46. Chapter 42
Chapter 42
Train or die. This should be every single magical being’s motto. No matter how much power flows through your veins, without experience, you are nothing but a meal for the hunters. Train or give your power to someone that will. We have a war to win.
~Maeve Arden, The Future of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
Cole is getting Darian from Stormhaven and making sure that Aric’s soldiers are ready for when we need them. I’m enjoying taking a few days to spend time with the people that I’d thought I’d lost, but I know that we’re going to need those soldiers sooner rather than later. Every day that we wait is another day that Gethin has to find the relics he’s missing.
We don’t have a plan in motion yet, though, so today I’m just enjoying the lightness of knowing that my friends and family are really safe. At the same time, it’s hard for me to be so far away from Cole. Ever since I woke, the thought of him being anywhere but at my side is almost painful. So I try to fill my time with anything other than worrying about him.
My mother is standing beside me as we watch Echo in a field. Three adult shadow walkers stand across from her, none of them with blades out. They’re all silently watching each other as if they’re waiting for a sign to move.
A single shadow shifts near Echo’s foot, and suddenly, the world is chaos. Shadows explode around her opponents, coming alive and lashing out at Echo. It looks like I should rush in to save her. She’s a child being attacked by three adults who have probably lived for hundreds of years.
I know that training is painful, though, and for Immortals, that pain starts early. Cole was being beaten by his father at a far younger age than this.
As those tendrils get within a foot of Echo, they suddenly stop. The shadow walkers look frustrated, and I realize what’s happened. Echo has stolen their shadows from them. She turns them on her enemies, and there’s no chance that they’re going to pull them from her.
“Stop,” my mother says, and everyone on the field in front of us does exactly that. “Echo, you know that the point of this is for you to train in fighting and protecting yourself with your powers, not fighting other shadow wielders. This trick works fine for the second, but it doesn’t help you at all if you’re fighting someone from another House.”
Echo sighs and nods. “Yes, Brenna.” She releases the darkness surrounding her, and the shadow walkers seem hesitant to take control of them again.
I whisper to my mother, “Has she trained against anyone other than shadow walkers?”
My mother shakes her head. “There haven’t been any other High Fae in Valinar until you three showed up yesterday.”
Dozens of finger-thin tendrils of black explode from Echo’s feet, racing across the ground toward the three shadow walkers. They move to block her attacks with theirs, using wide bands of darkness to push against the many thin attacks. Where I’d be moving, Echo stands completely still. Her opponents disappear, reappearing elsewhere, and Echo complains, “If I’m supposed to be training against others, then why can they shadow walk?”
“Because you should be fast enough to overwhelm them. Every Great House has ways to escape your attacks, and they can’t use those options, so stop complaining.”
It’s so different from how Cole had taught me. Why isn’t Echo being pushed to move and attack at the same time? Is it really because the shadow walkers here are too slow?
“Would it be a problem for me to spar with her?” I ask.
My mother looks at me, an eyebrow arched. “I trained her myself. She is young, but she’s not weak.” I know she doesn’t question my skill with a blade or magic since I fought against her for three months straight.
I shrug. “I would like to know what she’s capable of, and I have skills she’s never seen before. It would probably be good for both of us. She heals like other High Fae, correct?”
My mother nods and turns back to the field in front of us where Echo’s shadows have wrapped around two of the three shadow walkers, holding them still. The third has escaped again, but he’s not attacking. He’s just evading, and it’s only a matter of time before Echo catches him as well.
She turns to my mother and says, “Done.” A faint smile crosses her lips, but it’s not one of excitement like when I’d won those handful of fights with Cole when I’d first begun training. It’s one built of confidence rather than excitement. She’s done this too many times to count.
“Maeve would like to spar with you,” Mother says before turning to me. “What specifically would you like to train?”
I grin at her. “We’re going to war, and I’d like to know how well Echo does in an actual fight. Valinar has been a place of safety since she was born, and while it appears she’s learned to use shadows well enough, I want to know if she’s capable of fighting someone who knows how to fight back.”
