Page 24 of Crown of Wrath

My fingers wrap around his shadow-wreathed hand, and I pull him to me. I finally feel the shadows that had covered him, and I know that these differ from mine. Not only from a different person, it’s like they’re from a different world.

When I’d let the darkness fill me, I’d felt the rhythm of the void, but when I touch these shadows, a different rhythm flows through me. It’s one I know, but I can’t remember from where. My mind is too worried about getting my Da out of the void safely, though, and the thought is gone as quickly as I pull the shadows away from him and wrap him in my own.

I turn to the Shade, to Cole, and say, “I’ll get us back.” It’s simple. Clear. I feel as if my mind works again, and the shadows that fill the area around us are just as powerful as they were the day that I met Calyr.

I pull us back toward the opposite shore. I may have wanted the void before, but I won’t risk my Da to it. I won’t let anything happen to him. Yet, as I pull both the Shade and my Da behind me like a boat towing something, I can’t help but wonder what’s behind me. What is on the other side?

What waited for us if we had kept swimming deeper into the void?

It doesn’t matter. I can feel my father’s hand through the shadows. My father is alive.

I pull both Cole and my Da behind me through the void. It doesn’t take nearly as long now that I’m not looking for anyone. In a matter of minutes, I cross the divide and reach out to a place I haven’t seen in so long.

Aerwyn. The tiny village filled with Lesser Fae. A place of safety where no one knows to look for me or my father. A place where I can breathe and spend time with someone that I was sure was dead.

I reach out for the little bed that I’d slept in. The pine branches that the bedframe had been made of. There, under the window, I feel for a shadow that I remember stepping on regularly. I make it mine and use it to pull us out of the darkness.

Chapter 12

A History of Magic and Dragonsdidn’t prepare us for the future. It didn’t teach us everything we needed to know. It was exactly what it claimed to be. A history. Not a primer. Thus, it is necessary for a more useful book for future generations. The dangers to Nyth will not end with me, and my knowledge of the world must be shared.

~Maeve Arden, A Future of Magic and Dragons

Maeve

I step out of the shadow and realize that I’m completely naked. In a heartbeat, I recreate the midnight dress I’d worn for so long before the Shade or my Da realizes.

My father slowly stands up from the fetal position I’d found him in. Still wearing the simple farmer’s outfit he’d worn so longago, he doesn’t look like he’s aged a day. After fifteen years, his thinning brown hair should have thinned more. There should be wrinkles on his forehead and along his lips. But there aren’t any.

There, in the afternoon light streaming from the cottage window, I stare at the man that I’d believed was dead. Even Vesta had been sure of it. He’s not, though, and part of me feels more whole. I’d gone into the void feeling like the Queen of Earth.

The woman that stepped out of the shadows can’t be that, though. The Queen of Earth is calm, and tears stream from my eyes.

“You sound like Maeve, but you can’t be her. She’s eight,” he says. “Yet, you sound so much like her…” He runs his hand over my face and shakes his head. “You can’t be her. You can’t be. My Little Star is only eight, and you’re a young woman. But your voice… Your eyes… Maeve?”

I try to blink the tears away, but it’s futile. They refuse to stop running down my cheeks. “Da, it’s me. I’m so sorry.” The apology gushes out of me without thinking. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so young and…”

He frowns again, his confusion coloring his movements. “Sorry for what? For growing up?” A sharpness crosses his face, and he looks at the Shade—no, at Cole dressed in the Shadowed Cloak. “Your mother never told me about a magic that could make someone age like this.”

Even with how surprised and worried he seems, he lets out a deep yawn, like he’s just waking up from a long nap. “Please, Little Star, tell me what’s going on? Did your mother come back?”

I close my eyes and let the memory that Vesta had hidden from me as an eight-year-old girl play through my mind. “I tried to hurt you, father,” I whisper. “A long time ago, I got angry and I did a terrible thing.” My eyes snap open, and I see him taking mein, not as a little girl all grown up, but a High Fae with shadows rolling from my fingertips. “I’m like Mother, and when you told me that Mother was Fae, I thought you were lying, and I tried to hurt you.”

Da’s frown deepens. “Why would I lie? I love your mother more than anyone other than you.”

Little motes of dust float through the air behind him, sparkling between Da and the window. The little room that we’re in is so similar to the cottage I’d grown up in, and yet it’s nothing like it. It’s the same size. It’s built similarly.

Yet, it bears none of the love that built our family. It is not a home. It’s simply a place to sleep. My mother didn’t instill our home with love, but stories of her did. I knew of the woman my father loved as well as I knew how to hunt rabbits. Her existence in those stories had been a part of what had built our home.

I know exactly how much he loves my mother. He always has. “I… I was eight. I hated being called a Wyrdling.”

He looks at me, a clarity in his eyes that I don’t remember. “What happened, exactly, Little Star?”

“You’ve been in the void for fifteen years,” I whisper, worrying that he’ll hate me for what I did. “I used revulsion shadows to send you there when I was eight, and Vesta thought you were dead. There was nothing she could do.”

He’s silent, but I don’t see anger in his eyes. I shuffle my feet nervously and try to breathe normally, but I can’t. What if he hates me for what I did?

He shakes his head slowly. “Was it really all a dream? Brenna came home, and we raised you together. It felt so real, but it was all just a fantasy? Or was she really there in the dark place?”

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