Page 117 of Crown of Wrath

This place isn’t ours, but that cave was. Will always be. We’ve spent many nights together, but that was the one when everything changed. That was the beginning.

And this feels so much like the ending.

“When this is all over, we’re going to have two separate Keeps,” Maeve says. “Where are we going to sleep?”

I chuckle at the thought. What a silly thing. “We’ll alternate each week. I’d say every night, but who wants to have to change bedrooms that often?”

She grins and puts her head on my shoulder. It makes me sigh with contentment. “Do you remember that night in the cave when I asked if you wanted to fly away with me?”

She nods, not saying anything, and I continue. “Have you ever wondered if we made the wrong decision? What if we’d flown away as soon as you received the Painted Crown? No war. You’d never have broken. You’d never have even gone cold after you thought you lost Hazel. We wouldn’t have to care about what happened to anyone else. It would just be the two of us.”

“But I care what happens to them. I care about them all. Even now, after all the pain, I would do it all again. I’d make those sacrifices as many times as it took because what we’re doing matters. So many people and animals needed us to make those sacrifices—to take that pain—for them. Look at the drakelings. The only reason they’re going to survive is because of what we did. And the Immortals? How would it feel ifwewanted to have children but couldn’t? What’s one person’s pain against the world’s suffering?”

I know what she’s saying. I know because it’s how I felt for those thirty years that I fought every day to put these things into motion. It was the burden I carried, and while I thought of it as my redemption, even if that hadn’t been the case, I know I would have shouldered the Shadowed Cloak regardless and played the part Brenna asked of me. I knew I was the only one who could have.

But something tears at me.Victory or death. We may be the most powerful people in Nyth, but Gethin… Gethin seems to be immortal in a completely different way. I don’t know how to fight him. My father doesn’t know either. His only advice was, “Throw everything you have at him and hope for the best. And pray he didn’t find the Gauntlet.”

He hadn’t been wearing the Steel Gauntlet when Maeve fought him, so maybe that’s what he was searching for. Maybe he only found the Burning Brand.

Even if that’s the case, how do you kill someone who can sever their own neck or have daggers shoved through their skull without falling?

“I love you,” I whisper in her ear. It’s the only thing I know to say. It’s the only answer because right now, I want to run. I want to leave it all behind. For the first time in my life, I feel completely and utterly happy. My soul sings to hers, and I can’t regret the choices I’ve made. Except for the weight that hangs over me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, finally pulling her head off my shoulder and turning to look at me, suspicion in her eyes.

I can’t lie to her. I made that vow on the day that she received the Painted Crown. I cannot tell her anything but the truth, even if I hate that truth more than anything.

“I feel like this won’t turn out the way we want it to. I don’t know that we’ll beat Gethin. I don’t know that we’ll survive this. I’m not confident that any of this has been worth the pain because we could fail.”

She smiles at me. “I know. We might not win. We might all die, and I’m fine with that. Gethin may win, and the world may crumble, and everything that we care about may be nothing but ash by the end of this fight, and I wouldn’t change anything.”

I blink. Why would she say that? Everything since the day that I appeared to her as the Shade has been painful for her. How many bones did she break in training? Hundreds? Thousands? She shattered. She… She almost gave up. How could she still want to have gone down that path if it was going to end in failure?

“When I was young,” she says, her eyes blurring just a little as she remembers something from many years ago. “When Iwas young, I was told that I was a Wyrdling. I was told that I’d have to live in the woods all alone. Deep down, I think I always believed it, even if I constantly denied it. Cole, I grew up thinking that my future would be living in a cottage far from any other person. I thought that every day would be the same, hunting to survive with animals as my only friends. The idea of marriage was so far removed from my possibilities that I hated the very idea of it.”

Maeve runs her fingers over my lips, a strangely innocent gesture, yet it holds so much emotion. “I would have eventually ended up in the woods, Cole. I would have lived a life full of hunting and shadows and quiet. Instead, you found me. You forced me into the light, into this world of magic and beauty and power. You shoved me toward it when I wanted to run away. I became something I never could have imagined. I became a Queen. Not just a woman with a crown, either.”

Her smile widens as she pulls her finger away from my lips. “And I fell in love with you. I could give up the crown. I could give up the magic and immortality and nearly everything else. But I can’t give you up. This year has been the most terrible year in so many ways, but Cole, you were there with me, and that changes everything. The girl that lay with you in that cave didn’t know what it was to truly love. That thing I felt with you was a fraction of what I feel now. I hadn’t felt pain then. They say that you can’t appreciate the sunshine without the storm clouds, and they’re right. But I’ve spent months under storm clouds, and I’m still smiling.

“It has all been worth it. The fight has been worth it. Even if we lose—and that’s a real possibility—it’s still worth it because I know what genuine love is now. It’s finding the one who gives the storm clouds a song you can’t stop dancing to.”

Even under all the fear of what tomorrow will bring, I can’t help but smile back at her. “Then why are we sitting down? Why aren’t we dancing until our toes fall off?”

I climb to my feet and pull Maeve up beside me. Her eyes are twinkling like the night of the ball, when I’d danced like it was the last night of my life. The night that I stopped thinking about tomorrow and gave into my desires for the first time in so long.

Flames explode into being around us, but they’re accented with spinning crystals and shadows, all of which coexist happily as I pull my wife to me. The song in my head is the same one that we practiced with Nevan for weeks. The same one that had Maeve stomping on my toes constantly.

She laughs as I spin her, her voice as bright and sparkling as silver in moonlight. Her movements are those of the warrior turned into an art. Her skin shines in the firelight and shadows ripple across her face, changing her and shifting her into something mesmerizing.

But that’s who I married. A woman who changes and grows and never settles. Everything around her may be in stasis—a world of Immortals—but she is not. Regardless of the Painted Crown that shines on her forehead, she is human at her core, and she is perfect.

A thousand years from now, there will be statues of Queen Maeve, the woman who saved Nyth. There will be paintings and plays about her life. None of them will have this woman. They’ll have the one who dominates meetings against people hundreds of years older than her, the one who would defy the strongest King the world has ever known.

Only I know the one whose voice is like spun silver. Only I know the woman who will dance to a hidden song. Only I know the one who loves in a world where love is a weakness.

And I dance because she’s right. Whatever happens tomorrow, this is worth it.

Chapter 59

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