Page 194 of Mother of Death and Dawn

I saw you.

It was the truth. As Reshaye, no one saw me. I was a living being trapped in a world where no one acknowledged me, except for a single soul. What choice did I have but to become obsessed with them? Tisaanah had become everything to me then. My lover, my enemy, my captor, my slave. All these things, bound inextricably to what I had once been.

I reached out with a trembling hand and stroked her cheek. She was so soft. So fragile. And so unremarkably human.

She tried to hide it, but could not. She could not hide her flinch. She could not hide the tensing of her muscles. She could not hide the slight buzz in the air between us as I felt her magic simmer to life, ready to act.

She was afraid of me. We were no longer the same. She washuman.

Once I had thought what we shared was love. But even then, she had abandoned me, just as all the other humans had. She would not hesitate to murder me now, rip me away from my newfound purpose, drag my corpse to a room of white and white. Just as Maxantarius had cast me out and left me to hundreds and hundreds of days of torture. Just as my father had turned on me, in another life.

It was Reshaye who had craved Tisaanah. Not the new version of myself, who had a new home and a new purpose. And Aefe could not live until Reshaye was dead.

Once, I had loved her. But now, she was the enemy.

“No,” I said, quietly. “I am exactly who I wish to be.”

My hand trailed down past her jaw, resting at her throat.

Tightened. Tightened.

Tisaanah was smaller than I, her neck slender compared to the length of my fingers. Her eyes bulged as I lifted her off the ground. She clawed at my hand, leaving wounds of rot and pus that I barely felt.

My anger flared, demanding release. Black flowers sprouted at my fingertips, their vines crawling over her skin.

Tisaanah had become powerful through the gifts I—I!—had given her. She had used me and discarded me, just as her own captors had done to her.

She was like the rest of them, I told myself. Now, I had my own people who loved me, who trusted me. Tisaanah could not live if they were to survive. If she did not destroy us, then she would be captured and exploited by people who would.

Still, something made me pause as her head began to loll—just long enough that I was caught off guard when fire surrounded me.

CHAPTERSEVENTY-SEVEN

MAX

Iknew what she was. She looked at me like I’d known her for a hundred years. One look at those eyes, wild with fury, and I knew.

Aefe—Reshaye—hit the ground hard. She dropped Tisaanah, who rolled and gasped for breath. I had only seconds to kneel beside her, touch her shoulder in a wordless “Tell me you’re alright.”

She nodded, rubbing her throat. Then her eyes widened, and she pushed me out of the way.

Aefe lunged for us. Her magic was unlike anything I’d ever seen, light and—fuck, were thoseflowers?—flaring at her fingertips. I was a little too slow. A glancing blow from her magic at my shoulder nearly immobilized me with unnatural, intense pain.

He needs her power,Ishqa had told us.He needs her to win this war.

It didn’t matter what face it wore. This thing should not exist.

I opened my second eyelids and met Aefe’s attack head-on. Blinding light erupted through the room, white and red clashing. She was strong—stronger than a human, maybe even stronger than a typical Fey. When fire licked her flesh, she barely reacted.

I slipped her grasp one, two, three times. Struck at her legs to make her fall. I crawled over her, pinning her. My magic burned up in my veins. I had been using too much of it. Something was unstable in the layers of magic beneath. My power was growing harder to control.

But then again, maybe I didn’t need control now.

My worst nightmares had been given a human face, but there was nothing human about this thing. Nothing real, just a power that should never have been allowed to exist. A tragic person who had been distorted long past a time when she should have been alive, turned into something grotesque.

I had called Reshaye a monster the day it ruined my life. And as I leaned over this thing that had nearly killed Tisaanah, this creature that looked so deceptively alive, the word floated through my head again:

Monster.

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