Page 81 of Crown of Wrath

Chapter 41

I tried to tell the Prince about Valinar after the Midsummer Ball, but it was too late. He never met with me. Maeve wears the Painted Crown now, and everything has happened exactly as expected. Gethin has attacked Casimir, and we’ve lost Draenyth. Brenna, Maeve doesn’t know about Valinar. If you don’t catch her in Blackgrove, I don’t know how we’ll ever catch her. She’s too powerful…

~Vesta, letters to Brenna

Maeve

Everyone is here. All of Aerwyn. All of Blackgrove. And there are more. So many more. A city has been built here in the mists. Birds fly through the air. The sound of crickets chirping andgrass crunching under boots makes it feel almost normal, but behind it all, there’s an underlying silence that feels like it could never be filled.

That silence won’t let me forget that we’re inside the Nothing.

Rivertail sees us first, and he gestures to the rest of Aerwyn’s villagers who are sitting on the outskirts of the small city, seeming to wait for us. There are no walls, and the buildings are all made of wood, but it’s too large to be considered a village. There’s an undercurrent of anticipation there, too.

They’ve been patiently waiting for us. Just like that first day that we arrived in Aerwyn, they follow us at a distance while my mother leads us into town. They don’t want to interrupt, but they’ve missed us.

And I’ve missed them, too. Bog’s bouncing beside Rivertail. I catch sight of Duncan in his striped stocking cap. It’s not just my friends from Aerwyn, though. Calum Hayes’s bald head rises above so many of the Lesser Immortals.

Everyone’s here, and they’ve been waiting for us all this time. Everyone that I mourned is alive and well, safe within the Nothing. My mother saved them all, and while I hate that I didn’t know, I’m so glad that they are safe. The world’s become ever more dangerous as Gethin’s reach has grown, but they’ve been safe here.

How many people are here? How many people has my mother saved? I try to reach out with my Earth senses to find out just how large the city is.

It’s like the entire world has tiny bits of steel embedded in it.

I pause, and Cole stops as well, giving me a confused look. “Mother,” I say softly, feeling very discomforted by the fact that my powers aren’t working. It wasn’t long ago that I didn’t know I had an Immortal bloodline, but now that my life revolves around magic, I feel weaponless in a very unfamiliar land. I may besurrounded by friends and family, but I’ve learned never to trust anyone or anything.

She turns, stopping the group, and arches an eyebrow at me. “Yes?”

“Why can’t I use magic?”

She smiles knowingly. “You can. It just takes a little more to accomplish the same thing here. I cannot sustain this place alone. As a cost for the inhabitants’ safety, part of their power is drawn away to maintain it. All magic is harder here, but that cost keeps this place safe. Well, unless a new boundary is created away from the external walls. That stone you dropped into the center of town nearly crushed Lirael.”

Lirael? The banshee from Aerwyn? Oh, that was the scream that stopped me when I was hunting for Da. Lirael was trying to keep from being crushed by rocks falling from the sky.

Then it occurs to me to ask a question that seems obvious, but maybe it isn’t. I don’t feel like we should assume anything right now. We’d assumed that a mist that consumed everyone it touched was dangerous when it wasn’t, and I don’t think we should make that mistake again. “We can leave this place, can’t we?” I ask.

She nods to me. “It takes effort on my part to send you through the boundary between this world and Nyth, but if you’d like to leave, you’re more than welcome to. Maeve, you’re my guest, not my prisoner.”

There are so many new questions that keep popping into my mind. “And what about you? Can you leave?”

This time, she shakes her head. “No. Just like Kings and Queens of each House are the Conduits for Nyth, I am the Conduit for this world. Calyr built this place for me, and he used my power to anchor the magic.” She points to a massive tree that rises hundreds of feet into the air in the center of the city. “He turned it into that tree.”

“And you control the mist in Nyth?” The questions keep coming, and both Cole and Casimir are listening with rapt attention as my mother gives answers to questions that no one outside this place knew.

“Yes. In effect, Iamwhat you call the Nothing. This was my backup plan in case Prince Cole couldn’t convince you to follow him. I trusted the Prince to…” She hesitates.

“…manipulateme?” I suggest. Cole winces, but I smile. “I’ve come to terms with that, Mother. You did what you had to do as an Immortal. As a Queen. You didn’t even know what you would feel when you saw me for the first time. You were plotting as Queens do, and using your daughter as a tool to save the world didn’t seem like a terrible idea.”

“Your Da should have been there,” she says, a look of sadness in her eyes. “I could have reached him through our bond if we’d been close, just as I did when I found him in Aerwyn, but I didn’t dare come close to Blackgrove until you were older. Prudence and Trevor might have tried to escape. Then you could have gone somewhere I couldn’t follow. Like Stormhaven.”

It’s exactly where we’d gone. My mind tries to work through the reason. “I’m just guessing here, but is it because it would start a war between the humans and Immortals?”

She nods. “They’d assume that the Nothing was controlled by Immortals. When it happened to tiny villages, it could be explained as an oddity, as something that happened in the country. If I entered a major city like Stormhaven, it would introduce a myriad of additional problems. I’d have to deal with thousands of people, one at a time. The nobility would almost certainly escape, and they’d try to start a war in retaliation. The possibility of a war starting right now between humans and Immortals is the last thing anyone needs.”

“You planned ahead,” I say. “I can respect that. I still think that the broken nose was deserved.”

My mother chuckles and turns back to the city. “If that was the cost to have my daughter back, it was certainly worth it. Welcome to Valinar, Little Star,” she says. “It’s a place where you can rest safely without any worries.”

Without waiting for a response, she turns back toward the city and begins walking. I can’t help but watch her. She isn’t all that different from the woman I’d envisioned.

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