Page 83 of The Cruel Dawn
“I call them Devourers,” I say.
He nods. “Would you have turned me over to him?”
I don’t look at him. “I have to save this realm at all costs.” My words hang heavy between us, and I wonder if Jadon truly understands what they mean.
Jadon is not burdened with the job of saving anything. Even the grass beneath him dies, turning brittle and brown as if scorched by fire. Death spreads, clawing through the earth until it reaches me. A chill seeps into my skin, and the sickness stops with me. If I wasn’t sitting here, Miasma would’ve continued to creep on…devouring.
“You see it, don’t you?” Jadon raises his marked right hand, and then his left. “Everywhere I go, it follows. The land feels the death that I carry.”
I nod.
“I’m glad that you’re honest about that.” He chuckles bitterly. “I’ve seen what I am. I feel this poison inside of me, and I fight it every day, but it’s spreading because I’m alive. Soon, I’ll destroy everything you’re trying to save.”
“We’ll find a way to stop it,” I say, “to stop him. You’re not alone.”
Jadon’s eyes meet mine, and for a moment, I see the blacksmith I once knew, who’d fought beside me, who’d believed in something greater. But then his face darkens like storm clouds. “This sickness—itisme,” he says. “You can’t separate us. I’m the rot. I’m the ruin. The only way to save this realm is to destroy me.”
He’s right about that, too.
The sickness within him rises again, and the forest flickers around us—bright and green one moment, shadowed and dying the next.
I pull my hand away, and it’s now speckled with small bruises. I lie back on the thick grass and stare at the pinpoints of light in the sky.
It’s up to me to figure out who I’ll hurt for.
I point to the brightest speck in the sky. “That’s the realm of Lerango. It’s not that different from Vallendor. Mountains, oceans, forests… The people hunt and craft, farm and sing. A cousin on my mother’s side is Grand Steward there. Pretty easy job. And then…”
I slide my finger across the canvas of night, stopping at the bloom of light that sits on top of a pine tree. “And that’s Sianiodin. I haven’t visited yet—it’s a real shithole. Swamps. Not just the landscape but the thinking, thelackof thinking, the corruption and depression. Once the daystar and nightstar decide to stop walking there, Elyn will go there to read the decree of destruction, and then the Mera will come and—”
I snap my fingers. “And that will be the end of Sianiodin. Maybe I’ll get to visit before that happens and see it for myself.”
Jadon’s holding a wilted cluster of white tuberoses. He tosses them to me, and their deaths are quickly reversed as they land on my chest. He stares at me, full of thoughts that I don’t try to untangle. I contend with my own knotted thinking.I want this. I don’t want this. Let go. Don’t let go.I brush the renewed bundle of blooms across my lips and hold Jadon’s gaze.
His warm eyes focus on my neck again.
I drag the flowers down my chin, along the curve of my jaw and down to my throat. His eyes follow.
The towel I wear falls away. I skim the flowers along my breasts, down to my belly and between my hipbones.
“One of my favorite places,” he whispers.
“I remember.” I pause. Isn’t he curious about where I’ve been, who I’ve seen? Who I’ve been with? I have to tell him. “I reunited with someone in Gasho from before.”
Jadon doesn’t speak for a long time. Then: “Him?”
“Yes. His name is Zephar and…” I swallow, but my mouth stays dry. “I was very happy to see him again. To see all of my warriors again.”
“I’m sure they—he—missed you.”
I search the skies for the words. There are no clues in Lerango and certainly not in Sianiodin. “Zephar and I reunited, but not inallways… Not yet.”
Jadon nods, staring intently at me, laid bare before him.
“Because I still think of you. I still think of us, and sometimes, I wish… I close my eyes and…”
He whispers, “Show me.”
I imagine that my hand is Jadon’s hand, that my fingers are his, and I imagine that he is caressing my skin, that these fingers are his, slipping inside of me and stroking me. My amulet burns so bright between my breasts that all of Vallendor can see its glow.
