Page 129 of Crown of Wrath

The blade moved just as his father had taught him, slipping between ribs to pierce his heart. It was a beautiful strike.

Cole Cyrus hadn’t been strong enough to kill Gethin, but he’d been strong enough to inspire others to fight for the world. He’d been strong enough to convince Rhion to kill his own father.

Sometimes, it’s not how strong you are that matters. Sometimes it’s how much you’re willing to sacrifice, and Cole was willing to sacrifice himself.

Maeve Arden was a child in the eyes of Immortals. She’d wielded powers for less than a year when they’d trained with them for thousands of years.

But she’d proven that there was more to her than a bloodline. She’d fought every step of the way. She’d trained to become a warrior. She’d felt more pain in the last year—both physical and emotional—than most Immortals ever felt.

Only Cole truly understood his wife, and he’d known exactly what she would need to hear in that moment between life and death. He’d understood that his death would break her. Something in him had known that this moment would come, and he’d listened to that voice in his mind that was terrified for his wife.

Maeve steps around a corner while hunting for Gethin and finds him. He holds Cole in his arms, and then Cole explodes with flames. She runs as fast as the Queen of Earth can run toward them, but even she is too slow. She watches as thefires burned so brightly around her husband that nothing could survive it.

She has hope then because everyone who sees their entire world being held by a monster hopes for the monster’s death. Deep down, she knows that no amount of flames would kill Gethin, though.

A bony finger reaches around, blotting out the light of the flames, and then the flames stop. A single razor-sharp finger pierces Cole’s chest right through his heart, and blood flows over the bright red gambeson.

A moment passes where she sees him, those bright orange eyes filled with flames, and she sees the smile on his face. He’d known that he wouldn’t survive. He’d refused to go to the void with anything but joy in his heart.

A smile that she knows so well crosses his face as he slumped to the ground, and then Maeve felt the emptiness. She expected it to be like the void, but it isn’t. She thought it would be like when Hazel had gone into the Nothing. She thought it would be like when her Da and everyone else had gone into the Nothing.

She thought she would be prepared. She isn’t.

Cole’s soul is ripped from hers, and the pain hits her in the chest so hard that she falls to her knees mid-run. She gasps for breath as pain wracks her body. There is no till death do us part for soul bonds. Cole’s soul isn’t just ripped from hers. It severs a part of hers and takes it with him. She can still feel him, still feel the man he used to be, still feel the bond that should be there.

But there’s nothing on the other side. There’s no Cole. There are only remnants of his feelings. The scent of burning wind and the touch of smooth sand on her toes are still there, but there is no tower. There is no Cole.

He’s gone, and she is left. And pain is all she knows as darkness overtakes her.

Chapter 64

I understand why people shatter now. Surviving, maintaining the tenuous hold on reality, when your soul is in tatters, is so much harder. Even after everything, though, I trusted him. I trusted Cole to be right, that I could survive this pain. He was the best of us, after all. How could he be wrong?

~Maeve Arden, A History of Flames

Maeve

Pain. That is all I am. A shattered piece of something grand. I’d thought that I’d understood pain the day that Hazel had walked into the Nothing. I’d imagined that there was no pain that could be worse than believing everyone I cared about was dead.

I was wrong. Agony flares to life inside me like a clock ticks the seconds. As regular as breathing, the jagged edges of my soulrip and slide against the pieces of Cole’s that were left behind. It feels like shards of glass scraping against each other with only my heart separating them.

Six hours after I watched Cole die, my heart is nothing but ribbons.

I can’t let the pain keep me from this, though. I can’t let him disappear into the flames without me being there. I’m strong enough to stand beside him for this final journey.

There is no till death do us part for soul bonds.

No, there is not. He’ll be waiting for me. He’ll always be waiting for me. Even if I live thousands of years, he’ll stand at the edge of the void. If he’s strong enough to do that, I’m strong enough to stand beside his pyre.

There are hundreds of other pyres built, and tonight the city of Draenyth will burn brighter than ever before. I don’t care. This is the last fire I’ll ever care about.

I look into Cole’s eyes one last time. The fiery orange that only ever appeared when he was truly happy is still there, never having burned away into the blue he was born with. I run my fingers over his cheek, only my nails grazing his skin.

Another wave of pain rolls through me, and my body tenses as if lightning were shooting through me. I grit my teeth through it, and it subsides. My heart still aches, but the unbearable pain that washes over me every few minutes passes.

“How did you know? How could you possibly have known?” The words come out as barely more than whispers. A thousand people surround me, looking up as I gaze into Cole’s eyes. They’re waiting for me to leave him so they can light the fire and go back to celebrating ourvictory.

I know we won. Rhion killed Gethin and told his men to stand down. A remarkably small number of humans and High Fae were killed compared to what all-out war would have done. Itdoesn’t feel like a victory to me—not when Cole is dead. When my world feels like it’s been ripped from me.

---