38. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

My hands no longer feel the blades I wield. We are one. The cold steel under my fingers is how I find comfort. The song of their movement is a lullaby. We are one. The Thrones are failing, and death is the only answer. Death to Roderic. Death to Brenna. Death to Casimir. Death to me. But they will not go willingly. And my son is not strong enough…

~King Gethin, personal journals

Darian and Lee are standing next to me as we watch Cole move on the training grounds, all alone. High above him, we're standing behind the railing of what can only be described as a gallery. Instead of the red marble that everything else in the Keep of Flames is made of, this training area was built with typical stone and mortar. There's no doubt that the architecture doesn't compare to the opulence of the rest of the Keep, but this… this feels like a training ground.

When we'd first gotten here, there had been dozens of people using the space, all sparring against each other or using the training dummies to practice their attacks, something that Cole's always been against me doing. Now… they're all gone, and Cole's standing alone in the massive space.

I finally realize why everyone talks about Cole like he's unbeatable. Cole moves like the wind, flowing from one movement to the next, completely unfettered for the first time since I've met him. His feet barely touch the ground, and yet, he moves so solidly. The wings on his back flicker in and out of existence only when he needs them.

Still, he doesn't use fire. The sword flashes across a wooden training dummy's chest, and then he's flying backward in a wing-augmented leap, turning as he moves. His feet hit the ground hard enough that the sand flies up around him. Moving his hilt in a blocking motion, he turns the block into a counter-attack against the imagined attack, the tip of his blade sliding across the dummy's throat.

He's in the air again, hitting the ground ten steps away before the sand he'd thrown into the air previously has even hit the ground. His sword flashes out with five strikes, and he's leaping again.

"Is this how he trains?"

Darian nods and Lee says, "For hours. At least if he wants to be alone. If he's serious about his training, he brings in a few hundred soldiers in full armor with various blunted weapons and he lets them attempt to touch him."

"I don't think anyone's touched him in at least three hundred years," Darian says. "So don't feel bad if you don't either."

I smile at the comment since I hit him three times yesterday. "Why doesn't he use flames?"

Darian and Lee turn to each other, and Lee shrugs. "Because he doesn't want anyone to know how strong he is. He wants everyone to understand just how good he is with a sword, because that's how members of the House of Steel measure themselves. Flames are what he'd use against his own House. Against his father. He doesn't want anyone to know how good he is with them."

I blink. "Not even you two?"

They shake their heads. Darian says solemnly, "No. He quit publicly training with fire hundreds and hundreds of years ago. As soon as his father had stopped pushing him. He kept up the swordplay because it kept his father off his back, but the flames were his and his alone."

Oh. "His father thinks he's better than Cole with flames?" I ask.

"While he wears the Painted Crown, he is better. And the last time that the House of Flames received the crown, Casimir earned it. Not Cole. I assume nothing has changed, but Cole has his skill with the sword and his House of Steel magic. Casimir has neither of those. But with the Crown, there's no contest. Casimir would kill him."

That's terrifying. How could anyone be faster or stronger than Cole? What would that even look like? "Are you two glad that you aren't really in any of this conflict? You're House of Light, right?"

They look at each other, and it's like they're talking without words again. "We're in it," Lee says with more than a little attitude in her voice. "We're with Cole. Whatever happens, we're with him, and we always will be. We may not be in this conflict based on our powers or House, but we are based on our allegiance."

It seems like Cole's inspired a lot of loyalty. All of Aerwyn. Darian and Lee. Most of the people that work within the Keep look at him like Nevan did. They trust him. They care about him. I don't think that anyone looks at Casimir that way.

"Do you really think it's going to come to war? And is that war going to be with the House of Steel?"

This time it's Darian that speaks up. "War will happen eventually. The world is breaking, Maeve, and the two most powerful people in the world caused it. They know things are wrong, and the only answer either of them has is to gather more power. Even if that power will come at the cost of breaking the world even more. They believe that if they can't find any more enemies to kill, they will have saved the world. Even if that world is nothing but ash when they're done."

Gods, how am I supposed to stay out of this? I'd thought I was completely unimportant before. I'd thought that my only role in all of this was to fix the problems that I had created, but the more time I spend with Cole, Darian, and Lee, the more I wish I could help. Cole had seemed sure that I was going to be someone important. The Shade had pushed me to become powerful enough to be worth his investment in me. But only Sia knows everything.

