Page 33 of Mother of Death and Dawn

It’s a strange sensation, for half your life to suddenly come slamming back onto you like a million-pound weight. It was like I had been standing in a dark room all along, and the light had suddenly flipped on. Yet, it was a flickering light, one that obscured the questions I needed to answer the most. So much was still missing.

I remembered Brayan,and my family, but I didn’t know what had happened to them… even though I knew… I knew, somehow, that they were gone, the ache of their absence throbbing in my chest at the thought of them.

I remembered joining the Orders, and I knew it had changed my life, but I didn’t know how.

All of that was shrouded in the shadows still left behind the light.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“For fuck’s sake, aren’t you supposed todosomething?”

The voices sounded very far away.

“Breathe, Max.Breathe.”

I became aware of hands on my shoulders, of magic reaching towards my mind. I didn’t likethatsensation one fucking bit.

“Get the hellout of my head,” I snapped, yanking away from the healer’s touch. The Valtain woman stepped back fast, clearly afraid of me.

Only now did I take stock of my surroundings.

I was in the Towers. But I wasn’t in the basement, where Nura usually took me for experimentation. The floor-to-ceiling windows revealed a churning surf and a sunrise-drenched sky. Standing in front of that window was the Queen, her white suit blood spattered, crown tangled even more viciously in her hair. She looked so wildly different from my memories of her as a scrawny preteen.

And beside her was my brother.

The sight of him alone was so disorienting that a headache immediately began pulsing behind my temples. The present and my patchwork understanding of the past collided, making my stomach churn.

In my memories of Brayan, he was a young military champion—in his twenties and the prime of his career. For so much of my life, I cared about nothing more than I cared about what he thought of me.

The man who stood before now me looked like a different person.

He, like Nura, was drenched in blood. A wound across his cheek seeped red. His hair was still long, as I remembered it, bound over one shoulder in a braid that now had a few strands of silver mixed in with the black. He wore a long burgundy jacket that seemed vaguely military in style, though I didn’t think it was from Ara.

When I was younger, I had admired the way Brayan managed to embody that mix of savagery and elegance so coveted by the military—cold and animalistic on the battlefield, then proper enough to wash the blood off his hands and guide noble ladies around a ballroom. Now, he seemed… different. Like the balance had been disrupted.

He surveyed me with a dark-eyed, sharp stare.

When was the last time I had seen Brayan? I racked my brain. Memory beyond my teenage years dissolved into nothingness. I had the overwhelming sense that I hadn’t seen Brayan in a very long time. That he hadn’t seenmein a very long time.

Why?

I opened my mouth and wasn’t sure what would come out. It turned out to be, “Good to see you, Brayan.”

Nura’s eyebrows arched slightly. “You recognize him?”

If Nura’s surprise meant anything to Brayan, he didn’t show it. He just stared at me in silence.

“He’ll live?” Nura said to the healer, and the woman nodded.

“He’ll live.”

“Good. Call the Syrizen. We’ll get him out of here.”

Finally, Brayan spoke. “Absolutely not.”

He didn’t look at me, only the Queen.

“We have had this discussion, Brayan.”

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