66. Chapter 60
Chapter 60
The void is so much more dangerous than anywhere on Nyth, and yet all of us shadow walked, thinking we were safe. What fools we were. Thank the gods that the Five hid us from everyone, not just the hunters. Otherwise, the House of Shadows would be nothing but food for the creatures that lurk in the darkness.
~Echo Vael, The Future of Magic and Dragons
Maeve
Echo gives me a nervous smile and falls through her revulsion shadows. I take Cole and Casimir’s hands before following her into the void. As soon as we’re in the darkness, I pull us out in the Throne room of the House of Steel, hopeful that Gethin is here. He’s not.
The Throne sits against the wall, carved from a single slab of gray stone—not Steel as I’d expected. At first glance, it looks like the others, yet every other Throne gleams as though it was forged yesterday, their polished surfaces catching the light in soft, perfect reflections. But the Steel Throne is different. It’s worn. Tiny, nearly imperceptible piles of gray dust gather at the base, settling beneath the armrests like silent remnants of time itself. The stone is marred. The armrests are carved with shallow grooves—scratches where Gethin’s nails have worn away the surface over thousands of years.
The rest of the room is a clash of grandeur and ruin, opulence curdling into madness. Rich rugs and elaborate tapestries, the kind that would seem gaudy even in Stormhaven, have been shoved aside, heaped into careless piles in the corners. Silver tables stand overturned, golden goblets lie discarded, their spilled contents pooling in dark, viscous puddles across the floor. Wine or blood—it’s impossible to tell.
Beyond the doors, the Keep is alive with chaos. Shouts rise and fall as soldiers bark frantic orders, their words lost beneath the steady clamor of steel against stone. Boots hammer against the floors as an army mobilizes, and the city braces for war.
“Gethin’s quarters?” I ask.
Casimir nods.
We slip into the void. I already know most of the Keep’s layout, so it takes only a moment to find a shadow and pull us through. The room we step into is unmistakably a king’s. A massive four-poster bed looms against the wall, carved entirely from stone. Dragons coil along its frame, their heads rearing, claws frozen mid-snarl, and tiny embedded crystals catch the morning light, refracting it in fractured beams across the chamber.
But the bed is untouched. It might as well be ornamental. The heart of the room is the enormous desk, drowning in books, maps, and scattered parchment. A map of Nyth, nearly as large as the bed itself, dominates the wall, scrawled over in a mess of inked annotations. Books lie abandoned across the floor, torn from shelves in restless, sleepless fits. Every surface reflects the man who rules from this place—relentless, brilliant, unraveling.
Gethin has held the Steel Throne too long. His mind is breaking beneath its weight. I’ve known this, but standing here, surrounded by the proof of it, makes the truth undeniable.
Cole glances around the room and shakes his head. “Not here either. Where is he? Where would he be if he knew we were attacking?” Cole asks, his question pointed at his father.
Casimir shakes his head slowly. “He could be anywhere.” He looks around the room, his eyes stopping on the map and the chaos of the desk. “He’s never been like this. At least not while we were younger. Back then, he’d have been at the gates, commanding every movement, but I’m sure he’s not there now. He’s too paranoid that we’re coming for him. If he were on the ramparts, we could shadow walk directly to him, and no number of troops could keep us from him.”
He swears softly under his breath. “And even if he is confident that he can win a fight with us, he won’t do it in the open where people can watch. He has weaknesses. We all do. If he fought in the open like that, people could analyze the way he moved and acted to find those weaknesses. Even if they follow his orders, not everyone in his House has an unending loyalty to someone who’s obviously losing his mind.”
“So you think he’ll hide?” I ask. The frustration wells up in me unchecked. “The King of Steel is going to hide in the middle of an assault on Draenyth?”
Casimir shrugs. “He’s smart. Even if he’s insane, he’s still smarter than most. He knows you don’t want to assault the capitol or destroy the House of Steel. Based on how many times Rhion has walked away from fights with Cole, I’m sure he assumes you don’t even want to kill his heir. He’s probably recognized that he’s the only one in any genuine danger. He needs to keep the army at bay so that they don’t go through the entire Keep of Steel looking for him, but otherwise… Yes, he’s probably hiding.”
A snarl leaves my lips, but then I smile. “Well, lucky for us, I happen to be extremely good at finding hidden things.”
I close my eyes and let my Earth senses flow through the gray stone we stand on. I could find the Emerald Choker in the Keep of Earth; I’m sure I can find the King of Steel. Except… I can’t picture the Keep of Steel outside of this room. My mind keeps stopping at each of the corners of the room. It’s like something’s preventing my powers from expanding outward, as they normally do.
