Page 56 of Crown of Wrath

“It’s been less than a month. He’ll be patient. Maeve will come back soon, and then we’ll go back to fighting his battles for him.”

Darian shakes his head. “Cole, it might be too late at that point. I heard from Lee. She’s been in Draenyth for weeks now, and there are rumors that Gethin’s found the Burning Brand. Can you imagine if Gethin had the power of Flames?”

I sigh. “It’s better that he has the power of Flames than the power of Earth. I can fight fire with fire, but Earth… That would be difficult.”

“It would stop you and Maeve’s ability to shadow walk, though. Shadows were the key to fighting the House of Steel,and if he has the Burning Brand, he has basically eliminated the weakness.”

I lean back in the high-backed chair I’m sitting in and stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know what to do, Darian, but I can’t leave Maeve. Logically, I know we’re losing ground to Gethin, but I can’t walk away. I can’t let her wake up without me by her side. It’s not even just the vow.”

“You made me let Lee leave. You ordered her to find Vesta and left me all alone here. Why should you and Maeve not have to separate?”

I blink. No. I will accept that criticism. “Because Maeve has given up too much, Darian. I will not have her feel like I abandoned her. I can’t force her to wake up all alone. The things she’s going through right now… They’re harder than anyone could imagine. She’s going to have to go through every memory, re-experiencing them. She’s going to watch her father die. Her cousin. Aerwyn. Blackgrove. She’s going to revisit the lies I told her. She’s going to relive all the things that nearly broke her all over again as if it’s the first time. I cannot let her wake up after all that and have no one to hold her while she cries.”

“You’ll let people die so you can hold her?” The question is a hard one. It’s the kind of question that I’d have asked anyone else that was saying this. How much will you let someone else suffer so that you can prevent one person’s suffering? Because more people will die now that Gethin has the Burning Brand. That’s a guarantee.

I glance at the door that hides Maeve from the world. The sleeping Queen that no one will see but me until she wakes up. “Darian, I would let every person in the world die to protect her from another tear.”

He nods and stands up. “Then I’ll leave you be.”

Chapter 29

We didn’t understand the scope of the conflict. We didn’t understand the size of the world. All we knew was that someone was hurting innocents, and so we fought. Can protecting the innocents ever be the act of villains?

~Maeve Arden, The Future of Magic and Dragons

Maeve

The world I’ve become so comfortable in is lush. Hundreds and thousands of trees of various types spring up from dark, loamy soil. The scent of rain hangs in the air as shadows creep through the forest bearing fangs and claws.

Only a small portion of the forest is still burned. Each of these memories is hard. I have to rest after almost every one ofthem, tears pouring down the effigy’s cheek and sinking into the ground, turning the earth black and fertile.

It’s my tears that gave life to this place as much as the flames that are still burning in that pit in the sand that the Shade created. Those tears changed the ashy ground into soil. Each drop healed the land as I accepted the memories, just like the flames gave life to the trees.

I almost gave up as I got closer to finishing. The first memory that I truly struggled to accept was when I received the Painted Crown. It wasn’t the manipulation or lies that were so difficult. It was trying to wrap my mind around the fact that Cole Cyrus and the Shade were the same person. In my mind, they were so different. The way the Shade had touched me, had manipulated my body and mind, both before I became Queen and after I shattered were so different from the straightforward way that Cole approached the world. It wasn’t the pain that was difficult. Pain… pain was something to embrace, not run from. No, the difficulty lay in combining two very different sides to a single man.

The other memory that I’ve struggled with was the memory of his cracked and crumbling obsidian tower. I’m not there to help him heal, and I’m sure there are more cracks growing in his tower as he stands tall while I hide from the world. He is hurting. I’m sure of it. He’s falling apart while I work to rebuild my mental landscape, and I can’t leave. I can’t help him until I’m truly healed, or I’ll just break again at the first sign of sadness.

Healing and resting while I know the man I love more than anything in the world is hurting is so much harder than anything else. But it’s necessary, and even while I’m desperate to leave this place, to be back in Cole’s arms, I know he’d rather wait. I know he’d rather I do this right than to leave too early. He wants me to heal, and when I’m done, when I’m whole, I can be strong for him so he can heal as well.

The effigy sets a tree alight, and as I’m so used to now, a new memory comes alive in my mind. The day that I got into a fight with Hazel. I watch the memory in rapt concentration, seeing it all, yet not being able to change any of it.

Then I see the shadows crawling up from the ground. They wrap around the ring on my finger and pull it off. Shadows. Just as I become angrier than ever before, shadows rip the Forgotten Ring away from me, forcing it to the floor.

There’s only one person who could have done that. The Shade. Cole. How much had he affected things? I watch as Hazel calls me a Wyrdling for the first time, and I know that it’s not her. There’s no way my cousin would have done something that would hurt me so much. I know that the Shade has collected more powers than he’s shown me. Does he have some that could affect Hazel? Did he affect me as well?

He set everything in motion, and I know that I would have been furious, but now… I don’t know if I am. I probably should be. He manipulated me, but he didn’t know me. I was just a tool, no different from how he was a tool for my mother. All of us are just doing our parts to fix the pieces of a world that are broken and dying.

I shake my head as the memory ends with the Shade appearing before me. No, this memory didn’t hurt. Not like the others. It should have. Learning that the Shade caused Hazel that much pain all to force me into going along with him should make me want to scream as I have so many times since rebuilding this forest.

This time, I’m not angry at all. He did what he had to do. Compared to what he did to so many other people, it’s nothing. I’ve never felt bad at what the Shade had done in the past. When an entire world is at stake, there will always be a cost.

What are you willing to sacrifice?I’ve said that too many times to count, and Cole was willing to sacrifice my cousin.

The memory becomes another piece of me, and I’m left standing on the edge of the burned out section of forest. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I can bring another tree back before I rest.

The effigy sets the next tree ablaze, and flames lick upward as I’m drawn into another memory. I know immediately what this one is. The cottage is unnervingly still, wrapped in silence so thick it feels alive. A pit forms in my stomach. Memories that start with silence like this always leave me shattered, and I brace myself for the inevitable.

This is when my Da dies.

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