“You’re talking about true sparring, then.” She takes a moment and then nods. “Dulled blades.”
I nod to her and walk across the field to where the shadow walkers are dusting themselves off. They look at me, not sure what to make of me, and I just smile at them. As they walk away, I glance at the little girl across the field. She wields shadows and has been trained by my mother. She’ll steal them if she gets a chance, and the last thing I want is to be overpowered by her when everything I’m wielding is made of shadows. Including my clothes.
Without a second thought, I focus on the ground beneath my feet. It’s not the same as in Nyth, and when I consider having the stone flow up into armor, I dismiss the thought. I don’t know what it’d be like to wear stone from this place.
Instead, I lift my arms and will blue sapphire into being. A thousand tiny crystals explode into the air, each of them shaped into tiny interlocking plates like the armor I’d made of stone previously.
My stone armor hadn’t protected me very well from crossbow bolts in the past. I know that these sapphire plates will shatter, but they won’t let crossbow bolts through.
The shadows surrounding me disappear. I smirk at Echo, whose jaw hangs open as she realizes I won’t be wearing my midnight armor any longer. I hold my hand out, and a matching blue crystal spear appears in my hand.
It’s far more draining than in Nyth, but that’s what training is for. Working. I glance at the tip of the spear and make sure that the long, flattened tip has been blunted sufficiently. “No rules, Echo. Fight as though your life depends on it.”
She nods to me, and I test her strength. A hundred tendrils of shadow explode from my feet just as she’d done previously. They race across the field, and just like her previous sparring session, they stop when they’re only a foot away from her. This is what Cole felt when I wrenched control of his shadows away from him.
That was the purpose of that attack. Learn what she can do. Without a second thought, I run straight at her. My Earth strength gives me speed like she’s probably never seen before. Shadows flow from her body like water, creeping along the ground in thick bands that hide in the grass. They blend in, and the fine movement of the green blades is the only indication of their existence.
When they look to be a few feet away from me, I leap and sail through the air toward her, my feet almost ten feet in the air. Echo’s eyes open wide as she sees me getting past her tendrils, and she raises her hand as she backs up.
Shadows move from her fingertips, racing straight through the air toward me. I raise two hands as I hit the pinnacle of my leap and fall toward her. A sharp, paper-thin disk of blue crystal appears in front of Echo’s face. It falls and slices through the shadows that Echo doesn’t have time to harden. The darkness that had nearly reached me disappears as soon as the connection with her is lost.
At the same time, a crystalline spear grows from the ground behind her, the spear tip just as blunted as the one I carry. It grows into an upside-down “L” with the short leg facing Echo’s back. I hit the ground about twelve feet from Echo. Shadows explode from her feet again. Hundreds of them. There’s no way I can cut them all off, and for a moment, I feel a little bit of fear that the fourteen-year-old might catch me just as she did to the shadow walkers.
Except that I don’t think she has ever faced down someone she can’t simply overpower.
For the first time in my life, I consider how badly I can hurt a fourteen-year-old. How much like Casimir Cyrus am I willing to become? She’s an Immortal, so she’ll heal. The future Queen of Shadows is a child with very little training, and war is about to come to Nyth. She’s not ready if this is her only training.
Pain does wonders for helping someone to realize their inexperience. At least it did for me.
I hurl the crystal spear at Echo with all of my Earth strength. If that spear hit a House of Steel soldier in full armor, even the blunted version would pierce the breastplate.
I fall through the world immediately afterward, only touching the void for the half a moment it takes to find the shadow I’d been staring at when I’d shadow walked.
I appear two feet in front of Echo, my hand outstretched. Echo’s shadows are in front of her, a shield against the oncoming spear, and they block her sight. Everything’s happened too quickly for her to maintain control of the darkness surrounding her.
As easy as catching a grasshopper flying by, I catch the spear I’d thrown before it reaches Echo and leap over her shield to land behind her. She tries to bring more shadow up to stop me again, but she’s too slow, and my spear catches her squarely in the chest, not hard enough to even bruise her.
