Page 141 of Crown of Wrath

She is beautiful—beyondbeautiful. Her long black hair flows on a wind that doesn’t exist. She moves as if she isn’t bound to the world, stepping from the air onto the stone as though she is merelychoosingto touch the earth.

“Ah,” she says with a smile. “How interesting. You’re not human. You’re…”

She vanishes. Then, in an instant, she is beside me.

She is tall, almost twice as tall as I am, while maintaining an eerily consistent human proportion. Her hand moves to my face, her fingers cupping my cheek as she smiles down at me. “A human that’s been infused with dragon magic,” she muses. “So interesting. This world has grown so much while I’ve slept.”

I try to stand up, but I can’t. My body refuses to obey. Slowly, I rise—not by my own will. I float upward to be at eye level with her. “You’re the reason we were awoken,” she says, as gentle as it is absolute and unyielding. “Calyr tells me you have put us at risk, and yet you beg an audience. Explain yourself.”

I meet her gaze andunderstand. I’d thought she would be like my mother. I thought I understood power, especially after just fighting a dragon, but Lysara is… Lysara is more. Lysara makes Calyr look weak.

In her eyes, I glimpse true power. “I… My husband died. We were bound, and—”

She moves closer to me, her smile unreadable. “Your husband?”

Her palm presses against my cheek, and warmth—pure and impossible—floods me. It’s not just heat. It’s life. It’s the part of humanity that sets them apart from even Immortals. I lean into it, unable to stop myself, and for the first time since this allbegan, I feellight. The fear dissolves. The exhaustion, the pain, the endless weight of loss—it fades, swallowed by the radiance of her touch.

Shadows flow from me, completely unbidden, and wrap around her.

Shelaughs. “How wonderful!”

Then her expression becomes solemn. “You want me to bring your husband back from the dead?” Her smile fades completely. “That has never been done before.”

I smile at her, and I don’t feel the same fear coursing through me any longer. She took that away. “Then I’ll go to him. Nyth doesn’t need me anymore. Let me see him again, please?”

She frowns and stares into my eyes. “Your love is strong, Maeve,” she whispers. “You woke us and fought a dragon. You did all of this for love?”

“I’d do anything for Cole. I’d sacrifice anything to be with him again.”

The corner of her lip curls up. “I remember feeling that.” Lysara’s voice is like twinkling bells on a frosty night. “Seren,” she says the name of her lover as softly as if she were kissing him. “It’s been so very long since I last saw him.” She closes her eyes, and I know that she’s feeling the same pain rip through her as I feel so often. Her eyes flash open. “You put this world in jeopardy. You putmein jeopardy. All to bring a man back from the dead?”

“Yes,” I say and feel myself pulling away from the magic that flows from her touch. “Without him, the magic of this world would have disappeared. The animals. The Immortals. He didn’t deserve to die like that. I’d have accepted anyone’s death except his.”

She pauses, her head cocking to the side. “Don’t give me reasons. I know what love can do. You would have found angerin others by telling them this, but I remember the feeling of seeing my love’s face as he left this world.”

Behind her, the air shimmers and instead of the cave wall, I see a world of gray. There is a momentary image of people living, walking, whispering to each other. There are homes and fields of crops all under a gray sky. Then the image changes into a different kind of field, rows and rows of stone tables where humans are chained. They scream and writhe in anguish.

And Lysara smiles. “Never try to force my hand as you did with the dragon. We are not as forgiving as their kind. We… can bewrathful.”

The scent of death fills the cave, and her dress disappears. Her body is covered in crimson, her long black hair is coated in it. Her pale skin is drenched from the top of her head to the bottom of her soles. In her hands, she holds two daggers that drip blood onto the cave floor.

She is the Goddess of Death.

Then the image disappears, and I’m staring at her midnight dress again. Pools of blood lay on the cave floor where her daggers had dripped, telling me just how real that experience had been. “But today, I get to see the man I love again, and I am in a wonderful mood. I will grant you this one request—something that has never been done before. I have a stipulation, though.”

“Anything,” I whisper as my heart soars.

She cups my cheek again and smiles. “Your bloodline will owe me fealty when the time comes. We slept to stay away from the ones who hunted the dragons. We are awake now, and they will come here. Your child will be my greatest warrior in the coming war. He will command my armies. He will turn rivers red and my enemies to ash. Do you understand what you are promising?”

I nod to her. “Yes. My bloodline is yours to command in the coming war.”

She smiles and as her hand leaves my cheek, her nail scratches me just enough to draw blood. Lysara takes the drop of crimson and licks her nail. The magic of a binding oath wraps around me again, but it feels different. A different kind of power. A different kind of oath. Not for me.

For my children.

“Good. Have a wonderful life, Maeve Arden. Enjoy spending it with your husband.”

Then everything changes as she disappears. I fall to the ground, collapsing like a rag doll. My mind feels foggy, and I climb to my feet. And the bit of wood from Cole’s pyre is gone.

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