Page 88 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Even when I was expecting it, the sight of it stunned me all over again. It looked even worse than it had when Brayan and I encountered it. Now, its face was almost entirely gone, the empty, light-drenched eye sockets melding with its missing jaw.

The creature stumbled from the wreckage wailing, inhuman limbs thrashing.

Sammerin drew in a sharp gasp of horror.

The smoke dissipated to reveal that the monster waschasingsomeone.

The figure glanced over their shoulder at us. It was a young woman. She had strange, dual-tone skin, Valtain-pale with a swatch of color over one side of her face. White hair streaked with black whipped in the wind. Through it, one green eye fell to me.

That stare skewered me through the chest. I couldn’t look away.

The moment broke. The woman had to turn, blocking with her sword, bracing herself for impact. That idiot wasfightingthis thing.

I didn’t hear Brayan shout my name. I was already running back into the carnage.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN

AEFE

The vision was a crack of lightning that split my world in two. One moment, I was in my chambers, practicing my magic—and the next, the sensations buried me in an onslaught.

I saw iron bars and steel blades.

A night sky over an emerald forest.

A horrible face, half decomposed, covered with stringy red hair.

The flood of magic. The scorch of fire.

Andpain pain pain.

I couldn’t catch my breath. I had fallen to the ground. I pressed my palms to the cold tile of the floor until I felt it steady beneath me.

The connection still burned in my chest, unmistakable. The particular strain of magic we shared, the kind that reached deeper than the soul, pulled me like a thread tied around my throat. Just as it had when I showed it to Caduan.

Tisaanah and Maxantarius were far from where they had been before.

And they were together.Together.

I forced myself to my feet and stumbled out of my room. I didn’t stop running until I had reached Caduan’s chamber. I snarled something wordless at the guards and threw open his door. “We need to go,” I panted.

Caduan had been sitting at his desk. He sat up, blinking at me blearily, looking exhausted. “Go…where?”

Words. Such infuriatingly clumsy tools to communicate such important things.

“We need to go.Now.” When Caduan stood and approached, I grabbed his arms hard enough to leave marks in his skin. “I feel them. Now. Right now.”

All remnants of Caduan’s weariness disappeared. He threw his jacket on and didn’t bother buttoning it.

“Stay calm,” he said, sharply. “Maintain the connection.”

Holding onto that thread required increasingly more concentration; it grew thinner and more slippery by the second.

He stood behind me and put his hand over mine. Our fingers intertwined. His skin felt so hot. I leaned into the sensation of his warmth.

Life. Heartbeat.

“What we’re about to do is dangerous. We’re traveling fast, and I am going to ask you to steer where we go. We could lose control—”

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