Page 37 of Shade of Ruin

She nods and I glare at Cole, who’s watching us. “You won. Why didn’t you help her? She couldn’t breathe!”

Cole’s quiet for a moment before he puts the cup down and crosses the makeshift practice field. “Because I’m not the only person in the world who can do that. In a fight, she won’t have someone to help her undo that buckle in her armor. She and her brother are my two best friends. The two people I’ve spent my entire life with. I don’t want her to die to something she should have practiced doing. I’m okay with her hurting here. I don’t mind seeing her cry or bleed or be terrifiedhere. But the thought of seeing her hurting on an actual battlefield is terrifying, so no, I don’t think I should have helped herhere. I want to help her when it matters.”

He walks away from the practice field, not even bothering to let me respond. There’s nothing I could say that would change Cole’s mind. “He just worries about us,” Darian says from behind us. He’s back to his normal size now. The armor is back in place, like when they’d first started sparring with Cole.

“He doesn’t always have to fight so hard. If you’re actually his friends, he shouldn’t be hitting you hard enough to dothis,” I say, looking at the knee-sized indention in the steel armor that could have broken ribs, or worse.

Lee stands up now that she’s recovered, and she shakes her head. “No, Maeve. He’s right. What’s coming won’t give me time to catch my breath. It’s going to keep swinging until I can’t breathe ever again. We have to be stronger, and the only way he knows to do that is to hurt us. It’s how he was trained.”

“How he was trained? Someone taught him to be pissed off all the time?”

Darian laughs as he helps his sister take off her armor. “No, his father… is a very effective teacher. He isn’t kind, though. I’m sure you got that from how hepunishedhis son. Most Immortals hide any kind of weakness, including kindness, but Cole’s father takes that to an extreme. At the same time, Cole’s the best warrior there is. Other than his father, of course.”

I think about how easily he’s dealt with every fight that’s come up. “Was he trying just now?” I ask.

Darian and Lee both start laughing. Full-bodied laughter that’s so different from Cole. “Oh no,” Lee says. “He was training us. He showed us our weaknesses without hurting us. When he was fighting me by myself, he was purposefully giving me a workout since he thinks I need the most help of the two of us.”

Darian follows up, “He didn’t use any magic, Maeve. He was fighting at half speed and with only a quarter of his skills. He deserves his title of Prince.”

“And you’re both good at fighting? I’m sorry, but it’s hard for me to gauge anything since you both were incredible, too. You could have easily fought off every person in my village. To me, at least, you look like… well, you look like death.”

Lee grins at me. “We’re not bad. Slightly better than average for High Fae. We couldn’t win a war, but we might win a fight. But we…”

“Hate it,” Darian finishes for her. “Absolutely detest the fact that our entire civilization has come down to who can kill the other ones better. I don’t think that every High Fae should have to learn to use their powers for war. I want to fly so that I can see the forests and lakes and oceans from the sky because it helps me understand them. Without wings, I couldn’t have found that drakeling.”

Lee raises her hand and light billows off the tips of her fingers. “I’m just glad we’re not actual Great House High Fae. No one expects anyone from the House of Light to do anything in battle,and if we hadn’t been born to a father who was House of Steel, we’d never have been pushed nearly this hard.”

“That’s not true,” Darian argues. “Cole would have figured out a way for us to protect ourselves. Even if that meant only using light.”

Lee nods to her brother. “He always says that being strong is the first step to being peaceful. Being weak and unable to fight isn’t the same aschoosingnot to fight. The sheep can’t choose peace. Only the wolf has that option.”

“I think it’s more that if you can’t fight, you can’t be safe.” The way Darian says it, it’s like that’s a universal truth. And maybe it is for the Fae.

Maybe that’s why Vesta always said that I’d never win a fight against any of the Fae. Because they all grew up knowing that learning to fight and win was the only way to survive. I’m beginning to understand that I was lucky not to have been born in Fae culture. Living with humans seems so much more enjoyable.

“Why am I even practicing then? There’s no way that I could ever fight like you, much less like Cole.”

Darian shrugs and looks toward the village where he knows his friend is. “I don’t know why he’d teach you. He has his reasons, and I’ve learned to trust those reasons. He doesn’t tell us everything, Maeve. Cole does what Cole thinks is right, and it’s rare that he’s wrong.”

It’srarethat he’s wrong. But what about when he is? Aren’t there other ways to do things beyond the “Cole way”? I brush my hands off on my pants and look up at the night sky. He specifically told me not to practice my magic, but he was wrong. I can do so much more now than what I could do when I’d first met Cole. The moon is going to be full tonight, and I won’t need the fire to see. A grin crosses my lips.

The perfect kind of night for a midnight stroll through the forest.

“I guess we’ll just have to see what happens, then. I’ll keep training, but maybe tomorrow Cole will be in a good enough mood to talk about how he expects me to fight in a world where you two areaverage.”

Lee and Darian grin at me and look in Cole’s direction where he’s arranging the nightly fire. Lee says, “You probably won’t get much out of him for a while. Give him some time to cool off, but keep training. It’s never a bad idea to be as prepared as possible. Even if you can’t fight a High Fae, you might be able to protect yourself from some of the Lesser Fae, and you’ll be far more capable against humans.”

I nod to them, and they wander toward the fire as I glance back at the darkness beyond the village. I’ll learn to protect myself, but I think that I’ll have a better chance with shadows than I will with sticks.

Chapter 19

Only the strongest shall wear the Crown. Only the strongest will be the tie to hold our magic to this world. Four sacrifices to save the many. Only they, of all the immortal Fae,

shall fade in mind and body.

~Kasan the Lifegiver, A History of Magic and Dragons

Everyone in Darian andLee’s house is asleep when I step into the silver moonlight again. The door creaks just enough that I cringe at the noise, but no one wakes. I move directly away from the village and enjoy the damp tang to the air, the way it lingers on my skin almost like my shadows. I embrace the glory of a full moon all alone. My hands trace the reeds as I walk along one of the many tiny rivulets that feed the river I’d taught the villagers to fish at, my fingers bouncing off each one and onto thenext. The soft splashes of the stalks moving through the water are the only sound other than the frogs and crickets.

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