I open my eyes and walk to the corner of the room at one of the places my mind keeps getting stopped. As soon as I look at the wall, the reason is obvious. A hole has been cut in the otherwise seamless wall, and a brick of steel has been placed in the hole. A magic sink meant to prevent anyone from the House of Earth from being able to see the Keep and all of its secrets.
Casimir and Cole are watching me patiently. When Casimir sees the steel brick, he chuckles. “Told you he was smart. That’s going to make this a lot harder, but it’s exactly what I’d expected him to do. We’re going to have to search the Keep. When the other shadow walkers join the hunt, it’ll make it easier.”
I sigh. It may make it easier, but not by much. The Keeps are massive structures meant to house an entire section of the city. Hundreds of common rooms. Hundreds of secret passages and locked doors and otherwise unknown sections. And what happens if Gethin was so paranoid that he left the Keep altogether? He could be sitting in a cottage outside the city after giving orders to his commanders and Rhion.
Cole seems to read my mind. “He’s here,” he says with absolute certainty. “He won’t trust the defense of his House to anyone else. During the Shattering, he was at the forefront of the attack on the House of Earth. He refuses to give up the Throne to Rhion because he doesn’t believe that Rhion is strong enough. He’s tried to kill all the other Conduits because he believes he’s the only one who is still fit to rule. There’s no way that he’d let anyone else make decisions when his home is assaulted. There’s no way.”
Casimir nods to his son. “Cole’s right. There are a lot of things he’ll let someone else deal with. Even things that are important, like finding the House relics. Not this, though. There aren’t any second chances here. We could ignore him and simply take the Keep. We could do exactly what we did to the House of Shadows. Gethin may be willing to watch the world burn around him, but he won’t let his House burn.”
I look between the two of them and see absolutely no doubt about this in their eyes. “Well, that eliminates a lot of places he could be. Any thoughts on where to start?”
“Let’s assume Gethin knows that he’s the target,” Casimir says, slowly putting his thoughts together. “He’ll need to protect the gates to the city because ten thousand humans would make hunting for him far easier. More than any of the rest of us, he’ll remember the wars with humans. I was still a Prince then, but Gethin was already a Conduit. The House of Steel is one of the only reasons we were able to force a treaty, and he was a major part of that.”
Casimir pauses for a moment, continuing to work through his thoughts. “If Rhion isn’t sticking to his word and is here, fighting for his father, he’ll be holding the dungeons. They won’t want my soldiers freed and on this side of the wall. Gethin will need to be somewhere with a clear view to the battle at the gates that’s not too hidden—somewhere his soldiers can reach him to relay messages if there are problems, but not somewhere that his fight with us would be seen.”
I go through the images in my mind of the different places within the Keep of Steel. There’s an open-air breezeway that has a perfect vantage point to watch the battle at the gate of the city.
“Okay, I think I have a good idea of where he might be,” I say, and reach out my hands. Casimir and Cole take them, and I pull them into the void. Immediately, I move us all onto the breezeway.
Gethin is standing in the middle of the bridge with his arms on the steel railing. The only sign that he knows we’re there is a slight twitch as I pull Cole and Casimir from the void. Cole pulls the black steel sword from his back with a metallic scraping sound. It’s unmistakable. Casimir doesn’t draw the twin swords that hang at his waist, instead watching the man he’s feared for so long.
A steady wind blows all of our hair and carries the scent of magic and fear on it from the battlefield at the gate. Flames wreathe Casimir’s hands, the sound of them coming into existence impossible to miss.
Still, Gethin doesn’t move. He just keeps staring at the world below us.
Seconds pass, and none of us move. It should be obvious how this works. We attack, and he defends himself, except that nothing is ever simple with Gethin. I contemplate calling a shadow spear into existence but decide against it. It wasn’t very useful the last time I fought him.
Finally, after a full minute has passed, Gethin says, “You found me,” his eyes never leaving the battle. “Before you force me to deal with you, come look at this. Come look at what you’ve done.”
I glance at Casimir and Cole, who look nervous. Gethin says, “You think I’m ruining the world. You think that because the Houses are failing that I’m destroying the world. Come and look. The dragons knew this would happen. It’s in the book that Brenna found. Ruin will come, but there are shades of ruin. Well, ruin is here, child, and it’s our decision on how far that ruin extends.”
I swallow hard, knowing that line. Ruin will come. Calyr is certain of this. Ruin will come, but there are shades of ruin. Will everything be burned away, or will it be a flame that purges the land and allows for new growth? Death and pain are terrible, but they are necessary.
Inni is credited with that. I move to the railing, far enough away from Gethin that I feel like I can still react to whatever he does. I look out at the city as he talks. “Draenyth is like a garden,” he says. “When I was a child and my father was the King of Steel, the streets were clean. The people in the markets were fair. It was a city of beauty and wonder. As time has passed, it’s become more lawless and more broken. It isn’t just the steel that is failing. It’s the city. It’s the world. Everything needs to be cleansed, and no one but me has the balls to do it.”
