Page 86 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Too many sets of hands swarmed me, holding me down. I reached for my sword, but it was yanked from my grasp.

I let out a snarl. Bit an arm that reached over me. Fought back like the animal they thought I was. But soon I found myself pinned, soldiers wrestling shackles onto my wrists. I had made it ten feet beyond the compound gates.

I blinked the blood from my eyes. A man in a captain’s uniform stood over me.

“After all I had heard about you, I have to say, I expected this to be harder,” he said.

I spat at him. He rewarded me with a crack across the back of my head, hard enough to make my vision blur.

“Threllian bitch,” he muttered, wiping the spittle from his face in disgust. “Lock her up. The Queen wants her alive. Keep her far away from him.”

I fought them the whole way. Tears streamed from my eyes—from the smoke of the explosion. I let them believe it was because I was caught.

I pretended that I hadn’t planned for this to happen exactly as it did.

They dragged me to the eastern side of the compound. There, one of the guards—one of the Threllian guards—came just close enough to me to mutter in my ear.

“The west side. He’s been freed,” he whispered in Thereni. The other guards weren’t close enough to hear, and couldn’t understand us if they did, anyway.

It wasn’t the Threllian guards that we had to worry about. I saw the moment I was taken into captivity that they recognized me.

Thiswas the factor Nura didn’t consider.

She had the land, the manpower, the magic, the prisons. She set a trap with iron teeth. Tallied on paper, it was laughable to think that one person could pose any threat to these things. But she was thinking of me, a single slave—not the hundreds that oiled the gears of her burgeoning Threllian empire. She prioritized earning the steadfast loyalty of her Threllian subjects, but she didn’t know this place, didn’t knowthem. I’d learned a long time ago that there was nothing you couldn’t do if you knew what people truly wanted.

I knew what this man wanted.

His name was Viktor. He had come into Nura’s possession because he had been a slave on Esmaris Mikov’s estate and had chosen to stay after the Orders had taken it over. I didn’t know him personally, at least not well, but when I had seen his name on the list of soldiers stationed at this base, it had sparked familiarity. His sister and his nephew were among those Serel, Filias, and I had freed from a neighboring estate several months ago. They had joined the rebellion. Viktor wouldn’t know that they had been freed, or where they were now—but I did.

So, hours earlier, when Viktor had been making his daily early-morning patrols of the ground, it hadn’t even been difficult to find him alone in a base this understaffed. He knew who I was immediately. When I told him of his family, I watched his eyes widen. I’d seen that look so many times. Before he even opened his mouth, I knew he would help us. People will do anything for hope.

Now, Viktor took my arm, pulling us out of sight from the rest of the base. We had seconds. Even though the base was woefully short-staffed at night, I had attracted attention and riled up the guards here—just as I had intended to.

Viktor shoved a sheathed dagger into my hands, which I slipped into the waistband of my trousers. My heart was beating so fast.

“I saw him go,” Viktor said. “He and his brother are leaving now.”

Brother?

I barely cared about that moment of confusion. I was minutes away from seeing Max again. The hope was so intense that it terrified me.

“Go to the east side,” I said. “My friends will be waiting for you. They will get you out.”

His eyes gleamed beneath the lantern light. He slipped me a small metal key, and as he did, he paused to squeeze his calloused hand around mine. “Thank you, Tisaanah. Thank you.”

I nodded, my own throat tight. “You’re the one who deserves the thanks.”

He gave me a small smile, then looked over his shoulder. “We should wait no more than a half hour before freeing you. They’ll be sending the rest of the Aran soldiers back now that they know you’ve been captured. It will only get harder to get you out later, and if they realize he’s gone—”

The high-pitched screech cut through me like a scalpel, sharp enough that it shattered the air. It lasted for several long seconds, and by the time I managed to regain my senses, I realized the ground was shaking. Panicked shouts erupted outside. “Get that thing under control! Stop it! Kill it!Kill it!” someone was shrieking, before going silent.

Viktor’s eyes went round. Happiness fell away in favor of sheer terror.

“What is that?” I asked.

“We need to go right—” Viktor started, just as the most horrifying creature I had ever seen tore through the wall of the base.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

---