Page 111 of Crown of Wrath

“Ready?” I ask Echo.

“Not really? But Gethin could rush there, so we need to go.” That’s exactly the way I feel, and when I wrap my fingers around her hand, she gives it a squeeze of reassurance. I’m finding that we’re not all that different. We both want to do the right thing, but neither of us is really prepared for the world and the conflict that’s waiting.

I pull us through the shadows, and we end up in a hallway that I only had an image of. I hadn’t understood what was waiting for us. The floors are made of moss agate, a verdant whisper of tranquility, while the walls are made of what looks to be a silhouette of a forest in the middle of the night. Grays and browns make up the bark of what I’m guessing is supposed to be birch trees. In between them is a darkness that looks very similar to the shadows of trees.

Every other Keep has been simple and opulent. A single stone makes up each one, and while it’s gorgeous, it’s very one-dimensional. This is anything but. I run my finger over the birchbark and am shocked at the texture. It’s bark, but it’s stone. They created the walls of the Keep of Earth out of petrified wood. In between the trees of stone, the black is jet. It almost absorbs the bit of light that shines through the window at the end of the hallway.

“This is beautiful,” Echo says as she runs her fingers over the jet. “I wonder if all the halls are like this.”

“I don’t know. If the Keep of Earth is like other Keeps, it will be, but already, this one is quite a bit different. This would take so much more skill and power than the others.”

A slow grating sound pulls my attention away from the walls. As soon as my mind clears and I pay attention to the world around me, I feel it. A steady thrumming power that calls to me. As soon as my mind is clear, it’s a beacon that I can’t ignore.

Even when the slow scratching sound reverberates down the hallways. Echo looks more than a little nervous, but I’m already moving toward the power. She follows me down hallway after hallway through a maze of twists and turns. Unlike the Keep of Shadows, there are no corpses anywhere. The only clue that there was a terrible fight here are the multitudes of dried pools of blood which have become crimson stains in the stone.

Those stains stand in eerie contrast to the grandeur surrounding them. Golden chandeliers, dripping with candlelight, cast a flickering glow from the vaulted ceiling. Along the walls, paintings capture the vastness of the world—jagged mountaintops piercing the sky, restless oceans stretching beyond sight, meadows teeming with life.

Then there are the sculptures. Towering monoliths of stone, each one is carved into the shape of something monstrous. Some loom like grotesque hybrids—humanoid figures twisted with bat-like faces and leathery wings. Others resemble lions, but their snarling muzzles bear disturbingly human features. Claws like daggers. Fangs gleaming, as if poised to tear intoflesh. These are no ordinary statues. They are frozen nightmares, immortalized in marble and obsidian.

Then I see what’s screeching, and I stop. The pulsing power is close. So close. The door in front of us hangs from a single hinge. The dark cherry wood of the door has been battered and cut. Only splinters remain where the handle should be. An invisible wind keeps it moving, slowly creaking, and part of me wonders how long it’s been making that noise. Has it really been screeching incessantly for thirty years?

“That’s the Throne Room,” I say to Echo, who’s breathing heavily next to me. “Let’s try not to be surprised again?”

She grins up at me, and I feel around the Throne Room with my Earth senses to see what’s inside. There aren’t any people inside it. No Rhion or Gethin. No small army. Just furniture, art, and a surprising number of those monstrous sculptures. And the Throne, of course.

I nod to Echo, and we walk into the Throne Room. The moss agate floors and ceilings are just the same as every other room. The walls match the rest of the Keep with its petrified wood and jet design. The Throne of Earth, made of green and brown banded agate, is set against the far wall, and twenty-foot tall floor to ceiling windows allow light to pour into the room. Every few feet along the walls, there’s another one of those terrifying sculptures.

In the very center of the room with a sword still in him, a corpse with dark brown hair is left. Every other corpse was removed, but this singular person was left, and I can only believe that it’s Roderic. The former King of Earth.

I approach him carefully, not entirely sure that there aren’t any traps here. The sword is beautiful, not a soldier’s sword. Glyphs and sigils cover the steel, etched in gold. A king’s sword. Unlike Casimir, Gethin went to war with the House of Earth. Gethin killed Roderic.

I would expect him to be decayed after thirty years, but he looks like he died this morning. If you pulled the sword out and cleaned up the bloodstain under him, you’d think he was just sleeping.

He’s a handsome man. Where Casimir is sharp in every way, Roderic seems solid. His face is squared rather than narrow. His hair is thick. His body is just as solid, though it’s not massive like Rhion. In truth, he seems almost normal compared to the other powerful men I’ve met.

Almost like Gethin.

Then I hear another sound, and it’s not the door this time. Like stone against stone, it’s everywhere. Echoing in the otherwise silent chamber, I look around and realize the mistake I’d made the moment I appeared in the Keep of Earth.

What kind of Lesser Fae serve the House of Earth?

The sculptures are moving. Slowly moving, but each of them has turned those nightmare faces toward me and is standing up.

Chapter 55

I spent thirty years as a heartless Immortal with a single purpose. I did terribly cruel things to hundreds of people. Their lives were disposable, and still, their deaths were so much less cruel than what I did to Maeve. My darling Maeve…

~Cole Cyrus, A History of Flames

Cole

It feels like it’s been a lifetime since I clung to the shadows like this. The Cloak hides my face even though I’m sure the identity of the Shade has been whispered about among the people who still owe me debts. It doesn’t matter, though.

The debt is there whether they know who I am or not. The debt remains until I call it in. They can hate me. They can curse myname or even try to kill me, but they won’t get out of paying for the favor I gave them.

I step from the shadows into the marketplace. A weapon dealer in the Hammer District right outside the Keep of Steel stands beside his wares. The market is less busy than normal, and I can’t help but believe it has something to do with the tension in the air everywhere.

When an ending approaches, everyone feels it. The close of an era. The fall of kings and princes. The unraveling of life as they know it. Farmers, cooks, blacksmiths, and their families won’t recognize the reason behind the shift in their hearts. They won’t question why they linger at the dinner table a little longer, why their wandering hands seek warmth in the dark before dawn. But it’s the ending—the one coming in just days—that draws them closer.

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