Page 88 of Crown of Wrath

I huff. “Your daughter? Maybe I have your blood running through my veins, but that girl out there is more your daughter than I am. Look at her, Mother. She’s…”

My mother interrupts me. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. You have to understand that leaving you and your father was the hardest thing I ever did.” There’s a sorrow in her voice that I hadn’t expected. “I did it for you and him. I couldn’t have kept us both hidden, and living in hiding isn’t the life I’d ever wished for a little girl. It nearly broke me.”

“How long did you have to run before you created Valinar?” I ask.

She looks into the mist. “Two years. I spent two years running from Gethin’s hunters as I tried to put together a plan to gather the rest of the House of Shadows. Even then, it was a gamble. I didn’t know what Calyr would come up with when I went to him. It could have been so many things, but I was desperate. I had to keep everyone safe until you came of age and until you could claim the Painted Crown.”

Then she smiles. “There were so many ways this could all fall apart. The Prince could have failed. You could have figured everything out and walked away. Calyr could have turned me down. Gethin could have found you and killed you before you had the strength to fight back. There were a thousand ways everything could have crumbled, but they didn’t. That, more than anything else, shows that you’re my daughter. I’m known to have pulled victories out of impossible odds on more than one occasion, and you seem to be following that path.”

“We’re going to need to beat terrible odds to win this war, Mother. You know that, don’t you?” This is the first time I’ve talked to her about what’s happening outside of Valinar, and she looks more than a little dismayed.

Her hands press against the bark of the tree she was leaning against, and misty fingers drum a slow rhythm as she stares past me. “I know the unlikeliness of our success. You haven’t exactly brought an army with you.”

“I brought Cole Cyrus, Casimir Cyrus, and myself, and we just got done decimating an army.”

My mother’s lip curls up. “I know. I watched, remember.”

“How did you imagine this all going, Mother? Did you think that we’d rally the House of Flame against Gethin? The Lesser Fae? You’d already found the remnants of the House of Shadows, so what other army was there?”

She shakes her head. “I had hoped that the Prince could manipulate the citizens of Draenyth more as the Shade. Therewasn’t very much hope to begin with, and that’s part of why I went to Calyr. It’s why I sacrificed any chance of seeing you for twenty years. I had to do what I could.” Her smile fades, and she turns away from me to look out at the mist-covered trees. “Even if the odds are against us, I couldn’t give up, Maeve. I couldn’t let Gethin win.”

I hear the anger in her voice, and I put my hand on her arm reassuringly. “I know and understand.”

She gave me up to save the world. More than that, she gave up Da. She couldn’t see him for all these years, and he has so few years left. She may be Immortal, but he isn’t, and every year he has is a gift that must be so precious to her.

“Why didn’t you come straight to Blackgrove when you became Valinar? When I was a baby, no one would have been able to run from you.”

She shakes her head. “Because you couldn’t have become strong enough to wear the Painted Crown if you’d lived here with me. You couldn’t have…” She sighs. “It’s why Vesta stayed with you. She taught you to be strong, to be a human that could stand up against Immortals. I couldn’t have done that. I loved you too much.”

She finally turns to look at me. “Before I met your Da, I could have trained you to be a warrior and a Queen just like Casimir trained the Prince. I could have cut you and torn you apart and forced you to face your fears every day so that you could be the Queen the House of Earth needs, but now… I can’t. Watching you fight with Echo terrified me. I thought you were going to kill her, and I nearly stopped you both. I’m not the Queen of Shadows anymore, Maeve. I’m…”

I pull her in for a hug. “It’s okay. It all worked out the way it was supposed to, and I think we have a lot more hope for us winning than you think.”

Her lips tighten into a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes as she continues to stare into the forest. “It has to be enough. There’s nothing left to do now. He’s gone in search of the remaining relics, hasn’t he?”

I nod to her and she says, “We have to stop him. Soon. Every moment he has to train with the other House’s powers makes him infinitely more powerful. Every House has weaknesses that can be manipulated. Shadows beats Steel every time, but if he has the Brand or the Choker, his weaknesses will be negated. If he were to capture both, there would be almost nothing we could do to win against him. Even you wearing the Painted Crown wouldn’t be able to hurt him. He’s not some untrained child. He knows what each House is capable of, and he has the power of the Conduit flowing through him. We cannot allow him to train any longer.”

“There goes the idea of rest and relaxation,” I mutter. “We can’t go to war yet. Our human forces still need time to train and equip themselves. On that note, I have need of some of your shadow walkers.”

She finally turns to me, her eyebrow raised in question. “Human forces?” I give her a smile and begin to tell her what we’ve done.

Chapter 43

A world is a strange thing. It is an island within the Unending Sea, and each world has its own gateways, secrets, and rulers. Every world has at least one god. They are like the Conduits of Nyth. They are the creatures that created that world, the ones who needed a place to call home. Their magic gave their world life, and now that world gives them power.

~Rhaskar Thorne, The First Book of the Priests

Cole

The trees here are different. The bark reminds me of birch, but the branches aren’t so straight. They split and fork like oak trees, their trunks wide and strong like the ones near Aerwyn. Yet, their long, thin leaves, so similar to ash, fall to the forest floor.

And Bog climbs one of them to catch a bird. His gnarled and calloused hands move over the paper-thin bark with ease, and he makes barely a sound as he eyes the creature. His brown skin blends in with the trees, and the thin bit of mist that fills the air creates an ever-present mask over his movements.

The look in his eyes is one of pure attention, and Maeve smiles next to me as we watch him hunt the bird. She was raised to be a huntress, even though she rarely does so any longer, and she can appreciate the skill it takes to be successful.

Rivertail stands beside us, and I can’t help but think that they all look better than they ever did in Aerwyn. This is what they would look like if they’d been free in the forests. No matter how much Darian, Lee, and I tried to protect and provide for them, they were still hiding.

Here in Valinar, though, they aren’t hiding. They’re in another world where nothing bad can happen to them. They can farm or raise animals or have loud celebrations. Their homes can stretch above the trees if they want. There are no restrictions here, and they would never have had that freedom in Nyth.

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