Page 121 of Crown of Wrath

“Gethin’s quarters?” I ask.

Casimir nods.

We slip into the void. I already know most of the Keep’s layout, so it takes only a moment to find a shadow and pull us through. The room we step into is unmistakably a king’s. A massive four-poster bed looms against the wall, carved entirely from stone. Dragons coil along its frame, their heads rearing, claws frozen mid-snarl, and tiny embedded crystals catch the morning light, refracting it in fractured beams across the chamber.

But the bed is untouched. It might as well be ornamental. The heart of the room is the enormous desk, drowning in books, maps, and scattered parchment. A map of Nyth, nearly as largeas the bed itself, dominates the wall, scrawled over in a mess of inked annotations. Books lie abandoned across the floor, torn from shelves in restless, sleepless fits. Every surface reflects the man who rules from this place—relentless, brilliant, unraveling.

Gethin has held the Steel Throne too long. His mind is breaking beneath its weight. I’ve known this, but standing here, surrounded by the proof of it, makes the truth undeniable.

Cole glances around the room and shakes his head. “Not here either. Where is he? Where would he be if he knew we were attacking?” Cole asks, his question pointed at his father.

Casimir shakes his head slowly. “He could be anywhere.” He looks around the room, his eyes stopping on the map and the chaos of the desk. “He’s never been like this. At least not while we were younger. Back then, he’d have been at the gates, commanding every movement, but I’m sure he’s not there now. He’s too paranoid that we’re coming for him. If he were on the ramparts, we could shadow walk directly to him, and no number of troops could keep us from him.”

He swears softly under his breath. “And even if he is confident that he can win a fight with us, he won’t do it in the open where people can watch. He has weaknesses. We all do. If he fought in the open like that, people could analyze the way he moved and acted to find those weaknesses. Even if they follow his orders, not everyone in his House has an unending loyalty to someone who’s obviously losing his mind.”

“So you think he’ll hide?” I ask. The frustration wells up in me unchecked. “The King of Steel is going to hide in the middle of an assault on Draenyth?”

Casimir shrugs. “He’s smart. Even if he’s insane, he’s still smarter than most. He knows you don’t want to assault the capitol or destroy the House of Steel. Based on how many times Rhion has walked away from fights with Cole, I’m sure he assumes you don’t even want to kill his heir. He’s probablyrecognized that he’s the only one in any genuine danger. He needs to keep the army at bay so that they don’t go through the entire Keep of Steel looking for him, but otherwise… Yes, he’s probably hiding.”

A snarl leaves my lips, but then I smile. “Well, lucky for us, I happen to be extremely good at finding hidden things.”

I close my eyes and let my Earth senses flow through the gray stone we stand on. I could find the Emerald Choker in the Keep of Earth; I’m sure I can find the King of Steel. Except… I can’t picture the Keep of Steel outside of this room. My mind keeps stopping at each of the corners of the room. It’s like something’s preventing my powers from expanding outward, as they normally do.

I open my eyes and walk to the corner of the room at one of the places my mind keeps getting stopped. As soon as I look at the wall, the reason is obvious. A hole has been cut in the otherwise seamless wall, and a brick of steel has been placed in the hole. A magic sink meant to prevent anyone from the House of Earth from being able to see the Keep and all of its secrets.

Casimir and Cole are watching me patiently. When Casimir sees the steel brick, he chuckles. “Told you he was smart. That’s going to make this a lot harder, but it’s exactly what I’d expected him to do. We’re going to have to search the Keep. When the other shadow walkers join the hunt, it’ll make it easier.”

I sigh. It may make it easier, but not by much. The Keeps are massive structures meant to house an entire section of the city. Hundreds of common rooms. Hundreds of secret passages and locked doors and otherwise unknown sections. And what happens if Gethin was so paranoid that he left the Keep altogether? He could be sitting in a cottage outside the city after giving orders to his commanders and Rhion.