And she says that I'm not strong enough. Just a Wyrdling. At least you'll save your cousin that way, and no one else will get hurt.

I let the conversation fade as we continue to watch Cole train. I want to go down there, to hold a spear and see what it would be like to fight him at his full strength. I know I would lose faster than I could move. A single strike, and he'd cut past any of my defenses.

And that's not even him using his magic. That's just him being the best swordsman in all of Nyth.

It only convinces me further. I'm not meant for this world. Wyrdlings are meant to live in the woods, not have people depending on me.

"You're sure we're safe?" I ask.

Cole nods. A two-hour flight away from Draenyth. Deep in the mountains to the west. I can't think of a single village or city near us. I slide the ring off my finger and put it into a pocket in my pants, making sure that I push it deep into the pocket. It's the most valuable thing I own and the only way that I'll be able to convince Calyr to heal my cousin.

The ground is rocky where we stand. Pebbles and stones the size of my fist are strewn about everywhere. It's a terrible place to spar as the ground is nearly more dangerous than the magic and weapons we'd wield.

This is where Cole set us down, though. I try to stand as solidly as possible, the spear in my right hand and shadows flowing around my feet. I force myself to feel the emotion that I've worked so hard to contain since we got to Draenyth, the feelings that would give me away as a member of the House of Shadows.

Desire.

Cole is grinning at me, and I stare into those eyes to set the drumbeat pounding inside me. Except, instead of Cole, I think of that day in the pool. When the Shade had touched me. When he'd run those black-tinted nails over my body, and I'd felt so helpless.

The drumbeat roars to life inside me, radiating from the center of my stomach. And shadows flow from me like a river. I steer them, forcing them toward Cole, and with quick strikes, he slices through them, cutting away the magic as easily as he'd cut through paper. They dissipate as soon as the steel has separated them from me.

I push them around toward his back, like the Nothing had done to me. Curling around while he's busy with the most obvious ones in front of him. I'm sweating from exertion as he jumps, runs, and flies over them, forcing me to keep pushing more and more shadows from my hands. I do everything I can to keep him from having time to think about the darkness creeping up from behind him.

He's cutting the shadows back and moving even faster than he did on the training grounds, but I'm winning. Those shadows are getting closer and closer to him.

And then… I lose.

He catches fire. Not a little. There aren't flickering flames like when he's excited. No, he becomes an inferno, and every bit of darkness disappears, burned away by the orange and red that threatens to set the world aflame.

It's no wonder we had to fly so far away from Draenyth because I have to shield my eyes from the light, and I'm sure that if we weren't on the opposite side of a mountain, someone in Draenyth would see him.

My shadows evaporate. Every bit of darkness is burned away in that blinding flash of light and rolling heat that he exudes.

I just stop. What am I supposed to do against that?

Cole's laughter fills the air, rising even higher than the crackle of flames against the stone as twigs underfoot catch fire and turn to ash. Laughter? The reds and orange dissipate far slower than normal, and his face is the first part of his body that becomes fully visible. He looks so unlike himself.

A wide grin crosses his face, and he lets out full-bellied laughter. There's a sparkle in those eyes that I've never seen before. It's like I'm getting a glimpse of him behind the mask he wears for the world. It's a glimpse into the possibilities of Cole.

"That's how the House of Flames won against the House of Shadows," he says as the flames die down completely, leaving only heat waves radiating around him. "Shadows can't stand against the light of a powerful immolation. Have you learned how to shadow walk? That's the only way you can even consider fighting against immolation. Unless you're wearing armor, of course."

"Shadow walking?"

Cole nods, and the smile fades a bit. I want to tell him to stop. I don't need to know about shadow walking or anything else that's serious. I just want him to smile more. I want him to laugh and forget about anything of importance. For just a little longer, I want him to be himself, with no control or constraint.

But I'd be lying. Plus, it doesn't matter what I say. Unless he's training, he never feels like he can let go of that leash over his emotions. Maybe he can't. The flames that surrounded him would have burned anything around him to ash. They were so bright. So dangerous.

Maybe it's better that he keeps his emotions leashed. I know how hard it is to keep the shadows from slipping from my fingers even with the Forgotten Ring on. I can't imagine how hard it would be to know that an ounce of excitement could set the world around me on fire.

