Page 131 of The Cruel Dawn
“Mera warriors stronger than even you?” he asks. “Do you expect me to say no to that?”
“Are yourfollowersinterested in being living-dead?” I ask. “Do they get to choose?”
He squints at me.
“Orewid Rolse won’t just stop at your fighters,” I say. “Soon, it will beyourturn to die and be returned to walk again. Is that whatyouwant? You’d be the most powerful dead man on Vallendor. When I kill you, do you want me to bring you back, not as Zephar Itikin but as something you’re not? Do you aspire to become a diminished Diminished?”
He snorts again and lets his gaze wander the red sands. “Anything else?”
“You continue this way,” I say, “and you, too, will be punished. You will be destroyed. The Adjudicator will see to it—and so will the Council. So will my father. So will I.”
He swallows, and his jaw tightens. Fear lights his eyes for a moment, but then he narrows his eyes and nods. Without a word, he turns back to the desert and strides into the storm of red sand.
…
My heart hurts.
I’ve lost him. His sword. His love.
My chest feels numb; all of me feels numb. Every time I take a breath, something inside of me rips and fills my eyes with water.
Moths flutter around me as I Spryte to the Abbey of Mount Devour. Though their numbers have dwindled, the moths that remain brush their wings across my cheeks before they depart. They are a soft and tender reminder that delicate things still exist here.
Elyn paces outside the Abbey of Mount Devour, her eyes scanning the horizon. Justice glints from the scabbard on her back. When she spots me, her manic eyes soften. “You’re here.” Her shoulders droop with relief.
But then she frowns as she takes in my crumbling breastplate. “I thought you were changing armor?”
I push my hand through my unraveling braid. “The plans have changed some.”
The wind howls, and the long grass and bluebells surrounding the abbey tremble. Long ago, my mother told me that winds are the people’s desperate prayers to the gods. Who do desperate gods pray to?
Two dawns have come and gone since I was last at the abbey. From the outside, this building rises like a spire from the crest of the mountain, a fortress overlooking a turbulent realm. But the abbey has become a mausoleum.
The sky above us churns with gold-and-algae-green light, swirling like oil on water, a sick sky.
“You find Jadon?” I ask Elyn.
She shakes her head. “You talk to Zephar?”
Hands clammy and lungs tight, I tell her about Zephar, the Crusaders, and the living-dead Mera. “The Eserime are being forced to become resurrectors,” I say, shaking my head. “I saw them at the Sanctum: dead-eyed, mottle-skinned Diminished. Those fiery crossed swords have been branded onto their chests.”
Imlodel and Dayjah both have Yeaden blood, and they’d stood in my tent…dead.
Elyn gasps. “How did they learn…? Are they working with Danar Rrivae?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. But someone’s read theLibrum Esoterica—”
“Or they have some other book that we don’t know about,” she suggests.
“The Eserime working as resurrectors,” I whisper.
“Who thought of that?” Elyn asks as we hurry down the long hallway.
“Did I unknowingly recruit them to my team?” I wonder.I’ll tear it down, rebuild it, and even bring your lost ones back to life, just believe in me.“Did I do this, not realizing there could be disastrous consequences? Or did I recruit them, knowing full well the dangers but charging ahead anyway…?” Even as I walk, I squeeze the bridge of my nose, trying to remember…
“Kai,” Elyn says, shaking her head, “I’m telling you: the Eserime coming here to work with Mera like this? It wasn’t your idea.”
“It must have been Zephar’s idea, then.” My heart hurts even more.
