Page 13 of The Cruel Dawn
“We need to talk,” I tell Zephar.
He leads me to the Howling Wolf Inn, its wooden sign painted with a black wolf with jaws agape. The inn stands two stories tall, and crushed date pits cover the floor of the sitting room. I’d held court in this inn, taking meals with the farmers or the family heads or even the young people tapped as future leaders. I’d told them stories about the ways of other cities—their successes and failures. I’d offered lessons on diplomacy and conflict resolution.
But then tables of fifty people became twenty people, became five, and then no one came except for the innkeeper and his wife.
Now, that leather-faced innkeeper, Wolda, bows as his tiny wife, Sabenn, rushes behind Zephar and me with plates of date cakes, two glasses, and a pitcher of something dark and fruit-scented.
Zephar and I settle on a patio that overlooks the town, now being made perfect by the Eserime and Mera. I drop my cape, unbuckle and peel off my breastplate, greaves, and vambraces. I pull off my tunic, and now I’m standing in just my bandeau and leather breeches. I let my head fall back as light from the daystar nourishes my skin. Feels like freedom and victory and fucking, and I never want to wear armor again.
Zephar’s eyes sweep across my body, and he watches my hands rub life into skin that hadn’t felt light like this since last spring. “You leave me breathless,” he whispers.
My head rolls to the side, light-drunk. “Prove it.”
“You want me to die for you?” he asks, biting his lower lip.
I meet his gaze. “Umhmm.”
“I will. Tonight. Little deaths, over and over again.”
I raise my eyebrows. “It’s like that?”
“It’sbeenthat, love. Since last spring.”
My smile wants to die, but I force it to remain on my lips. I didn’t deny myself the pleasure of Jadon’s touch,but how the fuck was I supposed to know?
Zephar lifts his full glass. “To finding our way back.”
Yes.
The beverage tastes of fermented figs and apples, and the honeycakes taste more luscious than any I’ve eaten since waking up in that forest outside of Maford.
“So what do we need to talk about?” he asks.
“Even though I withdrew my favor from Gasho,” I say, “I didn’t leave them altogether vulnerable. You said the guards are dead. All of them?”
“I dissolved the companywith your permissionbecause Gasho forgot,” Zephar says, shrugging. “Yes, the otherworldly played a role in destroying the city, but the Gashoans are also at fault. They mistook their success as somethingtheydid. They believed that it was their genius that led them to create this perfect place, that their mere imaginations invented ways to irrigate their crops and harness the daystar’s power. They believed thatwe, the gods, were only here to ensure that their dates ripened, that their goats made milk, that we didn’t give them everything they had.
“And so they stopped praying to us. They stopped asking for advice and giving thanks. They knew what they wanted, and they knew what they were doing, and they didn’t need us and so we,the gods, said, ‘Fuck it.’”
He grins as he lifts his glass. “Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t take shit like that well.” Zephar drains his wine. “The otherworldly came to remind them that they are masters ofshit. They did call upon us for help, in the end, while you were away.”
“So…you didn’t answer the call?” I ask, squinting at him.
“Your instructions were, and I quote…” He dramatically clears his throat. “‘Fuck these people and all this fucking sand, they can kiss my sparkly ass, and Zee, don’t youdarehelp them without an okay from me.’” He pauses, then adds, “But you moved your head a lot more when you said it.”
Shit, Kai.I stare at my glass of wine, unable to drink on my suddenly sour stomach. I couldn’t have meant that. How could I say those things after I’d blessed all those babies and loved all those mothers and the Sisters and the old people? Today’s attack happened because I…because I…
Because I was an asshole.
Zephar pours himself more wine. “And here we are, together again. We can pick up where we left off. I’m thinking Shelezadd, north of here. They call it the ‘city of dawn,’ but there, too, they’ve turned it into a shithole.”
As Zephar describes the tar-stained town now overrun by bandits and rapists, my mind wanders. I will have to tell him that I didn’t come back to Gasho to destroy it or any other town. No, I’m here to save my people and Vallendor from Danar Rrivae. But if I’m to do that, I must first return to Mount Devour and demand the restoration of my powers. This realm—from the babies to the battabies—matters to me. Even in their imperfection, they deserve to not just survive, but to thrive.
“…because I’m far behind in destroying where my father was at my age,” Zephar is saying now, tapping bare skin where a realm’s symbol should be.
Zephar’s markings mean less to me now—the Kai from before would’ve cared about his ink as well as her own. Now, though, Vallendor must be restored and protected from the traitor at all costs. No more orphans. No more invasions. Zephar may bristle hearing this at first, but he will understand. And he will stay with me until the end, and then, if he wants, he can leave Vallendor to destroy the truly fucked-up realms like Gropool, Myala, and Alex. He can earn so many tattoos that he’ll run out of space on his beautiful body.
There are 67,000 known realms across the Aetherium, and a number of them can go.