"Shadow walking," he says, interrupting my thoughts, "is when you step into the shadows here and emerge from the shadows somewhere else. It's how so many members of the House of Shadows escaped our attack."

How the Shade moves. Stepping into the shadows and emerging elsewhere. That would be incredible on a battlefield, but it'd be helpful any other time as well.

"How do you do that?" If I could do that, then it'd be easy to sneak past the guards outside Calyr's cave.

Cole's eyes look past me as if he were remembering something. "I've heard it has to do with desiring to be somewhere else and being disgusted by where you are. I don't remember exactly how it works. There's something about when you're nowhere and nothing, you can create shadows anywhere."

I blink. "Wait. So I have to die?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. Not my House. I'm just telling you what I've heard."

Flames flicker around his body as he grins. It's good to know that he's not trying very hard to keep his emotions leashed. I let the conversation go, preferring to see that smile than to get information out of him.

I walk toward him, that grin on his face making it hard to keep the throbbing drumbeat inside me under control, and there's a steady stream of shadows that runs from my fingers to the ground. "You're handsome when you smile," I say.

It's like someone slapped him. "What?" he asks, surprise written all over his face.

"You're handsome when you smile," I repeat. "We're betrothed. Am I not supposed to tell you things like that?"

"No, it's not that." He shakes his head. "It's just… Nevermind."

He tries to turn away from me, but my hand goes to his cheek. "Don't do that, Cole. I've seen the way you look at me." As soon as I touch him, I can feel the emotional pain that rips through him. It's a confusing mess of loathing and hatred and desire and desperation.

He pulls away, the flames around his body disappearing completely, and everything in me wants to grab him, to force him to look at me and explain himself. "Cole," I say it with more than a little strength in my voice, and when I put my hand on his cheek, I whisper, "Talk to me. You're doing everything you promised during our betrothal. You're protecting me. You're helping me to be strong. Let me help you like I promised. Let me carry some of the weight. Let me help you find peace."

He shakes his head, but he doesn't pull away this time. When he turns to me, there's a darkness in those eyes. Secrets that he won't let me know. I don't push this time, though. I trust him, and everything inside me says that he's good. That he's not here to hurt me.

"Maeve, I'm not the kind of person you want. That you need. I…" He closes his eyes like he's having to do everything in his power to keep his emotions leashed. "You need someone who can be loyal to you. Not to… others. I was built to be a tool, and while I may not be wielded by my father any longer, I'm still that same tool. You want a person, Maeve. You deserve someone that can laugh and cry with you. Someone that can love. That's not me. I'm the sharpest blade anyone could wield, but someone kind–someone wonderful like you–doesn't marry her blade. She wields it until the enemy is dead, and then she puts it away."

"Is that what you think?" I ask. "That I think you're handsome because you're strong? That I haven't complained about sharing your bed because you're protecting me? No, Cole. I happen to enjoy your company. At least when you're not staring gloomily into a fire or telling me not to talk."

He chuckles, and the flames around him flash into existence. A small part of me worries about being burned, but I trust Cole. If there's anything I'm sure of right now, it's that he's the only person in the world that I trust.

Even more than the Shade.

"Cole, you're a good man. In a world where everyone does terrible things, you're a good man who tries to do the right thing."

He pulls away again. "No, I'm not, Maeve. Nothing about me is good." He turns away, not daring to look at me. "If I could tell you everything, you'd know that I'm just as terrible as my father. I'm not the hero in this story, and that you think I am shows how little you know."

As he says those words, flames flash around us, and I truly understand why the Keep of Flames is made of marble and has almost no furnishings. The fire that rages is all-encompassing, wreathing him in that orange and yellow and even some white. "You're not the only one who wants to fix the things that you've broken." His face is hidden behind flames so bright that my eyes hurt to look at him. A tree to his side is too close to him, and it ignites just from the heat that he radiates.

He ignores it.

"Everyone makes mistakes," I say. "You can't beat yourself up over it, Cole." I try to say it with enough confidence that he listens. When the words come out, they sound like a pitiful attempt to soothe a dangerous male.

The flames disappear entirely, and I'd almost question whether they'd ever been there if the tree next to Cole wasn't still on fire. When he looks at me, he says, in a voice even more broken than mine, "My mistakes should have been punishable by death, Maeve, and they would have been, if we'd lost. We didn't lose, though."

