Page 99 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Caduan’s was real.

A palm pressed against warm skin, held tight, as if holding me to this world.

Keep breathing.

Keep breathing, Aefe.

But the pain got worse before it got better. One day I dreamed of a door. Before me stood death.Come home, come home.I pressed my hand to death’s chest. There was no heartbeat there.

Then, another voice behind me.Come home.

I turned to see Caduan’s hand outstretched. I touched it and felt the thrum of his pulse beneath his skin.

A warm glow, and the choice was taken from me. Caduan’s reaching hand found me, pulling me into orange light. Living was more difficult than death. The pain ate me from the inside out.

But I leaned into that heartbeat. Leaned into it and let myself fall.

I waved to death, but it refused to say goodbye.

I will see you again,it whispered.

The door grew farther away.

Keep breathing,Caduan whispered.

Keep breathing.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE

TISAANAH

Idid this. I did this. I did this.

I despised Nura for what she had done to Max. She tortured him, imprisoned him, crippled his power. When he had so casually mentioned being “on Nura’s table,” I had bitten my tongue so hard I tasted blood.

But the destruction of that perfect mind… that was not Nura’s fault. That was all me.

How many times had I played out the moment in my head? The Fey king had been using Max as a conduit, leveraging his connection to the deepest levels of magic to assert his presence in Ara. My mind had reached into Max’s, and I’d seen it—all those threads wrapped around his thoughts, like a raging infection spreading.Cut it out,Max had told me.

And I had known, then, that it would be dangerous—that I could kill him. I’d felt his mind, all those precious memories, shatter like glass.

I did this.

I handled this the only way I knew how to: I turned pain into a plan into action. We would go to Zagos. We would remove the Stratagrams from Max’s skin—gods, when I saw those tattoos, the rage that I felt—and get him back his magic. And we would find a way to reclaim mine, too. I would be able to reassemble his mind. I would be able to fix what I had broken. Then I would turn my attention to Nura, and killing her as slowly and painfully as I possibly could.

I cemented these steps into certainty.

We traveled all day, and then into the night. I was eager to get to Zagos as quickly as possible, and the others seemed to share my impatience, all for our own reasons. I knew Ishqa’s priorities—the sooner we arrived at the city, the sooner we could start using the wayfinder. Selfishly, I struggled to care about the wayfinder as long as Max’s mind was in pieces.

Sammerin and Ishqa were able to use magic to take us parts of the way, though we had to do some traveling on foot. Max’s brother—Brayan, I had learned—clearly detested magic travel, quietly excusing himself afterwards and returning to the group looking slightly green.

As we traveled, Max peppered us with questions. We told him of the war and the Fey. Ishqa told him of King Caduan and his bloodthirsty vendetta against humankind, which had Brayan cursing quietly to himself. In return, he told us of the strange circumstances of his release from Ilyzath, which none of us, not even Ishqa, knew what to make of.

Max took everything we told him shockingly in stride, but as the questions went on, they would also get slower and farther between. He would touch his temple and wince, and his teeth would grind, and soon after that, they would cease completely.

I was secretly grateful when that happened. Sammerin was, too. Certain questions simply hit on topics we did not know how to discuss. We told him about Reshaye, in the vaguest possible terms. But whenever we encroached deeper on that topic, Sammerin and I would shoot each other helpless looks of uncertainty.

Max’s truth was so hard. So complicated. Even if we did tell Max the full story—thefullstory—about Reshaye, we certainly couldn’t do it in front of Brayan. This excuse allowed us some precious borrowed time while we grappled with this unspoken dilemma.

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