I stare into those stormy eyes and say, “You need to learn to move. A shadow walker is only safe when they’re moving. Everyone else will out muscle you. Everyone else will punish you for standing still, and your shadows are nothing against steel weapons or anyone with fire.”
I glance at the spear that had grown up only a foot behind her, and her eyes follow mine, finally seeing the hidden danger. “Something I learned from fighting my mother for months is that something is always trying to attack you from behind. It’s so easy, and your only real defenses are awareness and never staying still.”
I step back from Echo, and a shadow whips from my foot to the crystal spear, hardening as it connects with the bend of the L. The Crystal shatters, and the spearhead soars past us, barely an inch from Echo’s chest.
“You’re strong, but strength doesn’t always win. Experience, awareness, and flexibility with your powers win out nearly every time when you’re fighting someone even close to as strong as you.”
Echo frowns, but my mother doesn’t let her say anything as she interrupts. “She’s fourteen. She hasn’t even begun actual battle training. We don’t hurt children here, and no daughter of mine…”
“So you won’t be participating in the war, Echo?” I ask.
Echo’s eyes flash with lightning as she whirls toward my mother. “I am supposed to claim the Throne of Shadows, aren’t I?”
I meet my mother’s gaze, and there’s an edge to it I don’t understand. She’s willing to use everyone, but she won’t let the future Queen of Shadows train? I hadn’t expected that.
“Echo will not be taking part in any battles,” my mother proclaims loudly. “She is too young, and I will not allow it.”
Echo blinks slowly. “You have been my teacher since I was born, Brenna, and I respect you. More than anyone else in the world, you have earned that respect, but the very survival of the world depends on the coming battles. I have to fight, and if you were my age, you would fight too.”
Brenna, the greatest manipulator in the last thousand years, stares down the fourteen-year-old, and I’m sure she feels powerless. Then I understand. She’s raised this girl. She may not be her biological mother, but she raised her as much as Vesta raised me.
“I can’t protect you if you leave Valinar. Maeve is right. You’re not ready for battle. You still barely know how to shadow walk.”
I arch an eyebrow at my mother, but she’s ignoring me. “Then I will train to shadow walk until it is time to fight.” Echo turns to me. “Brenna can’t teach me because she’s bound to Valinar. The other shadow walkers are…”
“…afraid?” I finish for her. I understand that feeling after dealing with Cole acting as the Shade.
She nods and glances at the people watching us. “Do you feel like it’s a weight? Like it’s something to hide from?”
I chuckle. “It’s freedom, Echo. For me, at least. But you still have to be careful because if you give in too much to it, you’ll still be lost. The void doesn’t want anything to leave. Especially you. The first time you go to it with sadness or exhaustion in your heart, it will pull you in, and you’ll never leave.”
She smiles up at me before turning to my mother. “Queen Maeve will teach me to shadow walk as well as she does, and I will be ready for the coming battle.”
Brenna looks at her for a moment, then she turns on her heel and crosses the field to go back to the houses without a word. “Does she always hate it when people disagree with her?” I ask.
Echo shrugs. “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever done it. She’s… she’s Brenna. She’s been my teacher forever.”
I have a hard time believing that she’s never argued with Brenna at all, but thinking back, I don’t know if I ever disagreed with Vesta. Maybe the connection between a teacher and student is different.
If Vesta told me to do something in that stern way she always did, I don’t think I’d even consider arguing with her. She was always right. Why wouldn’t she be now?
I’m sure that my mother always seemed right to Echo as well. “I’ll talk to my mother, but if you’re going to be a part of any kind of battle, you’re going to need to spend a lot more time in the void between now and then. That’s safety. There are no shadow walkers within the House of Steel. No matter what happens, you can stay safe there. You can retreat or come back to Valinar or even attack a different area from the void. It’s the most important thing you can learn.”
