing Hazel to the Nothing, but that she’d been tortured to death.
The only bodies that are left behind by the Nothing are ripped and shredded, but we never found Hazel’s body. We looked for it.
There were enough bodies left behind at Blackgrove, though. Nothing had changed. Several of the older farmers who Maeve knew were left as little more than piles of gore. The only thing she could recognize them by was their hats and clothes.
I grit my teeth as the feelings that have been with Maeve since that day wash over me. The pain. The longing for her cousin. The sense of failure for not protecting her. And the anger… More than anything, that anger pulses like a metronome, constantly behind everything that happens.
“I am not hiding, Cole Cyrus,” the voice echoes. “Everyone dies. I tried to fight the Nothing. I tried to defend my weaknesses from it. In the end, everyone died except you, Darian, and Lee, but it’s only a matter of time before all of you die as well.”
Then I see, all at once, the entire village of Aerwyn—all the people that I saved from eternal torment and slavery—being ripped apart by the Nothing. Her father is standing just outside it, and… then it ends. Maeve’s broken soul can’t imagine what happened to her father. It’s too much for her to accept.
“That is the past, Maeve,” I say softly. “Darian, Lee, and I won’t die to the Nothing. We’ve fought it alongside you.”
“Maybe,” the voice whispers. “Maybe you’ll survive the Nothing, but you won’t survive Gethin. You won’t survive Rhion. I watched you. If I hadn’t been there, you’d have died. If Lee or Darian had been there instead, they’d have died. I will not have any more of my weaknesses die, Cole Cyrus. You’re all I have left.”
The voice is so brittle. She’s lost so many people, and she’s not wrong. I have no idea what will happen if I face Gethin right now. No one’s seen him fight. No one knows what he’s capable of.
“Then stand with us and fight, Maeve. You can’t hide here. That won’t save anyone.”
The wind whispers across the sand, and I can’t help but hear the melancholy in its barely audible movement. “You’ll always be here with me. Even if something happens out there, I can always see you here.”
From the black sand, a figure appears. Somehow made of the black sand on the beach rather than shadows. She’s a beautiful image of Maeve, every inch of her body the same as in the physical world. Except that she’s not wearing a crown.
Her bare body moves toward the open ocean of the void behind me, and from the void, an image appears. Shadows appear in my shape, but slowly, that darkness becomes more refined. Instead of a shadow effigy, it becomes… me. Shadows made flesh. Softly tanned skin. The striated scars that cross my back on full display as I watch Maeve run her finger made of sand across his cheek.
She’s recreating memories of me. “You’ll always be safe here,” she whispers to the flesh and blood effigy in front of me. “You’ll never have to fight here. You can finally feel the peace of the darkness here, Cole. You can be free like I am.”
Free? No, this is a cage. “This isn’t real, Maeve. This is in your mind.”
She shakes her head. “Who’s to say this is any less real than that other world we lived in? You healed because I did something in your landscape. Why can’t I stay here forever?”
“Your body will die.”
She turns away from the flesh and blood effigy, a serious look on her face. “What does that matter? The void will take me then? Or will I stay here? I think either are preferable to being forced to watch you and Darian and Lee die in front of me like everyone else has.”
I close my eyes, and a tear rolls down my cheek. I failed her.
“Everything’s fine, Cole,” she says, the finger made of black sand running over my cheek and wiping my tear away. “Nothing can hurt us here. Nothing can hurt our weaknesses here. We’re safe. Forever. Stop trying to let that weight on your shoulders force you to do something that only causes more pain.”
Her finger is like silk brushing my skin, and I realize the only chance I have. It’s the same possibility that helped her before. I can die. She’s accepted this, but the last time she started to crack, she showed me how to help her.
Cole Cyrus is a man that can die, but the Shade is a legend, and legends never die.