Page 13 of Crown of Wrath

“Why don’t you and Darian find out where Jasper is?” I say. “You’ll be able to blend in, and I’ll be able to shadow walk directly to where he is rather than risk being caught out in the open.”

Lee and Darian look at each other, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t know what they’re asking each other in that strange twin speak.

“That’s a good idea,” Darian says. “Give me a mark, and I’ll call for you when we’ve found him.”

He puts out his forearm to me, and I see Maeve watching intently as I press my nail to Darian’s skin. He grimaces as I infuse my flames into his skin. It’s a debt, but it’s not one he’ll ever have to pay off.

Darian and Lee both begin to change in front of us. Their features slowly shift into something different, intosomeonedifferent. Darian’s nose grows along with his ears, his messy brown hair becoming flecked with gray. The skin along his eyes and lips become puckered and wrinkled, and his eyebrows become drastically longer. Barely noticeable hair sprouts from inside his ears, nose, and the back of his neck and shoulders.

He stoops, his back rounding as he ages in front of me, and I’m jealous of his Steel abilities. This isn’t something I could ever do. My abilities with Steel are purely for battle. Healing, strength, speed, and armored skin. I could never become someone else.

Lee’s transformation is just as impressive. Instead of growing older, every bit of maturity from her features seems to evaporate. Her brown hair has become a lustrous black. Her eyes seem to have gotten just a little larger, and her lips curl into a smile.

She may wear the same royal clothing that she’d worn in Aric’s court, but now she looks like she’s barely older than a youth. Darian and Lee have become an old man and his granddaughter. They’ll blend in well enough.

I nod to them, and they grin at each other. “It’s good to be back,” Lee says, her voice that of a girl hundreds of years younger. Then they turn and run their hand over the imperceptible blemish in the wall and a door slides open to let them through.

Then they’re gone, and I’m left alone with Maeve again. I stare at her, not entirely sure what I should expect from her. She hasn’t wanted to talk to me beyond giving me orders since the Painted Crown appeared on her forehead.

The stone armor she wears shifts and moves in a way that normal plate armor can’t. It’s silent where steel would squeak and rub. It’s perfect. No edges touch, and the stone is so smooth that there’s no friction. Tiny hexagonal plates the size of mythumbnail that are connected so perfectly that even the world’s best blacksmith could never replicate it.

Yet, Maeve doesn’t move like it fits her. It’s nothing like when she wore her midnight armor. Her shadows fit her, and even though she was walking around with nothing physical between her and the rest of the world, she was confident in it. This armor, though… It’s not right. Or maybe she’s not right for it.

“Tell me, Shade, what goes through that mind of yours while you sit so silently? Are you plotting? Are you thinking of the way things used to be between us? Or are you closer to a monk than a man, and your mind is simply blank?”

I blink. This isn’t how she normally talks to me. There’s so much confidence that it’s like she’s hiding something behind it. She’s not confident in this plan. She can’t be. We don’t know enough. So why’s she acting like this?

Then I see the shadows trailing from her fingertips again. Not enough that I think she’s regained her powers, but she desires something. Or there’s a hint of desire, at least.

“I was considering your armor,” I say. “You seem uncomfortable in it.”

A truth with no judgement. She moves toward me, and the shadows leaking from her fingertips thicken. “Why do you say that? I’m the Queen of Earth. Isn’t this fitting?”

“Your midnight armor fit you better. You seemed more comfortable in it. This is beautiful, but you don’t move as fluidly as you did in shadows.”

She walks closer to me, and she raises her hand into the air, a foot away from my face. Shadows slowly trail down the stone that lines her arms. Little wisps of it, like when she wore the Forgotten Ring. “I don’t think the Queen of Earth can wear that armor. I can’t seem to create shadows like I used to.”

She says it like she’s far away, as if losing her Shadow powers isn’t a tragedy. “All you have to do is desire, my Queen,” I say. “Just as I taught you. Nothing has changed.”

“I don’t know if I can desire anything anymore, Shade,” she responds in that far off voice. “I tried when we were at our camp. It didn’t work.”

A shiver runs through me. She hasn’t talked to me like this since she didn’t know my identity. I’d thought she was breaking, but then she seemed more put together after we came to Stormhaven.

But why is she calling me Shade?I blink again as the answer comes to me. Sheknowsthat I’m Cole, but she doesn’tthinkof us as the same person. She feels safe with “the Shade”.

Shadows rise from the ground to encircle Maeve, so similar to the way they did before. I have a harder time controlling them as I once did because the past three months have pushed me to the breaking point, but I remember my years of training.Control your damn emotions.

Desire flows through me like a dark river, and my shadows flow underneath Maeve’s armor. It’s so similar to the way I’d teased her and manipulated her body when she was learning about her shadow powers.

I smell the lust in the air. Maeve’s scent only gets stronger as she looks into the shadows under my hood. “You enjoy touching me like this?” she asks.

“Yes. Do you?” I move closer to her, pressing into her personal space, and unlike the few times I’ve done it in the past three months, she doesn’t push away. She accepts the Shade into that space.

“I think so,” she whispers. My shadows glide against the bare skin under her armor, sliding over it as barely more than a damp wind, but she can sense that it’s me. She’s not a Wyrdling anymore. She’s just as much a High Fae as I am.

But she doesn’t push back as she has every time I’ve tried to touch her inner landscape. The betrothal bond between us is still there, still just as strong as it was when I was willing to break my vow to Brenna and die. She just refuses to open it.

My shadows tighten against her body, and a soft gasp escapes Maeve’s lips, yet her shadows don’t flood the room. This is a physical response, not an emotional one. “You feel different now, Shade,” she says. “You seem… tired. Or are you weaker? Am I just that much stronger?”

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