Page 77 of Crown of Wrath

“We have to go,” Cole says. I glance at his back and see the eagle wings that have sprouted. “I’ll fly fast,” he says to his father, who’s smiling at him. “You’ll be able to hold off the mist, won’t you?”

Casimir chuckles. “And if I don’t, does it even matter? It was good to get to fight with you one time, Cole. I’m proud of you. All these years, I couldn’t tell you, but I’m sorry for the pain I caused you, and I’m proud of the King you’re going to be. I’m sure you’ll be far better than I ever was.”

Cole stares at his father. His mouth opens as though he’s going to say something, but then it shuts. “I’ll fly fast,” he mutters, and he wraps his hands around my waist.

“Ready?” he asks me, his voice barely more than a whisper, and I nod.

But Casimir interrupts us. “What’s that sound?” he mutters.

Sound? I don’t hear anything at first. It’s absolute silence initially, but then I hear a soft humming. It’s under the silence, almost as if I’m not sure if I can hear it or not.

Cole’s eyes open wide. “I hear it too,” he says.

But what is it? It’s so soft that I can barely make it out. Then Casimir hums along, his ears picking it up better than I do, and I gape. “The song of power,” I whisper. “The one my Da hummed. Cole, why does the Nothing want us so badly? Why does it set traps for us? Why did Da walk into it? How did it convince Hazel to be trapped?”

All the pieces click into place at once. My Da knew this song before he’d ever seen the Nothing. There are only two possibilities. Either it’s connected to the void, or it’s connected to my mother.

“Where has Brenna been?” Cole asks. “Why hasn’t she come to me to help? She should have come to you.”

I nod to him. “How sure are you?” I ask.

He gets an unsure look on his face and then looks at the Nothing. “It came into being after you were born. It’s hunted you even harder than it hunted me, Maeve. It all makes sense. Nothing else does.”

And Casimir says from beside us, “If you’re suggesting that Brenna controls the Nothing… She’s the only person alive that would have figured out how to do something like this. And, she’s the only one who would have the motivation to do so. I hope she doesn’t hold grudges…”

He walks toward the mist and before we’ve even really understood what he was going to do, he steps into the Nothing. Cole looks like he’s going to chase after him, but then he pauses and looks at me. “What do you think?”

It’s the only thing that makes sense. What happens to the people that aren’t found? Why do some people find themselves sitting outside the Nothing when the rest of the village is gone? Only a handful of people are ever found with their bodies destroyed. Where are the rest of them?

“If we’re right, I can see Hazel. I can see my Da. I can see everyone again. If I’m wrong…”

Cole nods as the mists get closer to us. “If you’re wrong, then we die, and the world is doomed.”

There are two things that I have learned to trust completely. My instincts and Cole. I look at Cole and say, “What do you think? If my mother is in the Nothing, then this is the best weapon we could ever find.”

My instincts scream at me to walk into the mists. Just like my Da, I stare into the fog as it approaches, and I swear I can see something inside it. Just like when I fought it. Just like when I tried to rescue that little boy.

He says, “I can’t figure out anything else. Let’s see if the Nothing just came up with the cleverest trap yet or if we’ve just been running from help this whole time.”

I nod to him, and I wrap my fingers around his. With a deep breath and a whispered prayer to Erelith, the Goddess of Lost Causes, I step into the mist.

Chapter 40

I miss her so much. My daughter. My light. My Little Star. If there was anyone that could walk the path before her, I would do everything to pull her from it. There isn’t, though. She’s the only hope, and it breaks my heart to know that she’ll end up just as hard as I was. We did this, Vesta. We sacrificed our Little Star to save the world.

~Brenna Morvyn, letters to Vesta

Maeve

I expect the world to be swallowed in mist so thick I won’t be able to see my own hands, but it isn’t. The air is clear, touched only by the faintest wisps of silver, like breath on glass. It’s as though I’ve stepped through a doorway, into a place that shouldn’t exist. Like walking through a mirror and finding another world waiting on the other side.

I brace for pain, for something sharp and hollowing. Every story I’ve heard says stepping into the mist is a death sentence. The bodies I've seen that the Nothing left behind were… terrible. My breath curls in the still air, waiting for agony to sink its claws into me.

But nothing happens.

No searing pain. No gory destruction of my body. All that I feel is the slow ebb of my power, no different from when I stood too close to the mist.

I look at the world in front of me, still slightly in shock, and realize that it's warm here.

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