"I'm glad you won." Even if other people got hurt, I'm glad that Cole didn't. His eyes hold so much pain and turmoil in them that I don't know what to say. So I do the thing that no one's ever done for me.

I hug him. I wrap my arms around him and press my body against his. "Cole, I don't care what you did. I don't care what you're doing now or what secrets hide in that mind of yours. You are good."

Then I remember something that might make all the difference. "I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for you. You didn't have to save me. You didn't have to take me all the way to Draenyth. But you did, and that's changed my life and my cousin's. How many people have you done something similar for? You saved Darian from being forced into literal eternal slavery. All the people in Aerwyn have you to thank for being free. How many people in this city recognize you for what you truly are, and not what you think of yourself as?"

Cole shakes his head and walks a little further away. The tree collapses, exploding in a splash of embers. "I've killed more people than you've seen, Maeve. Males, females, and even children. I was the spearhead of the attack on the House of Shadows. The rest of my father's armies were the aftershocks of me. Mere cleanup efforts. But that's not all."

He refuses to look at me. "Everyone I'm connected to gets hurt because of me. I may try to make this world a better place, but if you're a part of my world, you'll be hurt just as much as my enemies. You're not like me. You're like Darian and Lee. Good people that have to be protected, but I can't protect you forever. Eventually, I won't be there, and someone will take the chance to do terrible things to you just to hurt me."

Gods, he's beautiful standing like that. Broken and bleeding the emotions that he's kept hidden from me for so long. Staring down at the rocky world below us that's as unforgiving and unfaltering as him, his hands balled into fists at his lack of control over the world around him.

"Everyone knows Immortals don't trust any other Immortals. But I know Darian and Lee are loyal. Have they told you why?"

I shake my head. "They proved their loyalty to me when we were children."

Without turning to look at me, he says, "When we were young, still very much children, they created a distraction to allow me to sneak out of the city because I wanted to try to fly without anyone from the House of Steel or House of Flames seeing. I'd never used my House of Steel powers before because manifesting pride in myself was not a simple thing to do with my childhood. It's still not the easiest thing for me to do, but regardless, I wanted to do it far away from anyone that would judge me. Namely, my father and everyone that reported to him."

He turns to look at me. "It was successful. I snuck out. I even manifested wings to fly back into the city."

The pain in his eyes now is even worse than before. "But I came back to Darian and Lee barely alive. Chained to steel poles, their bodies had been burned so badly that most people wouldn't have recognized them. Their mother was looking on with tears in her eyes. She'd pleaded with my father to free them, and he'd laughed as he'd burned them even more. All they'd had to do to be freed was to tell him where I was. They hadn't told him anything. This same thing happened many times over the years."

There's so much anger in his eyes. "My father understands that my friends are my weakness. They're… they're how he controls me. He will use you against me just as he's used Darian and Lee against me before."

"Wait," I say. "You somehow think that you're the villain when you were forced to fight?"

He shakes his head. "No." He sighs, and the strength inside him seems to fade against the weight on his shoulders. "I've asked you to trust me, Maeve. I'm not the hero. The hero doesn't do what I've done. What I'll continue to do. That's all I can say right now. Someday, I'll tell you everything, but not today."

I approach him, knowing that at any point he could set me ablaze in that inferno that's still burning that tree. I put my hand on his cheek. He sinks into my touch. All the pain he's feeling runs through me, through our betrothal bond. The pain of the past and of the present is something almost physical.

"You stop it. I won't argue with you over things I don't know. I don't care what's happening. I don't care what you've done, Cole." The memory of my promise to him before we came to Draenyth during our betrothal ceremony runs through me.

My nails press against his cheek, harder than I've done before, and I visualize myself laying in the trees by myself as a child. The way the wind soothed me. The way the trees pulled the pain away from me. I'd had so much sadness in me, and then I'd let the forest pull it all away.

Cole's eyes soften as I relive that feeling. As the betrothal bond sends that peace through the man that's given me so much hope and strength. I can see his muscle's relaxing. "Take off your shirt and lay down," I say. This time, my voice is as strong as steel.

Cole doesn't argue at all. He rips his tunic off. Shadows flow from my fingertips over the rocky ground and create a soft bed made of inky darkness. A dark cloud that is just as soft as it looks.

His scars are bright red, just like the first time I saw them. They cover every inch of his back, from the collar of his tunic to the top of his pants. A permanent reminder of the pain and torment he'd received as a child because he refused to let his friend become a slave.