My eyes take in what he’s done. An entire district has been turned into rubble. My stomach sinks as he continues. “They were slums, full of Wyrdlings and Lesser Fae without the strength to ascend the social ladder who thought they could live amongst the true Immortals. I rid Draenyth of everything they touched. Their homes, their businesses, and anyone connected to them. This city was not meant for the rabble. Let them live in squalor in their villages like cattle ready for the slaughter. This is how we make the steel strong again. It’s how we make the High Fae strong, like in my father’s time.”
I whirl at him. “You killed an entire district because they were too weak?”
“Sometimes I forget how soft and emotional your kind are,” he says and finally looks at me. There’s a vicious seriousness about him. “I will do whatever it takes to make this world the way it should be. I will crush anything or anyone who stands in the way of it being the place it needs to be. The world deserves to survive, and this weakness must be purged.”
I can feel the anger welling up inside me, but I can’t lash out without control. Not this time. So instead of trying to bash his head against the railing or throwing him off the side, I smile at him. “Thank you for reminding me exactly why you need to die.”
He chuckles, but his laughter doesn’t touch the seriousness in his eyes. “If I was worried about losing a fight against you three, do you really think I would have allowed you to find me?” He glances at Casimir and says, “Did your son finally convince you to do something other than bow to me? You’ll both die because of it, but at least you’ll die honorably now instead of begging me to spare you.”
Flames explode from Casimir’s hand, and Gethin clenches his left fist in the same moment. Steel envelopes him in the blink of an eye—a second skin that moves with him, stretching and shifting with no resistance. Fire sputters uselessly against the steel, and Gethin laughs. The Steel Gauntlet. The thing that we’d all been worried about.
I can hear the madness in that laughter. It’s uncontrolled even though he’s facing the leaders of two different Houses. There’s no fear or worry in him.
Cole attacks, his blade coming in with a powerful slice to Gethin’s side. His sword clangs against the metal covering him and bounces off, ringing like a bell, and Gethin reaches out. His hand moves supernaturally fast—so fast that even Cole can’t react quickly enough. He grabs Cole’s sword by the blade and rips it from his hand.
Cole tries to hang on, but Gethin’s stronger than him. He kicks out as Cole’s body comes close enough, and Cole can’t keep a hold of his sword. As soon as Gethin wrenches the sword free from Cole, he slams the flat of the blade against his knee. A sickening sound bounces around the breezeway, and as if it were made of wood, the metal cracks. All of us gape at the sword as Gethin slams it onto his knee again, and it breaks in half.
That was Nightforged steel. It’s supposedly unbreakable. Nothing else is going to get through his armor. That doesn’t mean he can’t be hurt, though. I let the power of Earth flow through me—so much more powerful now that I’m the Conduit—and I rush Gethin. I hit him squarely in the chest like a boulder rolling off the edge of a cliff.
He huffs as my shoulder connects with his sternum, and I slam him against the railing which holds. Barely. Then pain like I can’t remember sears through my shoulder. A single glance shows me my mistake. I’d assumed that Gethin’s lack of weapons would have let this become a wrestling match—something I might win.
But Gethin’s body can become a steel-coated weapon on a thought. A massive spike juts from my shoulder where his hand used to be. I scream as I feel it lengthening inside my body. The air inside my lungs suddenly goes away, and it’s like I’m underwater. He’s punctured my lung with steel, and I can’t heal with that much steel in my body. Not even slowly.
Over the hissing of air leaving my lung, Gethin’s maniacal laughter rises ever more pronounced.
It infuriates me, and I lose the final bit of control I had. I’m bent over, running out of air, and I don’t care. I slam my fist into Gethin’s shin as hard as I can. A sickening crack sounds, and his laughter ends immediately as he pulls away from me.
I swing again, trying to break his kneecap, but he’s gotten away from me by then. He’s also pulled that spike out of my shoulder, and my body’s already beginning to heal. I guess that my mother was right about claiming the Throne. I’d never have been able to heal from a wound that severe this quickly.
I suck in a deep breath and feel my lungs working like they should. Blood still runs down my back through the cracks in my crystal armor as my body struggles to heal the wound completely. I guess the speed at which we heal is a significant difference between the Houses of Steel and Earth.
Gethin’s already standing on his leg again, the shattered bones mended completely in seconds. At least I know I can hurt him now. Maybe we’re going to have to wear him down. Cole’s already moving, no longer worried about using a sword against him. He may not sit on the Steel Throne, but he still has Steel bloodlines running through him. He slams stone covered fists into Gethin’s face over and over again. I can hear his knuckles breaking and healing with each strike.
