Page 117 of Shade of Ruin

Immediately, Cole grabs my arm and stares me in the eye. “It’s time that we leave, Maeve. We need to get out of here before Rhion sends someone around to catch us. If we get trapped in these hallways, we’re dead.”

There are so many questions. So many emotions swirling in my head that I don’t fight back when he pulls me in the opposite direction that Rhion went. Darian and Lee follow Cole, and Vesta’s disappeared.

But I stop. My feet refuse to move, and anger builds again. Cole is the Shade? I’ve trusted him this entire time, and he’s lied to me every step of the way. Cole, Darian, and Lee stop. Cole tries to pull me forward, but he can’t. No, any other day, he’d probably have been able to drag me along behind him regardless of what I’d wanted. His powerful body would have been able to force me to do anything.

Not today.

The lightning that had raged inside me when Calyr had refused me had been terrible. All-consuming rage that made me want to hurt everyone. That had been unfocused. That had been anger unleashed.

This is strength with plenty of control. Vesta would be proud.

“Stop,” I growl. Cole, Darian, and Lee turn to look at me. How long have they all been planning this? Ever since my mother found my father. “I’m how you’re supposed to atone for the Shattering,” I say. “Me wearing the Painted Crown is supposed to fix all the damage you did?”

Cole looks at me, and I know he can’t lie to me. That lightning roars through me loud and clear. I was never part of the House of Shadows. I know what I can do. The magic speaks to me just as clearly as the Shade ever did. “Everything you have done as Prince Cole or as the Shade has been to put this crown on my head, hasn’t it? You’ve lied and twisted everything to look like you were trustworthy until now. Until you could put this crown on my head.”

“I never lied,” he says. “I tried to make you leave last night. I tried. I swore to you that if it came to protecting you and protecting myself, I would protect you first. I tried…”

He tried? After all these months, that was him trying? By refusing to follow through with his debt? I blink. It couldn’t have been a debt to the Shade since you can’t owe a debt to yourself. Who else could it be?

My mother.

I grit my teeth. The pieces slowly come together. “My whole life. Everything. Vesta teaching me. My bloodlines.” Then it clicks. “You were in Blackgrove. You made the ring fall off my finger, didn’t you?”

He bows his head. “I didn’t know you, Queen Maeve. You were the only way to keep the world from dying. I did what I had to do. I told you I wasn’t the hero. Let me help you escape this place, and you can do what you want with me. I’ve atoned for my mistakes.”

That thick black hair is all I see as he stares at the floor, waiting for my answer. “I don’t need you to help me escape, Cole,” I whisper.

Shadows pour from my fingertips to the ground, coating every bit of red marble around us in it. “You taught me well, Shade.”

I’m so focused on Cole that I barely notice Darian and Lee staring in fear at us. The shadows change, and suddenly we’re all falling through the world.

Chapter 49

More lines than the eye can see pass before my mind. Lifetimes upon lifetimes of choices. Yet there are only a few that everything rests upon. Two that the darkness has touched and will not let go. Two that could break, yet don’t. Two that shine their light where no other light will shine. Two whose light will dim forever. And one…

Calyr the Gold, A History of Magic and Dragons

I’d felt the darknesscalling to me the times that I’d shadow walked before. It had felt like home, like I could breathe again when I felt that pressure all around me, but it’s so much stronger now.

Everyone that I’ve cared about has lied and manipulated me since birth. Actually, my very birth was a manipulation. I’ve beenlied to and twisted so much that I don’t even know what I’d be without it at this point.

The darkness is an escape. Nothingness that could give me release from the lies. Peace. Finally. No need for anyone or anything. No responsibilities. No pain. Just the serenity of coming home.

I let a trickle of that darkness into me. The barest touch of it. All the anger that I’d held onto so tightly is drained away in an instant. Peace. The night winds blowing over a cool mountain lake. The rains that fall while the world is sleeping. Healing darkness.

I could stay here forever.

Then Cole speaks. “I call in the debt. Do not let us die in the darkness, Queen Maeve. You can kill us all when you pull us out, but do not let us die in the darkness.”

I don’t know why he’d want to leave. I want to ignore him, to stop thinking about him or anything else, but then pain pulls me away from it all. There, in the darkness, there’s a brightness that I can’t ignore. A bright red tally mark burning.

It burns away the temptation. It forces me to wake up. I don’t want them to die. I may be furious at all of them, but I don’t want them to die. They’re the only people who have ever really understood me. They manipulated me, and I can feel the ache from that manipulation in my chest, but I don’t want them to die.

At least not like this. Not without being able to think clearly. Not a death of being forgotten.

The darkness is mine. For the first time, I know what it’s like to be the Queen of Shadows. I may not be of that House, but I know what it is to call the darkness home. I can feel everything in this place. Moving like the wind, I wrap my own shadows around Cole, Darian, and Lee, and then I think of the one place I remember perfectly outside of Draenyth.

A tiny, nearly empty bedroom with a paper painting hanging on the wall.

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