79. Chapter 72
Chapter 72
Do not fight a dragon, soldier. They’re massive. Shoot them. We’ve been shooting birds from the sky for as long as there were birds. Just think of dragons as birds. Massive birds with scales thicker than a castle wall and teeth longer than a spear who breathe fire.
~Sir Alistair Hawking, Magical Combat for Humans
Maeve
Silence was all I had for hours. The weight of all I’ve done hung over me like a foul wind. I’d forced Calyr’s hand. I’d possibly destroyed the world. I’d pushed The Darkness and my mother into a trap together in case I’d needed to force Calyr into the void.
I did something impossible, but I didn’t do it alone.
First, I’d gone to my mother to understand more about Valinar and more about The Darkness. I’d convinced her I needed to know because she was the only one who could teach me of these things. I’d asked as a Conduit worrying about the future.
Then I’d gone to Darian and asked him to keep my plan secret. We’d talked only of it in Valinar so that Calyr couldn’t see. He’d helped me create the plan.
I’d gone to Casimir to teach me to use flames to fly. Then I’d gone to Rhion and asked him to teach me to use wings. Finally, I’d gone back to my mother and told her I needed her to do something difficult. I’d asked her to make the cage, and in return, I would help her have the only thing she wanted. My Da.
I refused to tell her why, but she understood how lonely eternity was going to be with no purpose for Valinar any longer.
All of it was successful. Each step had turned out exactly how we’d planned. Darian’s assessment of how to trick a dragon that could see the future was as perfect as I could imagine. There’s only one thing left, and there’s no way anyone could foresee how this will play out.
My fingers move over the black tally mark on my wrist. Another wave of pain flows through my body as the shreds of my soul reach for the other half that’s no longer there. I knew what I was getting into when I started on this path. I knew it would come down to forcing Calyr to decide if I was willing to burn the world to get my husband back.
I’m not. I’m just willing to lie and use trickery, and a dragon will never suspect that any more than Cole suspected Gethin would trick him. It’s the one thing I learned from the previous King of Steel. When faced with an opponent that could crush you, don’t be afraid to lie. I purposefully pulled The Darkness out of the void so that nothing would be there in the event I had to push Calyr into it. I couldn’t have destroyed the Thrones—to destroy all the magic in the world. I couldn’t be the Ruin that Calyr had foreseen.
I have the power to do it, but I won’t.
Even if I didn’t care what Cole would want, I still want the world to survive. I bluffed, and I won. If I’d lost, I’d have followed Cole to the Realm of Death. My broken oath would have killed me, but I’ve done what I had to do. The world is stable. The Conduits are bound to the Thrones. Hazel knows that if I die, she’ll be the one who can claim the Throne of Earth. Everything is set up so that if I died, Nyth will survive.
If I died, I’d go to Cole. If I survived, that meant that Calyr had gone to wake Lysara.
This is where my planning ended. I’ve never met a goddess before. I don’t know what Lysara will be like or how she’ll react to being woken up because of my trickery. I’ve heard the stories about her, about how she became the Goddess of Death because of love. I know that she, more than any other god, understood humans and loved them. More than that, though, I know that she’s my only option. If she refuses…
I won’t let her. I can’t.
I sit on shadows as I wait. The chair made of pure darkness seems to writhe and twist underneath me, eager to become more. Something about knowing that I might see Cole again has my shadows gaining a bit of a mind of their own. It’s almost like the night that they created the first effigy of the Shade, the night that I was betrothed to Cole.
I have more control over them now, though. Instead of creating what they want, they just move faster and hold a nervous energy.
They stop abruptly when everything in the room changes. A woman in a dress so black that it makes my shadows look light appears in front of me. Her dress is made of a fabric that I’ve never seen before. It sparkles as if she’d pulled the night sky down and fashioned a dress from it, stars included.
Her eyes are anything but dark, though. There’s a light to them that reminds me of Echo’s stormy eyes.