I leap into action, moving behind Gethin as Cole does his best to pummel him to death with his fists. I wrap my arm around his throat to get him into a headlock so that he can’t escape the punishment that Cole is dishing out.
It goes on for minutes, and Gethin doesn’t even try to get away. I can’t see him through the steel that coats every inch of his body except his eyes, but the steel indentations only get deeper. His face must be a bloody pulp. Maybe that’s why he’s not trying to fight back. Have we won? Was the trick really just to beat Gethin to death?
No . Cole’s thought moves through the bond. Something is wrong. He keeps slamming his fists against Gethin’s face, and the sound of flesh and bone being crushed is all I hear. Flecks of viscera leave the holes in his armor for his eyes and fly into my face.
Still, the King of Steel doesn’t struggle. He doesn’t speak or try to fight back or to pull away. He just accepts his beating.
Then Cole hits him so hard that something truly unexpected happens. His head comes off. As soon as it leaves his body, the silvery steel that coats the rest of his body disappears, and I can see exactly what Cole’s done to his face. It’s a mess of broken bone and crushed flesh. One of his eyes has been destroyed. It’s the most disgusting sight I’ve ever seen.
I pull away, his body slumping in front of me, and Cole rushes to me. “Is he…”
Cole looks from the destroyed head to the body on the ground, but he doesn’t answer. Casimir hasn’t moved, and still, he doesn’t say or do anything. All of us stand there for a few moments and just stare, not entirely sure what to do now.
We’ve killed Gethin. The war is won. I look into Cole’s eyes and see hope there. Is it all done? Then I look back at Gethin’s head, and it’s gone.
Casimir shouts, and flames explode around him as he flies toward us. Burning fingers press against the stone armor on my chest, and I fly backward. Cole’s body moves the same way, and both of us crash against the wall behind us.
Casimir stands all alone, half a sword blade lodged into his back. Gethin stands three feet away from him, and his head is attached to his body again, covered in that steel skin just like before.
Somehow, in seconds, he moved away from us, regrew his head, and picked up the sword blade to throw at Cole. Casimir had been watching, so he saw all of this happen.
Cole moves to his father’s side, and I put myself between Gethin and Casimir. Revulsion rolls through me, and shadows slip through the air between us. I watch in shock as Gethin pushes his fist into his stomach. The steel opens up for him, and when he pulls his hand out, I see the flaming stick in his hand. The Burning Brand.
Cole snarls, and I hear a grunt from behind me. Flames explode from the Burning Brand, and I slam a stone wall up in front of us to protect us from the fire. I don’t know how to fight him. I might be able to force him into the void, but my shadows are worthless when he has the Burning Brand. Cole and Casimir’s flames are worthless against that armor. I guess we can’t beat him to death since we literally decapitated him, and seconds later, he’s just fine.
I want to scream, but I need to focus. When I glance at Cole, he’s holding the bloody piece of sword in his hand, and Casimir is still bleeding all over, not moving. “It scratched his heart,” Cole says. “It won’t heal quickly, Maeve. We have to get him out of here. Maybe we need to regroup.”
I nod to him, and the stone wall rumbles, cracks appearing across it. He’s beating it down. We need to regroup and recover. We need a plan, but we can’t lose him down some secret passage through the Keep of Steel.
There’s only one answer. I grab Cole and Casimir’s arms and pull all of us into the void, but only long enough to call for Echo. “Take them somewhere safe and have a shadow walker stay with them until they’re ready to come back to the fight.” I turn to Cole and say, “I love you.”
Echo says nothing, but a shadow wraps around each of them. Like a wind in the darkness, I hear Cole say, “I love you, too.” I don’t have time for anything more than that, though. I go right back to face Gethin by myself. Not to fight, but to stall. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that we were woefully unprepared for this fight. My powers may be just as strong as his, but I don’t have the experience to put up a real fight. I don’t know what I can do, but Gethin knows every bit of his powers and all of mine as well.
Cole and Casimir could have won this fight against him if he hadn’t had that damned Gauntlet. No matter how he manipulated his body, they could have cooked him until there wasn’t anything left. He’d have been forced to wear normal steel armor just like the rest of the soldiers. Then we could have ripped him apart together.
That Gauntlet lets him have all the protection of steel with none of the problems, and I don’t know how we’re supposed to beat him.
When I reappear in the breezeway, Gethin’s armor has retracted, pulled into the gauntlet on his left hand. He’s standing all alone again and seems just as unlikely to attack me as he did initially. His eyes are focused on the battle at the gates of Draenyth. So I do the thing all the Kings and Queens of the Great Houses are unprepared for. I let him talk.