She nods to me, and for the first time since I arrived here, she gives me a look that almost seems respectful. “Thank you, Queen Maeve,” she says, her voice softening. “Thank you for showing me my weaknesses. I had assumed that I was ready for what was coming.”
I smile at the girl and want to tell her to stay away from the battle just like my mother said. I remember feeling like I was ready for fights. I’d thought I was powerful and could do anything.
I’d been wrong, and I’d experienced the horror that is losing the people closest to you. I’m not worried about Echo. My mother is right that she’s too young to be fighting, but she can still help. I’m sure of that.
But she’s going to have to watch the people she trained with die. A shiver runs through me, and I wonder who will die this time. I wonder what loss will try to break me while I try to save more people. It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, when the day is done, there won’t be anything but heartbreak waiting.
That’s what war is. The enemies we’re about to face aren’t too prideful to use trickery. They’re willing to do anything it takes to win. It won’t be clean like our battles with Steel soldiers in the field have been. That was simple, and I trusted us to win those fights because they were exactly what you’d expect. Them against us. Blades and magic trying to destroy the other side.
What will Gethin do, though? He didn’t win against the House of Earth with just strength. The longer I’ve been the Queen of Earth, the more I’ve realized that there’s no way that a barricaded Keep full of soldiers would lose a simple battle to the House of Steel. Unlike the House of Shadows, Roderic was ready for the impending battle.
The powers of the House of Steel are evenly matched with the House of Earth. It wouldn’t be like Flames fighting Shadows where the winner was obvious. If anything, Earth should have had an advantage.
So how did they win? Gethin’s trickery is the only plausible answer.
We have to remember that when we plan. We have to remember that our enemy is going to do things we don’t expect, and our plans are not going to work as well as they should.
“It’s normal for someone your age to be unaware of the things she needs to learn. That’s why we have teachers, after all.”
Echo smiles, and she looks past me. “I should go talk to Brenna,” she says softly. “I don’t like that she’s angry.” It feels like she’s wanting to say something else.
“I think she’s probably more frustrated at the situation as a whole rather than at you, in particular. She understands the drive to fight. Gods, she’s probably the one who instilled it in you. She’s just worried about your safety. You’re still very young.”
“Not too young, though.”
I stare into those stormy gray eyes and know that she’s been raised to be a Queen, and a Queen is never really young. “Not too young for some things. Why don’t you go back to what you were doing and let me talk to my mother? Remember that I’m young too.”
She looks up and pauses for a moment, considering. Then she nods. “Thank you again, Queen Maeve. I look forward to your lessons on shadow walking.” She pauses again, just like the day she’d led us through Valinar. Then she hugs me and whispers, “I’ve waited for so long to meet you, and you’re everything that Brenna and Vesta said you’d be.”
She catches me off guard, and before I ask what she means, she’s already running away. The shadow walkers begin training with her again, and she looks absolutely bored out of her mind as she fights three people who can’t hold a candle to her power. But she is running around the field even if she looks like an idiot with no idea why she’s moving. She doesn’t fight when someone more experienced tries to teach her.
I walk in the direction that my mother had gone, and it’s not long before I find her in the trees, her misty hand pressed against one, and her head resting against it. “She isn’t ready yet,” she says before I’ve made a sound.
“I know. Neither was I, though.”
She lifts her head and turns to look at me. “You weren’t, but you were my daughter. I could trust you.”
I huff. “Your daughter? Maybe I have your blood running through my veins, but that girl out there is more your daughter than I am. Look at her, Mother. She’s…”
My mother interrupts me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. You have to understand that leaving you and your father was the hardest thing I ever did.” There’s a sorrow in her voice that I hadn’t expected. “I did it for you and him. I couldn’t have kept us both hidden, and living in hiding isn’t the life I’d ever wished for a little girl. It nearly broke me.”
“How long did you have to run before you created Valinar?” I ask.
