Page 46 of Crown of Wrath

Except that there’s a softness here, too. “Embrace it, boy. That pain is what will make you great. It separates you from the dead men on the battlefield. The rest of your life will be painful. You’ll wake up to it. You’ll breathe, and your chest will burn. Every inch of your body will burn as you become strong, but that pain means you’re still living. It means you can still keep fighting.”

There’s a pause for a moment and Casimir bends over so that he’s looking at the boy. “The goal of life isn’t to stop hurting, son. It’s making sure youkeephurting. The only way to survive this world is to learn to embrace the pain.”

The Shade looks away from the visages and says, “Maeve Arden, do you hurt?”

I want to shake my head because I know what he means. “Not now.”

“Maybe it’s time to live again.”

I want to pull away from him, to make him stop making me feel. “No, Shade. I do not want to hurt. I do not want to feel that sorrow. Maybe it’s time I let the void take me if that’s the only other option.”

“You’re hurting now, aren’t you,” he says, the sound of water over river rocks again, and it pulls at me. I can’t help but remember the late nights where he touched me and twisted my body against me. The world that was so simple back then. I taught Rivertail to fish and Bog to catch birds with a net. I’d done everything to help Hazel.

Now… Now everything is pain. Every memory hurts. I try to draw Hazel from the void, but she won’t come. The anguish inside me won’t let me control shadows. I try to call Da or Rivertail or Calum Hayes from Blackgrove. None of them come, and the Shade merely stares up at the sky.

“Embrace it, Maeve. Stop fighting the pain. Feel every bit of it. Let it flow through you. Let it batter your heart even when you think you’ll never survive it. Just remember that no one dies from pain. They only die when they give up, and you’re so very close to that.”

The shadows move of their own accord. They flow into an image of the Nothing again. Da is staring at it. The haunting song that he hummed so often flows through the air. He stares into the mists, and then I watch as he steps into it. I watch as the man I desperately wanted in my life ever since I sent him to the void is destroyed by the Nothing.

I watch as he screams in agony. All the while, that song of power floats through the air as though Da was cooking fish. Then it’s done. I can’t help but cry as I look at the broken and battered body. I can’t help but want to break everything as the pain fills me up completely.

I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to play with little shadow dolls. My world is pain. My heart is broken. Everything that I cared about is gone, and I can’t do anything about it.

Then everything disappears…

Chapter 22

It was called The Shattering because it was so similar to what happens when a soul breaks. Fragments of the original still struggle, still do their best to survive. In the end, though, only pain and strife come to shattered souls, and that’s what we expected. Nothing that’s been shattered is expected to survive the test of time.

~Cole Cyrus, A History of Flames

The Shade

The pain crashed into me like a tidal wave, relentless and unforgiving. It was worse than anything I’ve ever felt—so much worse. How did she carry this? How did she hold so much anguish inside without breaking completely?

When I watched the image of her father stepping into the Nothing, I knew this wouldn’t work. The sheer weight of her despair hit me then, but I hadn’t been ready for what came next.

That scream. It wasn’t just a sound—it was a force, tearing through me like jagged glass. My body felt like it was being ripped apart, every nerve set ablaze as Maeve’s anguish surged through me, raw and unrestrained. Everything she’d buried, everything she’d locked away, poured into me like a flood breaking through a dam.

And then—nothing. It all vanished in an instant, leaving me weightless and disoriented, floating in the dark void of Maeve’s mind. My breaths come in short, panicked bursts.

I haven’t ever met a broken High Fae before. They don’t survive long. They stop eating and drinking. I’ve always considered it a mercy that they fade away even though they should be Immortal.

But I won’t let Maeve fade away. If there was one island, there may be more.

I open myself to the void, listening and feeling through the void as I’d done before. I feelsomethingin the distance, and I swim toward it.

What happened on that island? How did it all just… disappear? Mental landscapes don't change like that.

I swim through the darkness toward that bit of life I can sense. It’s far away, and I’m glad that the void of Maeve’s mind is not the void of the world. I’d never be able to swim this far.

It feels like hours pass. Each movement is more exhausting than the last, but I know I’m getting closer. I can feel Maeve. I should be able to feel her far more than I do, but she’s retreated far inside herself, and all I can do is keep swimming.

Because she won’t talk to me here. She won’t listen to me.

My shadows pull me along through the darkness even as my mind and body feel ready to give up. I smile and thank Maeve forshowing me just how much further beyond my limits I can push myself.

Those three months of fighting the Nothing where I survived purely on loyalty to Maeve showed me just how far I could push myself. I wrap that knowledge around me like a warm blanket in the cold.

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