Page 87 of Crown of Wrath

“I can’t protect you if you leave Valinar. Maeve is right. You’re not ready for battle. You still barely know how to shadow walk.”

I arch an eyebrow at my mother, but she’s ignoring me. “Then I will train to shadow walk until it is time to fight.” Echo turns to me. “Brenna can’t teach me because she’s bound to Valinar. The other shadow walkers are…”

“…afraid?” I finish for her. I understand that feeling after dealing with Cole acting as the Shade.

She nods and glances at the people watching us. “Do you feel like it’s a weight? Like it’s something to hide from?”

I chuckle. “It’s freedom, Echo. For me, at least. But you still have to be careful because if you give in too much to it, you’ll still be lost. The void doesn’t want anything to leave. Especially you. The first time you go to it with sadness or exhaustion in your heart, it will pull you in, and you’ll never leave.”

She smiles up at me before turning to my mother. “Queen Maeve will teach me to shadow walk as well as she does, and I will be ready for the coming battle.”

Brenna looks at her for a moment, then she turns on her heel and crosses the field to go back to the houses without a word. “Does she always hate it when people disagree with her?” I ask.

Echo shrugs. “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever done it. She’s… she’s Brenna. She’s been my teacher forever.”

I have a hard time believing that she’s never argued with Brenna at all, but thinking back, I don’t know if I ever disagreedwith Vesta. Maybe the connection between a teacher and student is different.

If Vesta told me to do something in that stern way she always did, I don’t think I’d even consider arguing with her. She was always right. Why wouldn’t she be now?

I’m sure that my mother always seemed right to Echo as well. “I’ll talk to my mother, but if you’re going to be a part of any kind of battle, you’re going to need to spend a lot more time in the void between now and then. That’s safety. There are no shadow walkers within the House of Steel. No matter what happens, you can stay safe there. You can retreat or come back to Valinar or even attack a different area from the void. It’s the most important thing you can learn.”

She nods to me, and for the first time since I arrived here, she gives me a look that almost seems respectful. “Thank you, Queen Maeve,” she says, her voice softening. “Thank you for showing me my weaknesses. I had assumed that I was ready for what was coming.”

I smile at the girl and want to tell her to stay away from the battle just like my mother said. I remember feeling like I was ready for fights. I’d thought I was powerful and could do anything.

I’d been wrong, and I’d experienced the horror that is losing the people closest to you. I’m not worried about Echo. My mother is right that she’s too young to be fighting, but she can still help. I’m sure of that.

But she’s going to have to watch the people she trained with die. A shiver runs through me, and I wonder who will die this time. I wonder what loss will try to break me while I try to save more people. It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, when the day is done, there won’t be anything but heartbreak waiting.

That’s what war is. The enemies we’re about to face aren’t too prideful to use trickery. They’re willing to do anything it takesto win. It won’t be clean like our battles with Steel soldiers in the field have been. That was simple, and I trusted us to win those fights because they were exactly what you’d expect. Them against us. Blades and magic trying to destroy the other side.

What will Gethin do, though? He didn’t win against the House of Earth with just strength. The longer I’ve been the Queen of Earth, the more I’ve realized that there’s no way that a barricaded Keep full of soldiers would lose a simple battle to the House of Steel. Unlike the House of Shadows, Roderic was ready for the impending battle.

The powers of the House of Steel are evenly matched with the House of Earth. It wouldn’t be like Flames fighting Shadows where the winner was obvious. If anything, Earth should have had an advantage.

So how did they win? Gethin’s trickery is the only plausible answer.

We have to remember that when we plan. We have to remember that our enemy is going to do things we don’t expect, and our plans arenotgoing to work as well as they should.

“It’s normal for someone your age to be unaware of the things she needs to learn. That’s why we have teachers, after all.”

Echo smiles, and she looks past me. “I should go talk to Brenna,” she says softly. “I don’t like that she’s angry.” It feels like she’s wanting to say something else.

“I think she’s probably more frustrated at the situation as a whole rather than at you, in particular. She understands the drive to fight. Gods, she’s probably the one who instilled it in you. She’s just worried about your safety. You’re still very young.”

“Not too young, though.”

I stare into those stormy gray eyes and know that she’s been raised to be a Queen, and a Queen is never really young. “Not too young for some things. Why don’t you go back to what you weredoing and let me talk to my mother? Remember that I’m young too.”

She looks up and pauses for a moment, considering. Then she nods. “Thank you again, Queen Maeve. I look forward to your lessons on shadow walking.” She pauses again, just like the day she’d led us through Valinar. Then she hugs me and whispers, “I’ve waited for so long to meet you, and you’re everything that Brenna and Vesta said you’d be.”

She catches me off guard, and before I ask what she means, she’s already running away. The shadow walkers begin training with her again, and she looks absolutely bored out of her mind as she fights three people who can’t hold a candle to her power. But she is running around the field even if she looks like an idiot with no idea why she’s moving. She doesn’t fight when someone more experienced tries to teach her.

I walk in the direction that my mother had gone, and it’s not long before I find her in the trees, her misty hand pressed against one, and her head resting against it. “She isn’t ready yet,” she says before I’ve made a sound.

“I know. Neither was I, though.”

She lifts her head and turns to look at me. “You weren’t, but you were my daughter. I could trust you.”

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