Page 17 of Crown of Wrath

The Shade just stares at me, silently judging my decision. I smile at all three of them. “And you’re telling me he wouldn’t have stabbed me in the back? He wouldn’t have brought me to Gethin or Rhion as a prized captive if he’d been strong enough? Anyone that would kill one of us is the enemy, and I won’t spend an extra moment trying to prevent their death. If we’d left Jasper alive, he probably would have made our lives more difficult somehow.”

They’re quiet, and I shrug before bending over to wipe my blade on his uniform again. “Darian, it’s time to move. Find another one of his uniforms and get changed into it. We need to be ready to go.”

You could hear a pin drop as all three of them stare at me. “Now,” I say, my voice growing colder, and Darian and Lee immediately leave the room to look for Jasper’s uniforms, leaving me and the Shade together again.

“You wouldn’t have done that before you received the Painted Crown.” His voice is a soft wind blowing from nowhere and everywhere at once. “When you were a Wyrdling, you made sure that as few people were hurt as possible.”

“I’m neither a Wyrdling nor am I naïve any longer. I will not put us at risk to save someone who will only ever do us harm. Jasper Wren would have sold us out to the House of Steel in an instant.”

“I could have used his debt to force him out of the city.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’d be the one to spring the trap, Shade. Maybe our desire to prevent bloodshed is the real trigger for Gethin’s trap. Regardless, I will not feel bad for the life that I took. He certainly wouldn’t have saved us if our roles had been reversed.”

The Shade doesn’t say anything as we stand in the room that had once been pristine and is now covered in a pool of blood. I slide my knife into its sheath and realize just how covered in gore I am. I’ll need a bath when we get back to Stormhaven before I can be seen in court again.

Right now, that little inconvenience is far more important than the dead Immortal at my feet.

Chapter 9

Beware the void. You cannot see its truth, Son of Darkness. It is far from empty. It is the Unending Sea, and there are far more dangerous things than dragons lurking in the depths of that darkness.

~Vyran the Black, A History of Magic and Dragons

Maeve

I don’t know if I trust the Shade’s strength, but there isn’t any other option since I can’t shadow walk. The Shade believes he is strong enough to get me directly behind Casimir. It’ll be draining to move into a steel room like that, but he has plenty of experience shadow walking to know what he can and can’t do.

After that, things are going to become messy. The Shade will be too weak to shadow walk, and we’ll be two floors from the bottom of the Keep of Steel. We won’t be able to just jump out awindow and fly away. No, it will come down to me and my Earth powers.

No one has questioned if I can get us out.

The Shade’s silence is a comfort now. No questions. No discussion. Just patient waiting while Darian and Lee make their way into Casimir’s cell, Darian dressed and changed into an exact replica of Jasper Wren and Lee transformed into a mouse.

“It’s time,” the Shade says and quickly grips my wrist. I nod to him, and shadows appear at our feet. My heart almost begins to speed up at the thought of visiting the void again, but that steady rhythm of my heartbeat never actually changes. It’s slow and steady and almost mechanical like a clock.

The Shade pulls us into the void, and my muscles relax as the darkness presses against me. It tempts me, begging me to give into it, but I resist. I have a purpose here. The world depends on me.

It almost convinced me once. When I found out that everything was a lie, I almost let the void take Cole, Darian, Lee, and myself. If the Shade hadn’t called in a debt, we’d all be lost to that darkness.

I feel the Shade reaching out with the power of the Shadowed Cloak, and he grasps at any bit of darkness in a prison cell covered with steel. Almost no one else would have the strength to force us into that room. Every bit of energy he pushes toward it is being consumed by the steel. Well, every bit up to a certain point. If he can flood the room with power, the steel won’t be able to absorb his power fast enough.

He does. We’re pulled out of the void and re-emerge into the normal world right behind a man wearing a bloodstained red military coat. Jasper Wren stands across the table from us, his eyes never straying from the man below us. The Shade falls to the ground, completely exhausted, and I ignore him.

My hands are moving immediately. Both of them wrap around Casimir’s temples, my fingers pressing against the black hair that’s so similar to Cole’s. For the first time in weeks, my heartbeat changes. Instead of peace, hatred for Casimir fills me. It’s a hate so intense I have a hard time maintaining control over myself. The world flashes red as I consider smashing Casimir’s face against the steel table he’s sitting at.

I don’t, though. I am not that Wyrdling who had no control over herself any longer. Instead, I focus on his pain and suffering, enjoying the knowledge that this is far more excruciating than anything he could do with fire.

Black lines form in his skin around my fingertips, and his body stiffens as my poison flows through him. Just like I could control shadows, this poison is mine, and it obeys my commands. It wants to move to his brain, leaving him a husk of a human. Then it would move to his heart, finally killing him, but not until he’d spent hours feeling the fiery burn of his veins melting and healing repeatedly as my poison moved.

Instead, I control it and focus its effects where I need them. I push it toward his mind. The black sludge that I nearly killed my cousin with encircles his ability to think and blocks it from any of his senses. He immediately falls over in his chair.

Jasper shifts back to Darian, and Lee is already on the floor and growing. Using my powers was harder than I’d expected because of the steel cell, but it wasn’t enough to drain me. The Shade is climbing to his feet, and I recognize just how close we were to not making it. I need to make sure he doesn’t have to use his powers for a while after this.

“Darian, please carry Casimir,” I say,

And then the sound of a lock clicking into place fills the otherwise silent room. So it was a better trap than we’d expected.

It doesn’t matter. Darian hesitates, and I snarl at him. “I said to get Casimir. I said that I’d get us out of here.”

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