58. Chapter 53
Chapter 53
I wish I could have raised them both. Seeing them together, two wonderful Queens who are so young, I wish I could have taught them both, could have shown them both love, and could have seen the light in their eyes as they competed.
They are both my daughters, but one lacked my blood and the other lacked my love. I could not have helped either, but I regret both.
~Brenna Morvyn, personal journals
Maeve
Echo is solemn as I take her hand. This is important, and now we both know that there is more danger to us than we ever expected. The Darkness could be waiting for us in the void. “I’ve never been to the Keep of Shadows, so I’ll have to find it. It will take time.”
“We will stay near the shadows then,” she says. It’s not a question.
“We will stay near the shadows,” I repeat, agreeing completely with her.
She nods and takes a deep breath. I notice my mother watching us from her house. Her eyes aren’t on me, though. They’re focused on the little girl who has far too much weight being put on her shoulders. A little girl who’s never felt the world without that weight.
I focus on the shadows at our feet and think of Gethin, turning them into revulsion shadows, sending us falling through the world into the void. Nothingness fills our vision, a darkness that is so impenetrable that even my Earth senses struggle to see through it. I ignore it, my mind focusing on the shadows around Draenyth.
I have connections to some of them. Cole’s old bedroom. Cole’s secret room. The rooftop of the Keep of Flames. The Firelight Café where I laughed and drank coffee with my friends and then fought off harpies.
I don’t have connections to the Keep of Shadows. I’ve never been there. I’ve never even seen it. I know where it should be as the Keeps are arranged the same as the cycle of control of the Painted Crown. Flames, Earth, Shadows, and Steel. The Keep of Shadows should be on the opposite side of Skycrest from the Keep of Flames.
Echo doesn’t say anything from beside me, but I can feel her shadows testing the void behind us, constantly on the watch for The Darkness. There are no shimmers of power or movements. It’s just as quiet here as every other time. My shadows touch a spot of darkness in Draenyth, and an image of smoky quartz walls appears in my mind.
That has to be it. “Found it,” I say, and I feel Echo turn toward me just as I pull us through the shadow into Nyth.
And into the most terrible place I’ve ever seen. It’s obviously the Keep of Shadows. The smoky quartz walls are the first tell, but the corpses that are strewn across the floors are even more obvious. Charred bodies that are little more than shaped ash lay everywhere.
“This is the Shattering?” Echo whispers in horror.
I don’t know how to answer. I wasn’t there. I didn’t witness it. “This is what happens when the High Fae go to war,” a voice I don’t know says from right in front of us.
A figure appears from the air, and I know instantly what it is. A sylph. Like Vesta. “I am Caelia, the current Watcher of the Keep. You… are Brenna’s daughter,” she says, looking at me. Then she turns to Echo and says, “You are here to claim the Throne?”
Echo nods to her. “Then follow me,” she says as she solidifies even more. Unlike Vesta, she’s not wearing clothes. She doesn’t even look human shaped. Instead, she’s more of a silhouette of a human. She has long, ethereal hair that seems to hint at being a lighter color. Her body has more curves than Vesta’s, and her face is obviously rounder. At the same time, her body is barely more than a strange refraction of the light, as if she were made of perfectly clear glass.
Her eyes are different. They hold a darkness that glows. Blacker than the shadows that hide in the corners, it draws my attention. She turns away from us and floats down a hallway. Her movements don’t disturb even a single mote of dust while every step we make sends up little whirlwinds of ash.
Watching Caelia, I’m awestruck at how well Vesta blended in with humans. Everyone knew Vesta was odd, but they’d never say that she was like Caelia. The words she uses are so similar, though. Her movements remind me of Vesta when she wasn’t paying attention. When I asked her something complicated, she would seem to glide rather than walk.
Echo’s attention is focused on Caelia as well, but I don’t think she’s thinking about Vesta. Instead, she’s trying not to look at the corpses that are everywhere. “It has been many years since a High Fae walked these halls. It is not the place of the sylphs to deal with the aftermath of the Shattering, so we have left our former friends.”
She pauses for a moment, her gaze drifting to a body whose black gambeson wasn’t completely burned. Then she turns, following a hallway, and Echo and I struggle to keep up. “Will you be staying here?” Caelia asks.
“Not right now,” Echo says, doing her best to maintain strength in her voice. I’m sure that it’s difficult for her to be thrust into a situation like this. She’s lived in peace her entire life, and now she’s about to go to war. The aftermath of the last war is spread out in front of her like a glimpse into our future.
Except that this time, Flames and Shadows are allied.
“Do you know Vesta?” Echo asks. “She’s the only sylph I’ve ever met.”
Caelia turns to her without slowing her pace. “Vesta was Mistress Brenna’s handmaiden. She was… a friend. She hasn’t lived here since Mistress Brenna’s rule. Where is Mistress Brenna? I can smell her on you both, but she is no longer the Queen. There is no longer a Conduit. Has she returned to the void?”
