Page 49 of Crown of Wrath

I look out at the island and recognize it for exactly what it is. A broken version of her old one. A forest, but one that’s been burned. The shadows are there, but they’re weak, almost like they aren’t worried about protecting it any longer.

“Maeve, come talk to me,” I call out.

No response, just like before. I know she’s watching. You can’t help but watch while someone is in your mental landscape like this. I watched every step she took in mine. I move away from the beach and try to ignore the fact that I hear the waves moving faster.

When I get to the forest, I run my hand over a burned piece of wood. It crumbles to ash, and the soft wind carries it away. I’d thought that my mental landscape had been destroyed, but it was nothing compared to this.

The forest is barely there. Then I hear words that sound so much like Maeve, but they seem distant and barely carried on the wind. Maybe Maeve is thinking them rather than saying them.Ruin will come, but there are shades of ruin. Will everything be burned away, or will it be a flame that purges the land and allows for new growth?

Haunting words. Words that definitely didn’t come from her. Maeve came into my mental landscape and healed me. Twice. But my powers are not meant for that. I can’t heal. Even the shadows inside the cloak cannot repair what was done here.

But Maeve can heal it. If I can convince her to want to, she could pour the same power into herself that she poured into me. After the previous two attempts, I know that will be harder than it sounds, but it’s the only answer. Only Maeve can heal herself, and only I can convince her to do it.

And logic won’t make it happen.

I run my fingers over an unburned branch, my nails scraping at the bark. I let out a soft sigh. I pick my way through the forest. Ash is still in the air from the fire, and I wonder just how long ago this happened. Just like Maeve used to do, I run my hands over the branches I pass. I feel her. Underneath the rough bark, I sense the woman. She is everywhere and everything.

This place isn’t made by her mind. Itisher mind. And I have an idea.

Chapter 25

Please know that I was not the hero of this story. I was the villain. I simply didn’t know it.

~Maeve Arden, The Future of Magic and Dragons

Maeve

The Shade walks across the island, and a ripple of fear courses through me. He is terrifying. I don’t know exactly why, but he elicits a primal terror inside me, and I beg the void to consume the island faster. The waves lapping at the shore speed up ever so slightly.

I barely notice, though, because he keeps touching things. The branches of half-burned trees. A stone made of swirling black crystal shadows. Black-tinted nails scrape the surface of anything he moves by, and each time he does it, memories flash through my mind.

His nails over my cheek. His breath on my skin. His fingers inside me…

They terrify me. I don’t know how I know him. I don’t know what happened between us before I was here. Before I was… whatever I am now.

I wonder why I feel like I do. All I have to do is wait for him to leave or for the void to take this place. It’s no different from before.

Except that every time he runs those black nails over a piece of bark or stone, I feel him. I feel the darkness in him. The memories that linger just out of reach call to me.

I know the Shade, but I don’t know how. I know his touch, but it’s more than this. I have memories of that touch affecting me, of it pushing me to be different, to lose control. Shadows extend from his hand and brush across the trees as he passes them, those dark tendrils teasing me with more memories that I can’t quite remember.

Flashes of darkness wreathing a body, of seductive teasing, of desperate need.

“Maeve,” he calls out into the forest. “I know you’re here. Come out and play, Maeve. You know you want to.”

The world seems to shake for a moment, and several burned branches crumble and turn to ash. “No,” I mutter. “I can’t.”

The Shade is a cruel creature. He will take everything that I am and break me. He will use me. But…

“You will,” he responds. “I know you better than anyone. I know what you crave, and I’m the only one who can give you what you want.”

Another earthquake rumbles across the world. The light shines on me, and pain still courses through me. All I need to do is wait. I can see the edges of this world being eaten away by the darkness. Those waves come ever more quickly, and it won’t be long now until I can finally give into it.

But the Shade tempts me. From his words to his touch to his shadows. They pull at my memories and remind me of a time before this place—aplacebefore this place. They remind me of when I was different.

His words rake across me again. “I’m not leaving. I will be here until the darkness overtakes everything, so why not come down here?”

His nails caress a branch that had been burned, and the world quakes ever so slightly. The branch crumbles to ash and blows away in the wind, and the Shade watches it move while he moves his hand to a different branch, his nails sliding down the smooth bark with agonizing slowness.

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