Page 41 of Crown of Wrath

It’s as though he can’t hear me. A smile crosses his face, the same smile he gave me when he was telling the story the other night. It’s one of pure happiness.

Then he walks into the mist.

“NO!” I scream, and I try to lash out. I am not the Wyrdling that couldn’t protect that little boy. I am the Queen of Nyth. I am the most powerful person in the world, and I will not let my Da die.

Shadows explode from me, but as soon as they get close to the Nothing, they evaporate, almost as if Cole was using fire against them.

As if on cue, he lands beside me, and we run to the spot that my Da walked into the Nothing. His flames explode against the mist, opening pockets of it up while his sword cuts into it, carving small sections out.

My shadows refuse to work, and I’m left feeling completely useless.

No matter how quickly Cole pushes, I know he won’t be fast enough. Unlike when the Nothing had caught Hazel, I can’t sense Da. He’s not dead. There’s no corpse to sense. He’s just… gone.

Da is gone. Aerwyn is gone. Bog and Rivertail and Duncan and Lirael are all gone.

For the first time since that day in the Keep of Flames, when I received the Painted Crown, I let the anger truly overtake me. I give into that deadly emotion that I can’t control. It’s the bottled lightning that I’ve refused.

I have nothing left to lose now, and I stop resisting. My midnight armor disappears, but every step I take has stone climbing my legs, liquid and just as fluid as shadows. I slam my hand against the ground, and the dirt in front of me explodes upward, columns of stone climbing into the sky, ten feet taller than the highest point of the Nothing.

Another column appears next to it, and another. One by one, they climb into the sky. Ten feet separate them, a simple command. Then I’m running. A single leap takes me to the top of the first pillar, an impossible jump for a human or even an Immortal, but not impossible for the Queen of Earth. I look out with my Earth senses, scouring the Nothing around the pillar with each leap.

There’s no one. Each leap, and each pillar that I land on is ten feet further into the mist, and there’s no sign of anyone. Minutes pass as I continue to move deeper, the rage still boiling inside me as I hunt for anyone. A villager or my Da. I cannot let them all be dead.

Each leap leaves me with more and more doubt that anyone is here. I see the trees that I’m passing. The houses that I know so well. This is the village where I learned to accept myself as morethan human. These were the first Immortals that I really got to know.

This may not have been my home, but it was close. It was the first step to becoming more than a Wyrdling.

I can’t findanyone. Revulsion shadows lash out, but they disappear before ever touching the mist.

I scream in frustration, and stonematerializesover the mist and falls to the ground. It creates a tiny hole in the mist. A shriek explodes from the Nothing, something I’ve never heard even in all those months of fighting.

Agony courses through my body, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, and everything goes black.

Chapter 19

Sorrow and sadness are not the same. Sadness is the feeling a child has when she loses her toy. Sorrow is the knife that rends the soul. Sorrow is the blade that ends a life. And there is no worse sorrow than watching hope die.

~Inni the Destroyer, A History of Magic and Dragons

Cole

I struggle to keep up with Maeve as she leaps from pillar to pillar, a new one rising each time she lands. The raven wings that keep me aloft should let me catch up to her easily, but Maeve wears the Painted Crown, and she’s embraced her gifts, even ones that I barely understand.

We’re nearly a mile into the Nothing, and I can barely make out my cottage in the distance. How she’s hopped from pillar to pillar this far without losing any of the anger inside her is incredible. What’s even more impressive is that no tendrils of mist have reached up to grasp at her. Maybe she hasn’t stayed still long enough? Maybe the Nothing isn’t sure how to deal with someone who is above it?

She screams in anger and stops. Revulsion shadows explode around her, but they’re gone in half a second as they near the mist below her.

Another scream rips from her throat, and I can’t help but feel the pain inside her across our bond. It’s like liquid steel coursing through her veins, and this time, instead of lashing out with shadows, stone manifests above the mist. It falls, creating a true hole in the impenetrable white for the first time. I see the briefest bit of green through the white. The forest floor.

Then I hear a shriek. It’s a sound I know, although I’ve only heard it a handful of times. The only thing it could be is a banshee or something very similar. The sound comes from the gap in the mists, and luckily, I’m far enough away to only feel a mild uncomfortableness rather than the paralyzing agony that they normally bring on.

There’s a banshee or something similar living inside the Nothing. I may have thought I’d seen something a hundred times when I’d fought it, but this is the first time I’ve had proof rather than a bit of color out of the corner of my eye.

And then Maeve falls.

I don’t have time to think any more about the banshee’s cry, because as soon as Maeve falls, the Nothing begins to climb the pillar she’s laying on. I dive the twenty feet to where she lays, and I pull up just before I hit the pillar hard enough to break my legs. My raven wings, which aren’t meant for pulling someonemy weight out of a dive, strain hard enough that the muscles threaten to rip.

Then I land, my knees taking the brunt of the impact, and I scoop Maeve up. Flames explode below me as I burn away the tendrils that are only inches away from us. The Nothing climbs up the pillar again, but I’m gone long before it can reach us.

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