She looks into the mist. “Two years. I spent two years running from Gethin’s hunters as I tried to put together a plan to gather the rest of the House of Shadows. Even then, it was a gamble. I didn’t know what Calyr would come up with when I went to him. It could have been so many things, but I was desperate. I had to keep everyone safe until you came of age and until you could claim the Painted Crown.”
Then she smiles. “There were so many ways this could all fall apart. The Prince could have failed. You could have figured everything out and walked away. Calyr could have turned me down. Gethin could have found you and killed you before you had the strength to fight back. There were a thousand ways everything could have crumbled, but they didn’t. That, more than anything else, shows that you’re my daughter. I’m known to have pulled victories out of impossible odds on more than one occasion, and you seem to be following that path.”
“We’re going to need to beat terrible odds to win this war, Mother. You know that, don’t you?” This is the first time I’ve talked to her about what’s happening outside of Valinar, and she looks more than a little dismayed.
Her hands press against the bark of the tree she was leaning against, and misty fingers drum a slow rhythm as she stares past me. “I know the unlikeliness of our success. You haven’t exactly brought an army with you.”
“I brought Cole Cyrus, Casimir Cyrus, and myself, and we just got done decimating an army.”
My mother’s lip curls up. “I know. I watched, remember.”
“How did you imagine this all going, Mother? Did you think that we’d rally the House of Flame against Gethin? The Lesser Fae? You’d already found the remnants of the House of Shadows, so what other army was there?”
She shakes her head. “I had hoped that the Prince could manipulate the citizens of Draenyth more as the Shade. There wasn’t very much hope to begin with, and that’s part of why I went to Calyr. It’s why I sacrificed any chance of seeing you for twenty years. I had to do what I could.” Her smile fades, and she turns away from me to look out at the mist-covered trees. “Even if the odds are against us, I couldn’t give up, Maeve. I couldn’t let Gethin win.”
I hear the anger in her voice, and I put my hand on her arm reassuringly. “I know and understand.”
She gave me up to save the world. More than that, she gave up Da. She couldn’t see him for all these years, and he has so few years left. She may be Immortal, but he isn’t, and every year he has is a gift that must be so precious to her.
“Why didn’t you come straight to Blackgrove when you became Valinar? When I was a baby, no one would have been able to run from you.”
She shakes her head. “Because you couldn’t have become strong enough to wear the Painted Crown if you’d lived here with me. You couldn’t have…” She sighs. “It’s why Vesta stayed with you. She taught you to be strong, to be a human that could stand up against Immortals. I couldn’t have done that. I loved you too much.”
She finally turns to look at me. “Before I met your Da, I could have trained you to be a warrior and a Queen just like Casimir trained the Prince. I could have cut you and torn you apart and forced you to face your fears every day so that you could be the Queen the House of Earth needs, but now… I can’t. Watching you fight with Echo terrified me. I thought you were going to kill her, and I nearly stopped you both. I’m not the Queen of Shadows anymore, Maeve. I’m…”
I pull her in for a hug. “It’s okay. It all worked out the way it was supposed to, and I think we have a lot more hope for us winning than you think.”
Her lips tighten into a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes as she continues to stare into the forest. “It has to be enough. There’s nothing left to do now. He’s gone in search of the remaining relics, hasn’t he?”
I nod to her and she says, “We have to stop him. Soon. Every moment he has to train with the other House’s powers makes him infinitely more powerful. Every House has weaknesses that can be manipulated. Shadows beats Steel every time, but if he has the Brand or the Choker, his weaknesses will be negated. If he were to capture both, there would be almost nothing we could do to win against him. Even you wearing the Painted Crown wouldn’t be able to hurt him. He’s not some untrained child. He knows what each House is capable of, and he has the power of the Conduit flowing through him. We cannot allow him to train any longer.”
“There goes the idea of rest and relaxation,” I mutter. “We can’t go to war yet. Our human forces still need time to train and equip themselves. On that note, I have need of some of your shadow walkers.”
She finally turns to me, her eyebrow raised in question. “Human forces?” I give her a smile and begin to tell her what we’ve done.