Page 83 of Shade of Ruin

“Maeve, I’m not the kind of person you want. That you need. I…” He closes his eyes like he’s having to do everything in his power to keep his emotions leashed. “You need someone who can be loyal to you. Not to… others. I was built to be a tool, and while I may not be wielded by my father any longer, I’m still that same tool. You want a person, Maeve. You deserve someone that can laugh and cry with you. Someone that can love. That’s not me. I’m the sharpest blade anyone could wield, but someone kind–someone wonderful like you–doesn’t marry her blade. She wields it until the enemy is dead, and then she puts it away.”

“Is that what you think?” I ask. “That I think you’re handsome because you’re strong? That I haven’t complained about sharing your bed because you’re protecting me? No, Cole. I happen to enjoy your company. At least when you’re not staring gloomily into a fire or telling me not to talk.”

He chuckles, and the flames around him flash into existence. A small part of me worries about being burned, but I trust Cole. If there’s anything I’m sure of right now, it’s that he’s the only person in the world that I trust.

Even more than the Shade.

“Cole, you’re a good man. In a world where everyone does terrible things, you’re a good man who tries to do the right thing.”

He pulls away again. “No, I’m not, Maeve. Nothing about me is good.” He turns away, not daring to look at me. “If I could tellyou everything, you’d know that I’m just as terrible as my father. I’m not the hero in this story, and that you think I am shows how little you know.”

As he says those words, flames flash around us, and I truly understand why the Keep of Flames is made of marble and has almost no furnishings. The fire that rages is all-encompassing, wreathing him in that orange and yellow and even some white. “You’re not the only one who wants to fix the things that you’ve broken.” His face is hidden behind flames so bright that my eyes hurt to look at him. A tree to his side is too close to him, and it ignites just from the heat that he radiates.

He ignores it.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” I say. “You can’t beat yourself up over it, Cole.” I try to say it with enough confidence that he listens. When the words come out, they sound like a pitiful attempt to soothe a dangerous male.

The flames disappear entirely, and I’d almost question whether they’d ever been there if the tree next to Cole wasn’t still on fire. When he looks at me, he says, in a voice even more broken than mine, “My mistakes should have been punishable by death, Maeve, and they would have been, if we’d lost. We didn’t lose, though.”

“I’m glad you won.” Even if other people got hurt, I’m glad that Cole didn’t. His eyes hold so much pain and turmoil in them that I don’t know what to say. So I do the thing that no one’s ever done for me.

I hug him. I wrap my arms around him and press my body against his. “Cole, I don’t care what you did. I don’t care what you’re doing now or what secrets hide in that mind of yours. You are good.”

Then I remember something that might make all the difference. “I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you. You didn’t have to save me. You didn’t have to take me all the way toDraenyth. But you did, and that’s changed my life and my cousin’s. How many people have you done something similar for? You saved Darian from being forced into literal eternal slavery. All the people in Aerwyn have you to thank for being free. How many people in this city recognize you for what you truly are, and not what you think of yourself as?”

Cole shakes his head and walks a little further away. The tree collapses, exploding in a splash of embers. “I’ve killed more people than you’ve seen, Maeve. Males, females, and even children. I was the spearhead of the attack on the House of Shadows. The rest of my father’s armies were the aftershocks of me. Mere cleanup efforts. But that’s not all.”

He refuses to look at me. “Everyone I’m connected to gets hurt because of me. I may try to make this world a better place, but if you’re a part of my world, you’ll be hurt just as much as my enemies. You’re not like me. You’re like Darian and Lee. Good people that have to be protected, but I can’t protect you forever. Eventually, I won’t be there, and someone will take the chance to do terrible things to you just to hurt me.”

Gods, he’s beautiful standing like that. Broken and bleeding the emotions that he’s kept hidden from me for so long. Staring down at the rocky world below us that’s as unforgiving and unfaltering as him, his hands balled into fists at his lack of control over the world around him.

“Everyone knows Immortals don’t trust any other Immortals. But I know Darian and Lee are loyal. Have they told you why?”

I shake my head. “They proved their loyalty to me when we were children.”

Without turning to look at me, he says, “When we were young, still very much children, they created a distraction to allow me to sneak out of the city because I wanted to try to fly without anyone from the House of Steel or House of Flames seeing. I’d never used my House of Steel powers before becausemanifesting pride in myself was not a simple thing to do with my childhood. It’s still not the easiest thing for me to do, but regardless, I wanted to do it far away from anyone that would judge me. Namely, my father and everyone that reported to him.”

He turns to look at me. “It was successful. I snuck out. I even manifested wings to fly back into the city.”

The pain in his eyes now is even worse than before. “But I came back to Darian and Lee barely alive. Chained to steel poles, their bodies had been burned so badly that most people wouldn’t have recognized them. Their mother was looking on with tears in her eyes. She’d pleaded with my father to free them, and he’d laughed as he’d burned them even more. All they’d had to do to be freed was to tell him where I was. They hadn’t told him anything. This same thing happened many times over the years.”

There’s so much anger in his eyes. “My father understands that my friends are my weakness. They’re… they’re how he controls me. He will use you against me just as he’s used Darian and Lee against me before.”

“Wait,” I say. “You somehow think that you’re the villain when you were forced to fight?”

He shakes his head. “No.” He sighs, and the strength inside him seems to fade against the weight on his shoulders. “I’ve asked you to trust me, Maeve. I’m not the hero. The hero doesn’t do what I’ve done. What I’ll continue to do. That’s all I can say right now. Someday, I’ll tell you everything, but not today.”

I approach him, knowing that at any point he could set me ablaze in that inferno that’s still burning that tree. I put my hand on his cheek. He sinks into my touch. All the pain he’s feeling runs through me, through our betrothal bond. The pain of the past and of the present is something almost physical.

“You stop it. I won’t argue with you over things I don’t know. I don’t care what’s happening. I don’t care what you’ve done,Cole.” The memory of my promise to him before we came to Draenyth during our betrothal ceremony runs through me.

My nails press against his cheek, harder than I’ve done before, and I visualize myself laying in the trees by myself as a child. The way the wind soothed me. The way the trees pulled the pain away from me. I’d had so much sadness in me, and then I’d let the forest pull it all away.

Cole’s eyes soften as I relive that feeling. As the betrothal bond sends that peace through the man that’s given me so much hope and strength. I can see his muscle’s relaxing. “Take off your shirt and lay down,” I say. This time, my voice is as strong as steel.

Cole doesn’t argue at all. He rips his tunic off. Shadows flow from my fingertips over the rocky ground and create a soft bed made of inky darkness. A dark cloud that is just as soft as it looks.

His scars are bright red, just like the first time I saw them. They cover every inch of his back, from the collar of his tunic to the top of his pants. A permanent reminder of the pain and torment he’d received as a child because he refused to let his friend become a slave.

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