Page 49 of The Cruel Dawn
She’s right, though. Holding on to that hurt means living like these dungeon-dwelling Raqiel, guarding my hurt feelings and never feeling the warmth of freedom kiss my face.
Elyn smiles as she watches me bumble from wall to wall.
I laugh. “Stop looking at me and showing off—I’m gonna throw up on your shoes.”
If I vomit in her presence, Iknowshe’ll never let me forget that.
Elyn tries not to smile and jams her lips together. She turns away from me and marches on in silence.
But silence makes me have to think more as I navigate these janky-lit hallways.
“Why don’t the sentinels down here cover their faces or wear red ribbons like the cardinal-bird ones that follow you around?” I ask.
Even as a free defender, I’d rarely interacted with the Raqiel. Living with the Fynals, though, I’d see the guard all the time. I had a crush on one—Eston, son of Athigor. He smiled at me once, and it had been the smallest, most inconsequential lift on the left side of his beautiful mouth. We held each other’s gaze for the moment it takes one to blink…
“Just a different branch of Raqiel,” Elyn says now. “They’re all trained in warfare. The cardinals just have additional skills. They understand more languages. Can identify a mortal threat quicker than the Raqiel of the dungeons. The other ‘red-bird’ ones serve all the Adjudicators throughout the Aetherium—and have done so since the first conflict ages before even our own parents’ births.” She pauses, having provided a distraction from my sorry state. Then she asks, “Better?”
I say, “Yes,” and I am better. I haven’t lurched or weaved in twenty paces. Sure, I’m taking tiny half steps, but Iamforging ahead.
We walk in silence on that hard-soft ground, through those tall corridors that have no ceilings, and into deeper shadows and shifting, glowing light. Elyn slows her pace—the darkness has grown even darker here, and her eyes can barely penetrate the gloom. The temperature in this passageway has also dropped. Frosty clouds puff like dust from our noses and mouths.
“Does keeping the prison this cold somehow stop him?” I ask.
“Yes, the cold weakens Miasma and whatever spells Danar Rrivae has endowed him with,” Elyn whispers.
“The holding cells we passed didn’t have prisoners,” I say, just realizing. I look back over my shoulder but only see darkness. “I remember jailing several immortals who broke the laws of Vallendor. You tried those cases.”
Tiny Aver, a Dindt, flayed the skin off a mortal woman who’d rejected him at a tavern.
Ryany Ashtod, another Dindt, killed a mortal family in the saffron fields of Peria.
Three Mera Diminished—Maxilla Sonuaria, Nicata Eulinari, and Lanicon Laniconia—burned down a village just because it was there. Six people died.
A pack of rowdy gods on holiday terrorized, tortured, and raped mortal women over the course of three dawns.
A few of these losers had even claimedunder oaththat they were doing my bidding.
But even on my worst days, I never tolerated rapists, and Elyn actually had to direct the Raqiel to keep me from beheading the leader of that assorted pack of evil.
“They have been moved to cells at the Abbey of Threka Realm,” Elyn says. “We don’t know enough about the Weapon to guarantee those prisoners’ survival here. This may be a jail, but we aren’t cruel.”
“I’d be okay with leaving the rapists down here,” I say.
Elyn turns to grin at me. “As the Adjudicator, maybe I’ll take the Lady’s recommendations once—if—she’s reinstated and bring them back.” I manage a small smile in return.
We stop at the end of the corridor and turn toward the only occupied cell in the dungeon.
“You have a visitor,” Elyn announces to the darkness.
Nausea—the first sign of Miasma—coils in my belly once again, but this feels different than the motion sickness I’d finally recovered from. This nausea feels like tiny, shrimp-like creatures swirling around my guts and chomping away at me with razor-like teeth. Yes, this queasiness bites. As I tiptoe closer to the cell, my skin pebbles from the cold. In this darkest darkness, a weak glow thrums from my pendant.
“Kai? I feel you here.” Jadon’s voice sounds scratchy, rusty, as though the cold has leeched every drop of oil from his body. His gaze is filled with light as weak as he is, an indicator of his state. He sits on the edge of a narrow bed. Piles of quilts and books are stacked across the stone floor. He wears a simple tunic and breeches, not the outfit of a prince or demigod. His greasy dark hair has grown and flops in his face even after he sweeps it away with his left hand. His marked right hand glows, a reminder of his lethal heritage. Even if this is a jail, it’s the jail in the abbey of the gods, and he doesn’t belong in this immortal space. He doesn’t belong to me, either. He is otherworldly.
Yet I dreamed about him nights ago. We’d lain together in that bower, holding each other right before the world around us exploded. He’d told me, “Time is life,” and “For love, for change, for all that yet breathes,” and then he caught fire and his last kiss had filled me with flames, and…
And now, seeing him again…
My blood boils, and then it ices. My heart booms, and then my heart goes still. Jadon Rrivae Wake spins me round.
