Page 78 of Crown of Wrath

Winter hasn’t touched this place. No snow clings to the unfamiliar trees, and no frigid wind twists the mist. The Nothing is silent here. Still. It feels untouched, like this place has existed this way forever, waiting.

Then a voice shatters the silence.

“Little Star,” a woman says from behind me.

I whirl, my body still primed for battle, and I freeze.

A woman stands behind me and is both real and impossible. Like Vesta is air given life, this woman is made of mist—solid yet shifting, defined yet insubstantial. She looks like she was once human or High Fae. Where Vesta has always seemed like something else entirely, this woman is somethingchanged. Somethingother.

A strange pull settles in my chest. A connection I can’t place, like a name on the tip of my tongue, like a memory just out of reach.

“Queen Brenna,” Cole whispers in reverence.

The moment he says it, the pieces snap into place.

My mother.

The Nothing.

The truth feels too big to fit inside my head. We'd thought… We'd walked into the Nothing because we believed that mymother controlled it, but part of me can't accept it as real. My mother has been here all along. In the Nothing. She's been part of it all this time. And she’s—

She takes a step toward me, her misty form moving as effortlessly as if she were flesh and bone. “Little Star,” she says again, her voice soft, aching, and everything I had imagined it to be. “I’ve been trying so hard to bring you here. Ever since your twenty-second birthday, I’ve done everything I could to reconnect with you.”

I don’t know what to say. My mind is still catching up, still struggling to make this real.

Minutes ago, I was fighting for my life. Steel soldiers. Blood. Running. Then the Nothing came, and I thought—I thought I’d lost everything.

Now my Mother is here, standing in front of me, reaching for me like she knows me.

She moves to embrace me, and I take a step back.

“You’ve been here this whole time?” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. I glance around at this strange, mist-filled world. At the silence. At the absence of movement. “This… this is where people have gone when they were taken by the Nothing?”

She smiles, her lips curving softly. “Yes, Maeve,” she says gently. “I’ve saved everyone you've cared for and brought them here. Now no one can hurt them.”

I go cold as memories crash into me.

The pain that had torn me apart when I thought Da had died. A moment when I’d nearly given in to the void, shattered beyond repair. The way I’d woken to Cole’s eyes filled with impossible hope after six weeks of waiting, of fearing that I wouldn’t come back at all—because my mother had been trying to help.

Something in me snaps.

My body reacts before my mind catches up. My arm moves, possessed by instinct. I don’t hold back. Every ounce of Earthstrength surges through me, my fist moving as fast as if I were fighting Cole.

It connects with a sharp, satisfying crack. Brenna staggers, her misty nose shattering with the force of my blow. She cries out, but I don’t care. I don’t even watch her recover.

Because behind her—

Hazel.

Da.

My breath catches as I take them in, frozen where they stand several feet away. They’ve been here all this time. Here. In the Nothing. Unlike my mother, I feel no hesitation, no tangled emotions.

I had thought they were dead. I had mourned them both.

Brenna says something, but I don’t hear it. I push past her, my steps unsteady as I cross the clearing. Da isn’t smiling, but Hazel—Hazel’s grin is wide, wider than I ever remember. She's different, so unlike the woman I'd come home to after receiving the Painted Crown.

I stare, trying to understand what’s different.

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