Page 43 of Crown of Wrath

Now he is being pulled away from this world—away from what is left of Vesper. Calyr demands that they leave, to journey far through the void to find a new world, but that will mean that he’ll have to leave even this last bit of her.

He knows Calyr is right. He knows that if he wants any of the other dragons to survive, they must leave, and he can’t stay behind. The hunters won’t come to him, they will follow Calyr and Vyran. They’ll go where the magic goes, and Sidon is the only one capable of defeating the hunters.

They’ll be helpless without him.

His soul aches to rejoin his mate.They need you, Sidon. Her voice whispers on the wind, and he knows it’s the fractured pieces of her soul whispering to him. There is no sound. The voice is only in his mind, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

“I cannot leave you,” he snarls.

They need you. I do not.

He knows the rest of what she’s saying. That he had failed her already. He hadn’t been there when the hunters had come. He had been watching another area of their roost with Kasan. He should have been here to protect his mate.

Protect them, Sidon, as you swore you’d do. Protect the Younglings and the Elders. Stand between them and your enemies, whatever it takes. I will always be with you, a voice on the wind. No one can take me away from you completely.

Sidon’s tears dry, and he presses one claw against the stone that had once been his mate. His claw runs over the scales behind her wings as he had done so often when she was alive, and he whispers, “I will protect them, Vesper, because you would have me do it. I will not be the brute that you met. I will be the better dragon that you helped me to become. But I will miss you. Forever.”

And Sidon walked away from his mate’s body to follow the rest of the dragons, the only one who had ever defeated one of the hunters. He knew what pain was now, and he let it fuel him as he fought. Every battle, he hoped to give the hunters just as much pain as he felt.

But that was impossible, because no amount of physical pain could compare to the ache of a lost soul bond.

Chapter 20

A steel crossbow bolt is your best friend. It may not kill a Fae, but it will damn sure slow it down. Shoot first, and then ask what the bastard is doing.

~Sir Alistair Hawking, Magical Combat for Humans

Cole

She’s still sleeping. It’s been six hours, and she’s still unresponsive. Flames flicker along my fingers, and their burn against my skin grounds me as I stare at my betrothed, my Queen, and more than anything, the woman I love.

This is not a good sign. When I’d brought her to this clearing, I’d done it to keep her from breaking. I didn’t want her to see anyone or anything that would give her memories of Aerwyn or her father. I needed to keep her safe from every possible newpain. Seeing Darian or Lee would remind her of Aerwyn, since that’s where she met them. Seeing Stormhaven would make her blame herself for leaving her father after he’d been out of the void for less than a week.

I wanted to keep her soul from breaking, but the more I sit and stare at her, the more I question whether she’s already shattered.

The flames climb my arm, singeing the skin and bringing blisters to the surface. Pain keeps me aware of everything. It keeps me from letting myself fall into the hole of doubt. Destiny would not play this terrible trick on us. There has to be a way out of it. I have to fix the broken pieces of the woman I love.

But when I reach out for her through our bond, it’s confusing. The world that I’d looked in at—that dark forest filled with shadows—isn’t the same. I can’t feel Maeve’s presence anymore. Everything’sdifferent, and it’s utterly terrifying.

Mental landscapes don’t change suddenly like this. They evolve as a person grows, but they don’t just change.

It only drives home the probability that the woman I love is gone, and I just can’t accept that.

I let the flames on my arm expire, and I take a deep breath. There’s no more time to postpone. I cannot allow Maeve to be lost to her own shattered mind and soul. Giving it time won’t help her come back from this.

I focus on the bond between us, following it to her, and I close my eyes. I feel myself in darkness, and I recognize it for what it is. The void. It’s the only place that she’s felt comfortable in. The only difference is that this isn’t the real void. This is just Maeve’s mind recreating it. She’s never experienced that overwhelming pressure that threatens to swallow you whole, and so I don’t either. For Maeve, it’s always been a temptation rather than a fear.

And it calls to me now, just like it calls to her. It whispers of letting go forever, of drifting in the silence forever.

There’s more to this place than the void. Maeve is here too—somewhere. The void fractures her, scattering pieces of her soul across this shadowy sea. I swim toward one of them, drawn like a moth to a distant flame. It’s invisible in the darkness, but when my hand brushes against it, it feels solid. Real.

Sand grits against my fingers. Using it as an anchor, I haul myself out of the void and onto a small island within Maeve’s mind. Black sand stretches out beneath me like any other island’s beach, just as dark that it’s indistinguishable from the void at first glance. Jagged rocks rise from the shore, their surfaces just as dark, but their cores twist and shimmer like crystallized shadows. They remind me of the obsidian tower in my own mental landscape.

The island is dark, but it’s not like the void. It feels like twilight. The moon hangs low in a purple sky, and the sun is gone. “Maeve?” I call out.

A low whisper reverberates through the air. “Cole?” The voice is Maeve’s, but it’s… off. Lost. Confused. It’s as though she isn’t sure it’s really me.

“Maeve!” I shout, my voice cracking. “Talk to me. Please don’t hide like this.”

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