Page 23 of Crown of Wrath

A word and a thought. But this is neither. This is a rhythm that hides behind the magic, and we float in it. With eyes wide open, there is nothing to see. No bodies. No fish in this sea of emptiness. Only our senses and minds and that constant rhythm of darkness are real here.

Strangely enough, there are landmarks as well. It feels like we’ve stepped into the ocean every time we shadow walk, but I’d only thought it was a lake because we’d never really looked around. I’ve never seen just how deep the darkness goes. Forever and ever, but only in one direction. In the other, all my ties to the real world lay. It’s almost like the transition from sea to shore. On the other side, where that sea goes on for infinity, there’s a depth to the darkness that even I could get lost in.

It calls to me. People like the Shade and other shadow walkers may swim along the shore here, but I was meant for the deepwaters. I was meant to swim in that place that’s far from the world that I’ve always known.

Maybe this is where I fit. After all these years of trying to find my place in the world, maybe this vast expanse of nothing is where I truly belong.

I swim out a little farther from shore and feel my tie to the physical world become less stable. Reaching out with my shadows, I can barely feel the ones that I’m tied to in Stormhaven.

I know what peace is. It’s the feeling that I’d had as a child when I’d climbed the trees in the forest around Blackgrove. It’s how I’d felt while hunting. Peace had been a constant companion in my childhood.

The darkness inside me now isn’t peaceful. There’s a pounding sense of need. I can’t ignore the drive to expand, to grow and feel and be everywhere all at once. It wants more than this world I’ve spent my entire life in. It’s the desire to be something and somewhere different. The darkness takes hold, and the shadows that I’d once lost are mine again.

Desire to be something more than human or Wyrdling or even High Fae consumes me. It wants to become the world—or at least the space between worlds?

“Little Star?” A voice interrupts me. That’s a voice I know. The Shade begins to panic because of how long we’ve been here and how far away from the shore we’ve gone. He’s not meant to be here like I am. The shadows that fill me up are a pressure against him, just like they were to Darian and Lee.

“No,” I whisper to the Shade. “Be strong. Just a few moments more.” He’s always been the strongest person I’ve known. He always had the answers. But now he’s struggling, and he doesn’t hear the voice.

The tide of the void ripples across me as I become more comfortable here. No different from any other sea, this is nota static place. My shadows are like paddles in the darkness. They’re extensions of my body that I can control and can propel me through this place. I wrap the Shade in them. He seems to calm as I cover him and protect him from the darkness that surrounds us.

“Little Star? Where are you?” That voice again. My mind follows it, trying to pinpoint it. It’s so far from where we started. I know the voice, but it can’t be real.

“What are you doing, Maeve?” the Shade asks in my mind, panic flowing from him to me with every word. “We’re going farther than is safe. Even you can be lost here.”

“You don’t need to worry. It’s safe for us. I… I’m not afraid. I’m more than I was.”

No one except me and my mother would feel safe here. Maybe some of the House of Shadows, but deep inside, I know they wouldn’t have gone this far. They’d be like the Shade. The darkness would be a pressure, not this freedom.

Who could be out there? And how do they havethatvoice?

“Maeve?” the voice asks. The words echo in my mind, and I know them. My father. Somehow, he’s survived here for fifteen years. My movements are a blur even in the void, and I swim toward him. The dark sea of nothing moves by, and I go to shout for him, but my voice freezes in my throat. I put him here. I’m the reason that he’s floated in the void all these years.

Da.

I turn back to where the voice came from, and I keep swimming in that direction, no longer worried about understanding the world around me. “Maeve? Where are you?” The sound is so much louder. Almost like he’s right next to me.

“Da?” I whisper. Panic has set in, and I have to find him.

“Maeve,” he says, so close that I should be able to sense him, but it’s like something’s hiding him.

My shadows move through the emptiness, thin tendrils sweeping through as I hunt for my father and hope this isn’t a trick of the void. I understand my powers of Earth and, to a lesser extent, of Shadows, but I don’t understand the void. It wants me to stay. It wants everyone to stay, and I’m simply not as affected by its call as others are.

So what if it’s trying to trick me?

What if my father isn’t alive?

Are the void and the Nothing similar? What if they’re both trying to trick people into being caught up in them?

It doesn’t matter, and as the Shade struggles beside me, I tighten my grip on him. He tries to talk to me, but I ignore whatever he’s trying to tell me. He’s safe enough with my power wrapped around him, and I’m going to find my Da no matter what happens.

My shadows flare out, expanding their reach as the drumbeat inside me pounds out a matching rhythm to the void. The song of the void. Of desire. Of darkness. It pulses like beams of light, and I can feel through the nothingness enough. Not perfectly, but enough.

Then I find him. He’s wrapped in shadows so tight that there’s no way the void could have touched him. “Da, I’m here. Reach out your hand and take mine. I’ll bring you home.”

There’s hesitation, and I don’t blame him. He’s been here for so long, and how could he have survived all this time? Someone saved him. But who? There’s only one person I can think of: my mother.

But how?

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