60. Chapter 55
Chapter 55
I spent thirty years as a heartless Immortal with a single purpose. I did terribly cruel things to hundreds of people. Their lives were disposable, and still, their deaths were so much less cruel than what I did to Maeve. My darling Maeve…
~Cole Cyrus, A History of Flames
Cole
It feels like it’s been a lifetime since I clung to the shadows like this. The Cloak hides my face even though I’m sure the identity of the Shade has been whispered about among the people who still owe me debts. It doesn’t matter, though.
The debt is there whether they know who I am or not. The debt remains until I call it in. They can hate me. They can curse my name or even try to kill me, but they won’t get out of paying for the favor I gave them.
I step from the shadows into the marketplace. A weapon dealer in the Hammer District right outside the Keep of Steel stands beside his wares. The market is less busy than normal, and I can’t help but believe it has something to do with the tension in the air everywhere.
When an ending approaches, everyone feels it. The close of an era. The fall of kings and princes. The unraveling of life as they know it. Farmers, cooks, blacksmiths, and their families won’t recognize the reason behind the shift in their hearts. They won’t question why they linger at the dinner table a little longer, why their wandering hands seek warmth in the dark before dawn. But it’s the ending—the one coming in just days—that draws them closer.
I have spent a thousand years watching the world, mostly alone, and I have come to conclusions the few priests would share. The most important is this: no one exists in isolation. Mortal or Immortal, all are bound in a web unseen. The farmer depends on the blacksmith who shoes his mule. The blacksmith needs the baker who kneads his bread. The baker survives on the grain the farmer sows. And all of them are tied to the guard they pass in the market each week.
These bonds are more than duty or habit. They are threads of soul and spirit, pulsing with shared moods, unspoken fears, and unacknowledged desires. People covet what their neighbor has not out of greed alone, but because their fates—whether they know it or not—are intertwined.
And the looming shadow of an ending is felt by them all.
Shadows wrap around the weapon dealer’s hand and tighten. He’s an ironwight. Pale skin and paler eyes, he skirts between the physical world and the spiritual world, never completely solid unless he’s been touching metal. The steel he works is his anchor to the world, and without it, he’d be lost in the ether, barely more than a spirit.
On his pale wrist lies a single black tally mark, a debt for the time that he had lost his place at the market. Without customers to buy his work, he couldn’t afford to have more steel to work, and his anchor to this world would slowly fade.
I made sure he wasn’t pushed out of the normally bustling market of the Hammer District purely because of his race. A small bit of intimidation changed an administrator’s opinion of who could and couldn’t pay for a license to sell their wares. It saved Ferrin’s sanity.
That was seventeen years ago. “Good morning, Ferrin,” I say as he glances down at the shadows around his wrist.
His eyes go wide as he sees me. “It’s time to pay your debt.”
The black mark tingles on his wrist as the magic activates. “What do you need?” His voice is a soft baritone, not gruff like you’d expect from someone who spends most of their days around a forge. Then again, like so many others, when someone was born to do the thing they spend their days doing, it rarely affects them the same way it does others.
“I need you to open the gates to the city for me when the time comes.” My words travel only to Ferrin as I use one of the many tools I gathered when I was playing the role of the Shade: a Siren’s song. I grip the shell as I speak only to him. “I need you to do it silently and without letting anyone know what you are doing.”
He stares at me wordlessly for several long moments. “You are attacking the city,” he says.
“Something like that.” The mark on Ferrin’s wrist burns brightly, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered by the pain. Then again, what steelworker is bothered by a bit of a burn?
“You want me to allow you to come into the city and destroy it.” He looks around the market that, while not exactly bustling, is still full of people. “I can’t do that. I will burn out before I help you destroy this place.”
I glance down at the mark that is glowing bright red and beginning to spread up his forearm. I shake my head. “No, I don’t want to destroy Draenyth. I want to save it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” I look into Ferrin’s eyes, and I pull the cloak hood off.
“Prince Cole,” he says softly. “I’d heard whispers, but I hadn’t believed them…”
“I want to give the people the lives they deserve. Not the one that is being forced on them. It’s time to return to the old ways. No more slaves. No more being punished for who or what you are. It’s time that the world stopped being the High Fae’s playground and the rest of the world’s cage.”
Ferrin nods to me. The glowing mark on his wrist disappears almost instantly. “I will do as you say. I will open the gates.”
I nod to him and pull my hood back up, covering my face in shadows once again. Ferrin stops me, his hand going to my arm, and I can feel the strength in him. “Don’t destroy this place. Things need to change, but this city…”
“The city and its people will be as protected as I can keep them. I only need to kill one Immortal, but there will be others that die. That is what happens during… endings .”
Ferrin nods to me and releases my arm. “I will do what you ask.”
I say nothing else as I fall through the world into the void. There are so many debts to call in, and if each is going to take this long, I don’t have nearly enough time.
And it’s time that someone very special gets released from her prison.