Echo is about to respond when I interrupt. “We don’t know what happened to her. I was under the assumption that only death would sever the connection between a Queen and the Throne. Is that incorrect?”
Without hesitation, Caelia says, “There are other ways, though all of them seem unusual. If the Conduit goes to the void for too long, it could sever the connection. If she had been drained of all of her power.” She hums to herself for a moment before saying, “There may be other ways, but I do not know them. Vesta would know, but I was never the scholar that she is. I prefer the logistics of running the Keep rather than seeking knowledge myself. Not every sylph can wander the world hunting for relics of the past.”
Something bothers me about Caelia. Maybe it’s that she is asking very probing questions about my mother. Maybe it’s that all sylphs are unusual, and I’m just not used to Caelia’s strangeness. Either way, my instincts tell me to keep her from finding out any truths, and I trust my instincts more than I trust an Immortal I don’t know.
The Keep of Shadows is strange compared to the Keep of Flames. It’s so dark. I wonder if it’s because no one has lived there for all these years or if that darkness has always been a part of this place.
Part of the darkness, I’m sure, is because so much has been destroyed. I see the remnants of what look to be brass candelabras laying melted and twisted on the floor rather than hanging from the ceiling. Bits of chain cling to the walls, but whatever they were connected to are gone. There’s no ornamentation. No rugs or paintings. Just smoky quartz and ash-covered corpses.
Until we enter the Throne Room. That’s when I realize that the Keep of Shadows isn’t made of smoky quartz. That smoky look is soot from the flames. In this one room, there were no fires. In this single room in a Keep that could hold thousands, everything is as it should be.
A beautiful candelabra hangs from the ceiling, still burning with fresh candles. The stone that makes up the floors, walls, and ceiling is a swirling snow-white that makes the stone opaque. Tapestries cover the walls, depicting all the dragons. Against the back wall, a Throne made of midnight black stone whose darkness is only rivaled by the void rests against the wall. Its simplicity is exactly what I’d expect from my mother’s House.
But there is nothing dark about this place. It’s a place of beauty and light.
“So there’s another one of you,” a voice I know far too well says from a shadow. I turn around and see Gethin, his body slowly lightening as he steps out of the corner he was lurking in. His sharp face and hawk-nose stare down at us in a smirk. “Two children playing in the world of gods.”
Just like when I saw him at the Midsummer ball, he’s wearing a silver military jacket with gleaming buttons. It hangs on him like he was born for it, and as he walks, his movements are slow and sure-footed. If men were to embody a single aspect, Gethin would be the example of confidence.
Every muscle in my body is tensed as I stand in front of the person who is responsible for so many tragedies. The bodies that fill the halls here. The cracks in Cole’s mental landscape from what he was forced to do. The fear that fills the city of Draenyth. Even his son’s sorrow can be attributed to him.
He’s not wearing armor.
Flames are weak to Steel, but Shadows aren’t. Shadows win against Steel every time, according to Cole. I’ve been planning to go to war just to kill him. Now I’m standing in front of him, and there’s nothing stopping me from finishing this right now.
Shadows explode around me, all of them moving in different directions to surround him. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even draw his sword. Instead, when the shadows grip him, that piece of his body disappears and reappears as he steps toward me. His body reforms as soon as anything touches him, as though he were made of clay rather than flesh. I force the quartz under our feet to rise and flow over him, but he simply leaves his feet behind to grow new ones mid-step. All the while, he doesn’t stop smiling.
“Little Queen, you are so young. So very young.” His words show no fear that he’s fighting for his life against the one who wears the Painted Crown and should be the strongest person in Nyth. “You’ve only begun to learn to use your powers. How could you ever expect to win a fight with me? I have lived longer than anyone else in this world, and you think you could kill me?”
Echo’s shadows move even more quickly from behind me, and where they grip him, they expand, trying to flow over his body. One wraps around his throat, and all but the thinnest bit of flesh disappears as he steps through the tendril of darkness. His head looks like it should fall off his body as it’s no longer supported by his spine, but then it all reforms, the flesh and muscles and bones re-knitting in an instant.
A crystal spear appears in my hands, and I rush toward Gethin, my Earth strength pushing my body to move faster than even Steel warriors can. The razor-sharp sapphire tip slams into Gethin’s stomach, and I feel it slide through his spine—a momentary resistance before the crystal cuts through. It’s so similar to what I’d done to Rhion to end the two confrontations with him, but Gethin doesn’t collapse. He just walks forward, his body seeming to consume the spear.
