Page 11 of The Cruel Dawn
Celestial, your power bright.
Be our star in darkest night,
With gratitude, our voices raise,
In song and praise, we sing your ways.
Two guards pull back one of the veils hiding a temple chamber. Inside the chamber is a bath built on polished alabaster stone. The whole room shimmers, its walls made of blue lapis lazuli and inlaid with gold moths. Pillars of obsidian threaded with silver soar up to the open domed ceiling. Water cascades from multitiered pools, billowing steam scented with mint and lavender.
An Eserime with wavy seafoam-colored hair and silver eyes makes her way to my side. She dips her head and says, “Lady Megidrail, your list.” She hands me a roll of gold-tinged paper, which reads:
•AQUEDUCT NORTH
•AQUEDUCT SOUTH
•FORTIFICATION OF:
•ROADS
•GATES
•BRIDGE
•OVERGROWTH
From reclaiming farmland and organizing defenses to healing the sick and weak to reconnecting with old allies.
“If you could please consider,” she says, “what you’d like to restore first.”
My eyes widen, and I sneak a peek at Zephar.
“You like it the way you like it,” he says with a shrug, grinning. “You don’t like shortcuts or others making big decisions like…the color of wildflowers in a field no one visits.”
“Water and healing first,” I tell her. “Food next. Place protective wards all around—without them, what good is a fixed bone if another urt is gonna break it? Wait—where’s…?”
I race out those broken gates and return to the gully.
That mother with the baby and toddler hasn’t moved from their spot in the dried canal.
I hop down to join them and say, “Iretah.”
She looks up at me with wide, tear-filled eyes. “Celestial.”
I touch the top of her head.
She glows blue.
I touch the top of the little girl’s head, and Nenefer also glows blue.
The baby that she holds, though…
“Whose child is this?” I ask, touching the infant’s head.
“Tymy belongs to my brother and his wife,” Iretah says.
“And where are they?”
She swallows. “Dead. Attacked last week by the creatures. There was no one here to protect us. No one here…”
