Page 140 of Crown of Wrath

The pain disappears immediately, and I smile. “Swear it, Calyr. Bind yourself to that decision, and I will free you from this cage so that you can follow through with your oath.”

A snarl loud enough to shake the mountain around me comes from his throat, but he doesn’t argue. “You know that you’redooming everyone to the creatures that hunted my kind? I cannot hide the gods on my own. Their power will draw them here. Maybe not today. Maybe not even in a century. But they will come, and they will destroy everything you’ve fought for. Don’t you understand what you’re doing?”

“A month ago, Gethin was going to destroy this world. We killed him. A year ago, Gethin was going to take the Painted Crown and slaughter the House of Flame. My mother and Cole stopped him. We’ll stop these hunters, and this time we have time to prepare. Maybe if you helped us to, we wouldn’t be so in the dark, but regardless, we will fight back. We’re not like dragons. We won’t run. We’ll stand against whoever comes, just like the humans who stood up against the High Fae thousands of years ago. And we’ll win just the same.”

Calyr settles on the ground. “And if the hunters are human with the power to destroy dragons? What will you do then? Our enemy’s numbers are endless. You may have found a way to trap and force me, but you are the only High Fae capable of it. I would have crushed any other. I cannot kill a single hunter, Daughter of Stone. You bring nothing but death to this world. It was a possibility I foresaw, but I had hoped…”

“Hope is for those who don’t have the power to change the future,” I say, only slightly shook by the revelations that Calyr’s given me. The pride and joy and desire and calmness that collectively flow inside me refuse to allow anything to stop now that the boulder has begun to roll.

“Arrogance. Dragons thought the same. We were forced to flee when the hunters destroyed half of dragon kind. You cannot flee. You are too weak to fight. Your choice is already made, though.” Another snarl rips from his throat, and he says, “I swear I will wake Lysara and the rest of the gods of this world as soon as you release me from Skycrest.”

I smile, and the shadows dissipate. I put my hand on the floor of the cave and take control of the stone. A pathway large enough for Calyr to walk through opens up, the rock crumbling into nothing before our eyes. For the first time in centuries, Calyr sees sunlight, and he looks behind him at me for a moment before walking out.

I look down at the tally mark and the burns all around it that haven’t healed—that I haven’t wanted to heal—and I smile. “Soon, Cole. Soon, I will see you again.”

Chapter 72

Do not fight a dragon, soldier. They’re massive. Shoot them. We’ve been shooting birds from the sky for as long as there were birds. Just think of dragons as birds. Massive birds with scales thicker than a castle wall and teeth longer than a spear who breathe fire.

~Sir Alistair Hawking, Magical Combat for Humans

Maeve

Silence was all I had for hours. The weight of all I’ve done hung over me like a foul wind. I’d forced Calyr’s hand. I’d possibly destroyed the world. I’d pushed The Darkness and my mother into a trap together in case I’d needed to force Calyr into the void.

I did something impossible, but I didn’t do it alone.

First, I’d gone to my mother to understand more about Valinar and more about The Darkness. I’d convinced her I needed to know because she was the only one who could teach me of these things. I’d asked as a Conduit worrying about the future.

Then I’d gone to Darian and asked him to keep my plan secret. We’d talked only of it in Valinar so that Calyr couldn’t see. He’d helped me create the plan.

I’d gone to Casimir to teach me to use flames to fly. Then I’d gone to Rhion and asked him to teach me to use wings. Finally, I’d gone back to my mother and told her I needed her to do something difficult. I’d asked her to make the cage, and in return, I would help her have the only thing she wanted. My Da.

I refused to tell her why, but she understood how lonely eternity was going to be with no purpose for Valinar any longer.

All of it was successful. Each step had turned out exactly how we’d planned. Darian’s assessment of how to trick a dragon that could see the future was as perfect as I could imagine. There’s only one thing left, and there’s no way anyone could foresee how this will play out.

My fingers move over the black tally mark on my wrist. Another wave of pain flows through my body as the shreds of my soul reach for the other half that’s no longer there. I knew what I was getting into when I started on this path. I knew it would come down to forcing Calyr to decide if I was willing to burn the world to get my husband back.

I’m not. I’m just willing to lie and use trickery, and a dragon will never suspect that any more than Cole suspected Gethin would trick him. It’s the one thing I learned from the previous King of Steel. When faced with an opponent that could crush you, don’t be afraid to lie. I purposefully pulled The Darkness out of the void so that nothing would be there in the event I had to push Calyr into it. I couldn’t have destroyed the Thrones—todestroy all the magic in the world. I couldn’t be the Ruin that Calyr had foreseen.

I have the power to do it, but I won’t.

Even if I didn’t care what Cole would want, I still want the world to survive. I bluffed, and I won. If I’d lost, I’d have followed Cole to the Realm of Death. My broken oath would have killed me, but I’ve done what I had to do. The world is stable. The Conduits are bound to the Thrones. Hazel knows that if I die, she’ll be the one who can claim the Throne of Earth. Everything is set up so that if I died, Nyth will survive.

If I died, I’d go to Cole. If I survived, that meant that Calyr had gone to wake Lysara.

This is where my planning ended. I’ve never met a goddess before. I don’t know what Lysara will be like or how she’ll react to being woken up because of my trickery. I’ve heard the stories about her, about how she became the Goddess of Death because of love. I know that she, more than any other god, understood humans and loved them. More than that, though, I know that she’s my only option. If she refuses…

I won’t let her. I can’t.

I sit on shadows as I wait. The chair made of pure darkness seems to writhe and twist underneath me, eager to become more. Something about knowing that I might see Cole again has my shadows gaining a bit of a mind of their own. It’s almost like the night that they created the first effigy of the Shade, the night that I was betrothed to Cole.

I have more control over them now, though. Instead of creating what they want, they just move faster and hold a nervous energy.

They stop abruptly when everything in the room changes. A woman in a dress so black that it makes my shadows look light appears in front of me. Her dress is made of a fabric that I’venever seen before. It sparkles as if she’d pulled the night sky down and fashioned a dress from it, stars included.

Her eyes are anything but dark, though. There’s a light to them that reminds me of Echo’s stormy eyes.

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