I try to wrench it free like I’d do when I’d stabbed a boar, but it’s stuck. His body has formed something to hold on to it, and no matter how hard I pull, it won’t come out. Gethin reaches out, his hand moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Even faster than Cole. His fingers wrap around my throat, and he says, “Little Queen, you are a sorry excuse for a replacement for Roderic. He would have known how to defeat me. He would have more than a year of experience wielding those powers. To think of what you could have become with both shadows and earth…”
It takes every ounce of Earth strength to keep his fingers from crushing my throat. Then Echo’s shadows come down on his arm. Just as he’d done so many times already, his arm disappears as the shadows touch him, and in that instant, I can pull away. I shove the spear that’s nearly a part of him and I leap backward at the same time.
The corner of his lip curls up in a cruel smile, and I glance at Echo. Fear fills her eyes, but she’s not running even though she could. “Clever girl,” Gethin says to her. “But we can’t have that.”
He reaches into his chest and pulls out a burning stick. Holding it in his right hand, a fire explodes toward the two of us. A crystal disk appears in front of us, stopping the wave of fire just long enough for me to speak to Echo.
“Claim the Throne. Now .”
She nods and runs to the chair made of midnight black stone. I turn to Gethin, who’s still smiling. “Why wouldn’t you want us to claim the Thrones, Gethin?” I say, drawing his attention away from Echo. “Is it just that you want all the power for yourself?”
He focuses on me, and more flames pour from the Burning Brand. I block the flames with another crystal disk. “I am the only one who can make sure that the Thrones don’t fail,” he says over the sound of roaring fire that flares around the edges of the disk. I can’t see him, but I know where he is from the sound of his voice. “Roderic was going mad, and the powers of his House were failing. Now you’d have me believe that a Wyrdling who can barely wield her powers is supposed to be the Conduit for the House of Earth? The magic of the creatures will fail with a disgrace like you sitting on it. And that one…” He says it, and I know Echo is in danger. Without waiting for an attack, I draw quartz from the floor up around her in a full circle. “That one isn’t even High Fae. You can smell that she’s wrong. Brenna’s mistaken if she thinks that child will be the one to replace her. Do you hear me, girl? I will find you, and I will kill you.”
The flames that he’d been pouring from the Brand toward me change and focus on the wall that I’ve built around Echo. I notice them beginning to crumble under the onslaught. Stone daggers appear in my hands, and I do something that’s probably stupid.
The shadows from the crystal disk floating in front of me becoming my revulsion shadows, and I fall through the world. I appear behind Gethin, and in a single movement, I slam the daggers into his skull. They pierce his brain, and the tips come out under his chin.
Still, he doesn’t slump to the ground. He whirls around, and again, his fingers wrap around my neck. His eyes have become deep crimson as they fill with blood, and while there’s madness in them, there’s just as much intelligence. My attack did nothing except open myself to him.
My hands go to the one around my neck, trying to pry it loose as he slowly squeezes, cutting off the oxygen to my brain. Seconds pass, and he doesn’t say a word. My world becomes darker, even with the burning brand only a few feet away from me. Colors fade into a world of gray as I struggle.
He lifts my body into the air, his fingers crushing my windpipe, until he’s staring at me eye to eye. My spear still extends from his stomach, and my daggers poke out from his chin, their hilts sticking from the top of his head. Revulsion shadows attempt to cut him to pieces. Nothing matters. His body simply disappears and reappears when the magical weapons are removed.
All I can do is stare at the man with twin daggers piercing his head. He should be dead. A hundred cuts and stabs should have killed him many times over, but he just keeps smiling as he looks at me through blood-filled eyes.
One of my shadows rips through his wrist, but he’s quick to swap hands. The Burning Brand falls against him as he does so, leaning against his side. “You’ve thought you played the part of the predator for a long time, little Queen. You murdered my soldiers with impunity. You stole my Crown and have done everything you could to keep me from my goals. You’ve never been the predator, though. You’ve been the vermin, and I’ve enjoyed playing our game, but it’s time to be done with it.”
The hand that he’d been holding me with before becomes a stone spear tip. Nothing Gethin’s done has been done with any speed, and this is no different. He could have stabbed me in the face, but instead, he inches that razor sharp tip toward my eye with agonizing slowness.
“No,” the word comes from behind him. Echo. It has to be her. I want to tell her to run, to shadow walk away from here, but I can’t. I can’t breathe, much less talk.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” he says. “As soon as I’m done with this one, I’ll send you to the void as well.”
“No,” she says again, and a sound I’ve never heard before screeches through the room. For the first time since we came into the Throne Room, Gethin moves quickly. A tidal wave of shadows sweeps across the room, and I hear the sound of the void in it. An emptiness that even the Nothing can’t achieve. It’s so silent that it screams at you. I’ve been there hundreds of times now, and still it sends shivers down my spine.
Gethin drops me and raises the Burning Brand against the shadows. Light explodes from it so brightly that I have to shade my eyes as I gasp for air. Before I take even a single breath, the shadows beneath me become revulsion shadows, and I fall into the void.