She is beautiful— beyond beautiful. Her long black hair flows on a wind that doesn’t exist. She moves as if she isn’t bound to the world, stepping from the air onto the stone as though she is merely choosing to touch the earth.
“Ah,” she says with a smile. “How interesting. You’re not human. You’re…”
She vanishes. Then, in an instant, she is beside me.
She is tall, almost twice as tall as I am, while maintaining an eerily consistent human proportion. Her hand moves to my face, her fingers cupping my cheek as she smiles down at me. “A human that’s been infused with dragon magic,” she muses. “So interesting. This world has grown so much while I’ve slept.”
I try to stand up, but I can’t. My body refuses to obey. Slowly, I rise—not by my own will. I float upward to be at eye level with her. “You’re the reason we were awoken,” she says, as gentle as it is absolute and unyielding. “Calyr tells me you have put us at risk, and yet you beg an audience. Explain yourself.”
I meet her gaze and understand . I’d thought she would be like my mother. I thought I understood power, especially after just fighting a dragon, but Lysara is… Lysara is more. Lysara makes Calyr look weak.
In her eyes, I glimpse true power. “I… My husband died. We were bound, and—”
She moves closer to me, her smile unreadable. “Your husband?”
Her palm presses against my cheek, and warmth—pure and impossible—floods me. It’s not just heat. It’s life. It’s the part of humanity that sets them apart from even Immortals. I lean into it, unable to stop myself, and for the first time since this all began, I feel light . The fear dissolves. The exhaustion, the pain, the endless weight of loss—it fades, swallowed by the radiance of her touch.
Shadows flow from me, completely unbidden, and wrap around her.
She laughs . “How wonderful!”
Then her expression becomes solemn. “You want me to bring your husband back from the dead?” Her smile fades completely. “That has never been done before.”
I smile at her, and I don’t feel the same fear coursing through me any longer. She took that away. “Then I’ll go to him. Nyth doesn’t need me anymore. Let me see him again, please?”
She frowns and stares into my eyes. “Your love is strong, Maeve,” she whispers. “You woke us and fought a dragon. You did all of this for love?”
“I’d do anything for Cole. I’d sacrifice anything to be with him again.”
The corner of her lip curls up. “I remember feeling that.” Lysara’s voice is like twinkling bells on a frosty night. “Seren,” she says the name of her lover as softly as if she were kissing him. “It’s been so very long since I last saw him.” She closes her eyes, and I know that she’s feeling the same pain rip through her as I feel so often. Her eyes flash open. “You put this world in jeopardy. You put me in jeopardy. All to bring a man back from the dead?”
“Yes,” I say and feel myself pulling away from the magic that flows from her touch. “Without him, the magic of this world would have disappeared. The animals. The Immortals. He didn’t deserve to die like that. I’d have accepted anyone’s death except his.”
She pauses, her head cocking to the side. “Don’t give me reasons. I know what love can do. You would have found anger in others by telling them this, but I remember the feeling of seeing my love’s face as he left this world.”
Behind her, the air shimmers and instead of the cave wall, I see a world of gray. There is a momentary image of people living, walking, whispering to each other. There are homes and fields of crops all under a gray sky. Then the image changes into a different kind of field, rows and rows of stone tables where humans are chained. They scream and writhe in anguish.
And Lysara smiles. “Never try to force my hand as you did with the dragon. We are not as forgiving as their kind. We… can be wrathful .”
The scent of death fills the cave, and her dress disappears. Her body is covered in crimson, her long black hair is coated in it. Her pale skin is drenched from the top of her head to the bottom of her soles. In her hands, she holds two daggers that drip blood onto the cave floor.
She is the Goddess of Death.
Then the image disappears, and I’m staring at her midnight dress again. Pools of blood lay on the cave floor where her daggers had dripped, telling me just how real that experience had been. “But today, I get to see the man I love again, and I am in a wonderful mood. I will grant you this one request—something that has never been done before. I have a stipulation, though.”