When he lays down, his back up, I shiver, and the peace that had filled me a moment ago is swallowed up by a nervousness that I'm not used to. I know what I'm supposed to be trying to do. Wash away Cole's weariness and self-loathing with a peace that comes so naturally to me. It's going to require that I touch him. I'll need to run my hands over his body just like the night that his father tortured him.

I take the two steps toward the shadow bed and sit down on the side. My right hand presses against his shoulder, fingers wide across his shoulder blade, and I feel him. The unnaturally smooth skin. It's a spiderweb of scar tissues I'm sure almost no one other than Nevan has ever touched before. Shadows curl around his body. The day that I saw these scars was the first day that I realized he was not as simple and cold as he seemed.

Cole lets out a soft groan as my other hand moves to the other shoulder blade, and both of them massage the sore muscles. "You don't know how good that feels," he groans.

I don't. In my entire life, I've never felt another person's hands on my body like this. My thumbs move over the thick bands of muscles, slowly kneading them in a way that I would expect to feel good. Similar to how I've rubbed my legs after having to haul large game long distances.

The knots in his back are secondary problems, though. The real problem isn't in his body at all. It's in his head and heart. In his very soul if I'm to believe the explanation of the betrothal bond.

When I reach out to feel him through the bond, I let myself explore a little. My eyes close almost instinctively as my fingers move across his scarred skin. In my mind, I see myself standing right outside that desert filled with fiery winds and glass shaped so that even Nightforged steel doesn't compare to the razor-sharp edges. In the center of it all stands that obsidian tower rising high into the sky. Every emotion is a hot wind, creating a new sharp surface that threatens to slice my mind apart. It all makes me recoil. So much pain. So much fear.

It's all in my mind. Or soul? But I feel transported there, and even as my hands move over Cole's back, I feel like this desert landscape of his mind is just as real. When I put my hand out into that blazing wind, the pain of it searing across my skin is just as real as it had been when I'd felt his father burn him through the bond.

Everything about this place in Cole's mind is pain. How could he walk through life like this? How could he survive for as long as he has? At the center of the terrible landscape, the obsidian tower looms, and it is beautiful. Ringed in shadows, it stands all alone amidst the pain and misery. The flames and sharp glass may swirl around it, but the tower remains nearly unscathed other than the cracks that run around the base. It calls to me. It begs me to step through the tormented landscape so that I can touch it. The shadows that curl from my fingers are desperate to connect with the shadows that seep from the black stone.

At my back, a different wind blows. One of calmness. One of peace. Like a cool ocean breeze on a summer day. One filled with possibilities and life. The same feelings that I've had every time I walked into a forest all alone.

I take a step toward the tower, and I want to pull back. My boots aren't strong enough to weather the cuts each step will make in me. My tunic isn't thick enough to protect me from the smoldering winds of this place.

But there's a scent on that terrible wind. Dark and powerful. Cole's scent. Spiced amber, and it reminds me of all the things that Cole's done for me and every other person in his life. He's weathered the storm, so they didn't have to. Cole stood up to his father to keep me from feeling that pain. He took the punishments so that Darian and Lee didn't have to.

It's time that someone took the pain for him.

I step forward. Agony rockets through me as the razor sharp ground slices through my boots and leaves my feet bleeding. The wind lashes out at me, burning through my tunic and leaving blisters along my arm.

It's nothing compared to the night that Cole was punished.

I take another step. Again, the searing pain shoots through my body, and I want to collapse. There will be too many steps toward that black tower in the sky. I'll die before I make it. But when I look behind me, the land is smooth. That sweet summer breeze pushes me on. Where I tread, there is no more sharpness. No more terrible heat. It's almost as though my very existence in this land is forcing the world to reshape into something less hostile. Something less miserable.

Where I walk, the world is still dark and terrifying, but it's peaceful. It's calm. It's a place that someone could heal in.

I set my jaw and my sights on the tower in the distance. There's no way I could walk all the way to that tower today. I won't even get close. But this is not the last time I'll walk through these terrifying landscapes of Cole's soul, and one day, I'll see that tower up close. I'll feel that black stone under my hands.

Then I'll know what's kept Cole pushing forward all these years when the world he lived in has tried to crush him since his very birth.

I can't change the wounds that Cole has suffered, but I can do this. I can help him to find peace. I can help him to heal.