Page 23 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“Why did you bring me here?”

“Once, a very long time ago, you taught me almost everything I know today about combat.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Maybe not in some ways.” He went to the opposite side of the ring and knelt beside a crate, retrieving something wrapped in dark fabric. He returned to me, placed the items on the ground, and unwrapped them.

My breath caught for reasons I did not understand.

Two blades lay in the sand. They were identical, long for daggers but short for swords, with a slight curve to them. They were made of a sleek black steel.

The sight of them stirred a strange sensation within me.

“Do you recognize these?” Caduan asked.

“No.” Half a lie.

“You used to wield them. Not these exact ones, but blades just like these.”

“I told you that was not me.”

“I understand.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Fair enough. But perhaps you might enjoy doing something physical.”

I didn’t move.

“Or not,” Caduan said, lifting one shoulder. “If you would prefer to return to your room.”

I did not want to return to my room. I did not want to walk back through Ela’Dar. I wondered if perhaps Caduan knew that.

I picked up the blades.

As my hands closed around their hilts, instant familiarity shook me. The sensation was so intense that the hairs rose on the back of my neck. For a moment, I was holding these very weapons, so long ago, in a city made of black stone. For one split second, I regained some grasp of who I once had been.

And then, seconds later, it was drowned beneath a thousand other memories. Memories of a thousand other weapons in a hundred other bodies, weapons that I had been forced to wield—forced tobe—in so many other lives.

I needed to move. I needed anger. Anger was real.

Caduan had been watching me carefully. When I struck, he was prepared. His sword was already out, ready to block me—which he did easily. Not that it was difficult. My attacks were sloppy, half-hearted. I barely knew how to control a body by myself anymore.

And yet, there was something breathlessly satisfying in the clash of metal against metal, in the strain of my muscles. The way my emotionwentsomewhere.

Caduan looked oddly pleased.

“I knew you would remember,” he said.

Clash. Our weapons struck.

“Even back then,” he went on, “I don’t think it was the violence that you enjoyed. It was the physicality of it.”

With every lunge, my heart beat faster, my rage burning hotter, like I had opened up a passage I didn’t know how to close again.

Why was he talking about what I used to be? Why was he reminding me of everything that had been taken away from me? Didn’t he see that I could never be that person again? That I couldn’t reclaim her, even if I tried? Why would he shove my face into everything I couldn’t be, like a boot grinding my cheek into the mud?

A particularly vicious strike left our faces inches apart, our weapons vibrating between us.

“Why did you bring me back?” The words tore from my throat without my permission.

“Because you deserved a life.”

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