Page 5 of Crown of Wrath

Broken branches twist as I step on them. Stones slide. Clumps of leaves slip. The world tries to knock me to the ground, but I don’t let it. If I were to fall… I don’t know if I’d be able to get up.

After nearly a millennium of training and battle, I’m only now understanding what it is to embrace pain. The scars along my back came from torture, but I didn’t have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Now I have to fight when every joint and muscle screams that it can’t keep going.

Yet, I don’t care. Pain is my life, and I’m just thankful that I’m from the House of Flames. I was born to endure it.

Instead of letting my mind think of my broken body, I focus on Maeve. I focus on the fact that Darian and Lee are gone for the week, and we’ll be alone for the first time since we escaped Draenyth. It’s terrifying because I have no idea what it will be like.

We’re supposed to rest. We’re supposed to recover from our battles. The last time that Maeve and I rested, we did it in the same bed. We spent days relaxing in warm baths. I don’t even know how to relax without her beside me.

I can’t help but remember the way her hands and shadows felt on my body. The way her lips felt against mine. I miss it so much.

That’s why I’m going to the river. It’s been too long since I had a bath, and I probably smell as bad as I look. My hair has a distinctive crunch to it from days of sweat, and when I run my hand over the back of my neck, I can feel the grime rubbing off.

There won’t be any battles today. My gambeson comes off, and I drop it onto the riverbank, glad to feel its weight off me. It’s like I can breathe again.

For as long as I can remember, I always felt safer wearing my armor. Now, after three months of constant battle, I need a moment to breathe without its heavy weight on my shoulders. I need to feel the air against my skin.

I strip off the rest of my clothes and leave them in a pile before I step into the slowly flowing river. There’s a bite of cold in the autumn air, but I have enough energy to heat the water around me. I sigh as my sapped muscles relax almost immediately inthe now warm water. It’s deep, and I can’t touch the bottom as I swim out to the middle.

It’s exactly what I need. I dive down a little, my hands running through my tangled and knotted hair. I can’t remember the last time my hair was this wild. It just shows how far past exhaustion I’ve pushed.

Now is the time to recover, though. Whatever my Queen needs, it won’t require pushing myself, and I’ll be able to heal. I’ll be stronger because of these months. I’ll be a better sword after being tempered in the fires of constant battle. Whatever my father had attempted to do to forge the greatest weapon Nyth had ever seen, he was nothing compared to my Queen. I won’t refuse her when she demands I fight beyond my limits. I’ll simply become stronger. Every fight had been more a battle of willpower than one of actual combat.

Now it’s done, and I get to rest.

I surface, and when I open my eyes, I’m greeted by a sight I hadn’t imagined. Maeve’s standing on the bank completely naked. She’s staring out at the river, not at me, and I can’t help but watch her. Several seconds pass by as I tread water. Her eyes don’t leave the opposite bank, and I don’t know what she’s staring at.

She’s so beautiful. Even after these months of fighting, she looks glorious. Her body is stronger than I remember it. Every inch has been turned into a weapon of war, hardened just as much as I’ve become.

Yet, everything inside me yearns to go to her, to beg her to forget the past. Everything inside me wants to go back to that time when there was no one and nothing she wanted more in the world than me. The days where she didn’t hold back her caresses. The mornings that I would wake from dreams of her, and she’d be there, a smile on her face.

She’s my everything now, but once upon a time, I’d been her everything as well, and I’d give anything to have it back. I’d have let the world burn to see her look at me that way again.

The world is so quiet. I’d say that the Nothing was here, but we know exactly where it is. Even the birds and insects are silent as the world watches my Queen. It’s impossible to miss that something is changing. This moment—this brief silence—is a harbinger of something to come, and it’s only that recognition that keeps me from moving.

Then I realize what’s different. No shadows flow from her fingertips. Even when she’d been a Wyrdling wearing the Forgotten Ring, there’d been hints of shadows. Now, when more power flows through her than anyone else in the world, there are none. What’s happened?

Something shifts in her, and she slowly walks into the water, not bothered at all by the slow current. She wades in until the water is up to her breasts and then she kicks off, swimming into the center just as I’m doing.

She’s further downstream, and I can’t stop watching her, but the questions plague me. Why aren’t there shadows? Why is she so unfazed that I’m here? What is she doing?

For the last thirty years, every moment of my life has been orchestrated by me. The future of the entire world rested on my shoulders. I’d been almost nine hundred years old at that point. I’d weathered the storm of my father’s temper for that entire time. I’d learned to control myself and my magic and build walls to protect myself. I’d thought that I was strong enough to protect my emotions.

Then my father forced me into shattering the House of Shadows. I’d been told to kill everyone. Male and female. Adult, elder, and child. I’d been told to mass murder everyone who wielded shadows of any sort.

I’d done nearly everything he’d told me to protect Darian and Lee. I’d killed hundreds that day. Then I’d found Brenna. I’d stared her down, just the two of us, and I’d let her go. When her shadows had pooled, I hadn’t burned them away even though I could have.

She was the only person I could have imagined saving us all. I couldn’t let her die. Even if it meant my only friends would be burned to death by my father. That moment had changed everything. It had given the world a chance.

Now, all that weight has been thrust onto Maeve’s shoulders, and it’s not right. A twenty-three-year-old shouldn’t be trying to hold the world together when the rest of the Immortals are trying to rip it apart.

I’d bear that burden for her if I could, but I can’t. She can’t give me the Painted Crown.

She’s breaking under the weight of it. That’s the only answer. Between my betrayal and the weight of the Painted Crown, the woman I was willing to let the world die for is shattering just as much as her bloodlines were.

No shadows mean she’s lost all desire for anything. Not just for me.

She’s losing control. She’s losing herself.

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