Cole seems to read my mind. “He’s here,” he says with absolute certainty. “He won’t trust the defense of his House toanyone else. During the Shattering, he was at the forefront of the attack on the House of Earth. He refuses to give up the Throne to Rhion because he doesn’t believe that Rhion is strong enough. He’s tried to kill all the other Conduits because he believes he’s the only one who is still fit to rule. There’s no way that he’d let anyone else make decisions when his home is assaulted. There’s no way.”

Casimir nods to his son. “Cole’s right. There are a lot of things he’ll let someone else deal with. Even things that are important, like finding the House relics. Not this, though. There aren’t any second chances here. We could ignore him and simply take the Keep. We could do exactly what we did to the House of Shadows. Gethin may be willing to watch the world burn around him, but he won’t let his House burn.”

I look between the two of them and see absolutely no doubt about this in their eyes. “Well, that eliminates a lot of places he could be. Any thoughts on where to start?”

“Let’s assume Gethin knows that he’s the target,” Casimir says, slowly putting his thoughts together. “He’ll need to protect the gates to the city because ten thousand humans would make hunting for him far easier. More than any of the rest of us, he’ll remember the wars with humans. I was still a Prince then, but Gethin was already a Conduit. The House of Steel is one of the only reasons we were able to force a treaty, and he was a major part of that.”

Casimir pauses for a moment, continuing to work through his thoughts. “If Rhion isn’t sticking to his word and is here, fighting for his father, he’ll be holding the dungeons. They won’t want my soldiers freed and on this side of the wall. Gethin will need to be somewhere with a clear view to the battle at the gates that’s not too hidden—somewhere his soldiers can reach him to relay messages if there are problems, but not somewhere that his fight with us would be seen.”

I go through the images in my mind of the different places within the Keep of Steel. There’s an open-air breezeway that has a perfect vantage point to watch the battle at the gate of the city.

“Okay, I think I have a good idea of where he might be,” I say, and reach out my hands. Casimir and Cole take them, and I pull them into the void. Immediately, I move us all onto the breezeway.

Gethin is standing in the middle of the bridge with his arms on the steel railing. The only sign that he knows we’re there is a slight twitch as I pull Cole and Casimir from the void. Cole pulls the black steel sword from his back with a metallic scraping sound. It’s unmistakable. Casimir doesn’t draw the twin swords that hang at his waist, instead watching the man he’s feared for so long.

A steady wind blows all of our hair and carries the scent of magic and fear on it from the battlefield at the gate. Flames wreathe Casimir’s hands, the sound of them coming into existence impossible to miss.

Still, Gethin doesn’t move. He just keeps staring at the world below us.

Seconds pass, and none of us move. It should be obvious how this works. We attack, and he defends himself, except that nothing is ever simple with Gethin. I contemplate calling a shadow spear into existence but decide against it. It wasn’t very useful the last time I fought him.

Finally, after a full minute has passed, Gethin says, “You found me,” his eyes never leaving the battle. “Before you force me to deal with you, come look at this. Come look at what you’ve done.”

I glance at Casimir and Cole, who look nervous. Gethin says, “You think I’m ruining the world. You think that because the Houses are failing that I’m destroying the world. Come and look. The dragons knew this would happen. It’s in the book thatBrenna found. Ruin will come, but there are shades of ruin. Well, ruin is here, child, and it’s our decision on how far that ruin extends.”

I swallow hard, knowing that line.Ruin will come. Calyr is certain of this. Ruin will come, but there are shades of ruin. Will everything be burned away, or will it be a flame that purges the land and allows for new growth? Death and pain are terrible, but they are necessary.

Inni is credited with that. I move to the railing, far enough away from Gethin that I feel like I can still react to whatever he does. I look out at the city as he talks. “Draenyth is like a garden,” he says. “When I was a child and my father was the King of Steel, the streets were clean. The people in the markets were fair. It was a city of beauty and wonder. As time has passed, it’s become more lawless and more broken. It isn’t just the steel that is failing. It’s the city. It’s the world. Everything needs to be cleansed, and no one but me has the balls to do it.”

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