Page 29 of Crown of Wrath

A terrifying realization shakes me.

“Where’s Mother?” I say, my head whipping to Da. “You’re bound to her, so where is she?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’d expected her to be here.”

“So reach out to her through your bond,” I say, every bit of power inside me beginning to swirl. “She could protect you from the void. You should be able to show her where you are. She should already be here. She…”

“I can’t feel her, Maeve. It’s like she’s gone, but there’s no hole in my soul like she’d explained. It’s almost like we were never married.”

I glance at Cole. “Is it because he’s human?”

Cole shrugs. “I have no idea. To my knowledge, your mother is the only Immortal that’s been stupid enough to bind herself to a human.”

He pauses, a glimpse of fear crossing over his face after calling my mother stupid, but then he brushes it off. It’s something he would have said before. He never worried about hurting my feelings, and his brutal honesty was one of the reasons I never expected the manipulation.

I don’t comment on it. I don’t want him to be afraid of being himself. More cracks in that tower when it’s finally beginning to heal are the last thing I want.

“You don’t know…” I say softly. “Da, have you ever pulled on the bond before? I mean, you must have when I sent you to the void, or Mother wouldn’t have known you were there.”

He nods. “I’ve tried to reach out to her until my head hurts every day. Something strange has happened, and I’m sorry. I don’t know as much as everyone else. I can’t describe it better than that.”

Cole says, “There’s not any history of this happening, if that’s what you were wondering. We could sneak into Draenyth and try to research it, but I don’t think it’s worthwhile. The only thing I’ve ever heard about people that are magically married is that they can easily contact their spouse or their spouse is dead. There is no other option.”

I shake my head. “Then what could it be?”

“What if she’s lost in the void?” Cole asks. “The connection could be too fuzzy, then. Even shadows make magical connections fuzzy. Moving into the void could definitely cause that distance.”

I blink. “Then the connection would have been clearer when Da was forced there. Then she could have reached out and protected him.”

“But why didn’t she bring me out then? And how could she be lost there?” Da asks.

I look at Cole, who shrugs. I don’t know either. “Maybe we need to take another trip into the void,” I say.

Da grins before going back to his fish. A soft song escapes his lips as he opens the pot and checks the fish, steam rising around his face as he looks into it. Like the song of the void, it reverberates even though he’s being so quiet. It’s a song I can feel more than I can hear.

It pulls at me like I’ve heard it so many times in the past, and I just don’t remember. Or maybe the memories were taken from me? Could someone have stolen my memories? Wouldn’t the Painted Crown have given them back?

I glance at Cole, and he’s frowning just as much as me. I don’t know why, though, and I reach out across our bond, tentatively at first. He welcomes me in, and I find myself on that desert landscape.

“Do you know that song?” I ask.

Over the wind that used to be scorching, Cole’s voice comes loud and clear. “Yes. But I don’t know from where.”

I scan my memories, trying to think of any place we’d have heard a song. Maybe in Draenyth? In a tavern? The Firelight Café? In Aerwyn? I can’t remember a single time that someone was singing that song.

“I feel like it’s important,” I say.

“It is. It’s a song of power, the kind of magic that the world was built of. You can hear similar songs in places of power. They came from before the dragons; they’re songs of the gods.”

I didn’t think that the High Fae believed in the gods.

I shake my head. “That’s a question for another day, then. It’s not that important, is it?”

“No,” the wind whispers to me. “Spend time with your father, Maeve. Nearly everything else can wait.”

I sigh and let the connection between us break apart. Da is grinning at me. “Dinner is done,” he says and hands me a plate. He passes plates out to all of us, the fish smelling of fresh herbs that had been gathered while people were fishing.

Rivertail smiles as he takes a deep sniff. “This smells so different from normal. Thank you, Sandor.”

---