“Anything,” I whisper as my heart soars.
She cups my cheek again and smiles. “Your bloodline will owe me fealty when the time comes. We slept to stay away from the ones who hunted the dragons. We are awake now, and they will come here. Your child will be my greatest warrior in the coming war. He will command my armies. He will turn rivers red and my enemies to ash. Do you understand what you are promising?”
I nod to her. “Yes. My bloodline is yours to command in the coming war.”
She smiles and as her hand leaves my cheek, her nail scratches me just enough to draw blood. Lysara takes the drop of crimson and licks her nail. The magic of a binding oath wraps around me again, but it feels different. A different kind of power. A different kind of oath. Not for me.
For my children.
“Good. Have a wonderful life, Maeve Arden. Enjoy spending it with your husband.”
Then everything changes as she disappears. I fall to the ground, collapsing like a rag doll. My mind feels foggy, and I climb to my feet. And the bit of wood from Cole’s pyre is gone.
“What happened?” a voice that I can’t quite believe is real says.
I whirl to face Cole, and he’s just as beautiful as ever. The sharp lines of his face, the warmth of a smile that he only ever gives me; they’re exactly the same as the day I watched him burn. My heart breaks all over again as I stare into his eyes, and even though I know everything I’ve done has been to bring him back to me, I still can’t believe it. He’s the same. Cole Cyrus, my love, is here again.
It's like nothing after Gethin got a hold of him happened. He’s wearing the same clothes. He even has the same bits of ash and soot that I saw on his cheeks when he’d fallen from Gethin’s arms.
“It worked,” I whisper and wrap my arms around him, pulling him to me. He doesn’t resist as he takes a deep inhale of my hair. “I had hoped, but…”
“Maeve, what happened?” He pulls back from me, and I realize his eyes are still bright orange, just like when he’d died. “I feel strange. Like I’ve been sleeping, but…”
“You died,” I whisper. “I watched as Gethin stabbed you, and you died. I…” My words stumble as I try to come up with an explanation, but Cole doesn’t interrupt. “I convinced Calyr to wake up the gods. Lysara, the Goddess of Death, brought you back from the Realm of the Dead to me.”
Cole runs a hand through his raven-black hair. “I don’t understand. Why would Calyr wake the gods up? What did you offer him? I’m sorry, Maeve. My head is all stuffy like I’ve got cotton between my ears, and my mind isn’t working like it should. Didn’t you say that Calyr and the rest of the dragons put the gods to sleep to keep their magic from drawing the hunters?”
I give him my best smile. My hand runs over his cheek, and I stand on my tiptoes to kiss him lightly on the lips. “I forced him to do it. He didn’t want to, but I didn’t give him a choice. I wasn’t going to allow anyone to keep you away from me.”
He pulls me closer to him, and I finally take a deep breath, really letting his scent wash over me, and I know it’s truly him. I know that the spiced amber scent that floods me is him. A tear runs down my cheek, and he whispers in my ear, “I love you, Maeve.”
“I love you more,” I whisper back. For the first time since he fell, I realize that seconds have passed, and my soul hasn’t ached. I reach out to the frayed pieces of my soul and realize it’s no longer shredded. It’s not even torn any longer. A deep scar runs where the separation was, but it’s a scar, not a wound. Through the bond, I whisper to him, “I never let you go. You’re mine forever, Cole Cyrus.”
I can feel him wanting to ask about everything that’s happened, but he doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he just breathes me in. He holds me so tight I know he recognizes how long we’ve been apart.
For the first time in a little more than a month, I feel whole again. Even after everything, the only thing that makes me feel right is feeling Cole’s hands on me.
Because without Cole, I’m nothing, and if he’s here, then nothing can ever really be wrong. What’s the worst that can happen? We die? He already did, and I would have followed him even into death. As long as we’re together, we’ll find a way to be happy.
And that’s what matters.