Page 138 of The Cruel Dawn
I say nothing and take a step away from him. My thoughts grow foggy, and I can’t tell if that is the effect of my own confusion or the insidious, creeping Miasma. The air around me feels heavy, pulsing against my chest and back like a living thing. My skin is damp and sweaty, my underarms sticky. The remaining pieces of armor that I still wear creak with every breath I take, those once-sturdy plates barely protecting me as they once did. A sudden, biting draft near my hipbone reveals a new breach that appeared when I killed the windwolves.
Just as I feared, bruises have spread across my side. The dull throb in my ribcage and the pain in my lower back are more than just external damage—death seizes me from my very core, just like the Voidful who’d surrounded the Broken Hammer. Apples rot first from the inside.
Jadon’s blue and lavender eyes sparkle, and his smile becomes more of a sneer. “I didn’t expect to find you here alone, Kai, not with only two dawns left.” He takes a step toward me, closing the gap between us. “We need to talk.” He points to my new sword. “As beautiful and as powerful as she looks, you might as well put her away. You can’t kill me—”
“Yet.”I swallow the bile now burning up my throat. “And I’d rather not put her away. Thanks, though, for your suggestion.”
This man standing before me, with those eyes and glowing skin… I don’t know him. I wonder if I ever did. I’m trapped here with him, a beautiful disaster, without a solution, without an ally.
Not that any of my friends were allies.
Jadon exhales and squeezes the bridge of his nose. “It was never fair that you and I were pitted against each other. We’ve come so far.” He shakes his head. “I’ve missed you so much, and it nearly broke me, willing you to come up here so that we could be together again. And now you’re here, and now we’re free to…to…”
He shakes his head again. “To love each other, especially since you and Zephar can never be. I may not be immortal, but I’ll live a long life with you. I’ll protect you—”
I hold up my bruised and now-swollen hand. “This isn’t about your protection. Nothing is ever that simple. There’s the realm and all the life that is mine to defend. That was my purpose, Jadon.Thatwas my destiny, as futile as it might be. But my own fate? If Vallendor dies, I, too, will die. Living a long life with you has always been a dream. In the end, neither matters.”
Jadon snorts. “How romantic.”
And now it’s my turn to stare at him. “My job never mattered to you?”
“Youmattered to me,” he says, his arms outstretched toward me. “Youstillmatter to me.”
“And Vallendor—?”
“Vallendor,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“‘Vallendor’ means not only you,” I say, “but also Philia and Jamart the candlemaker and Farmer Gery’s dog Milo and Tazara the king of the night-dwelling creatures, and these canyons and that fucking tree down there… I loved and cared about it all, and even though we know this fight is over, part of me, the part that most wants to live, is still trying to figure out how I’ll save this realm—even if I can’t kill Danar Rrivae, who is bent on destruction just so he can challenge Supreme.”
I step closer to Jadon even as nausea roils through me. “My love is bigger than yours. My commitment isbigger. My loss isbigger. This is just the truth. Do you understand? I want companionship. I desire friendship. I crave love. Once upon a time, for a blink of an eye, you gave me all of those things. But you lied to me, and you are still lying to me.”
“What have I lied to you about now?” he asks, eyes wide.
I stare at him, at that tattoo of the elements slowly slinking up to his shoulder, eating away at his mortality. His markings boast of power while my bruises shuffle me toward death. This, too, goes against the natural order.
“Ask me anything right now,” he says, “and I’ll tell you the truth.” He pauses, then adds, “If he lets me.”
I squint at him. Him,Jadon Rrivae.
“Did you ever hold people hostage in that horrid Beaminster jail?” I ask.
He doesn’t even blink. “Yes, and I regret it all,” he says, as Jadon Wake.
“How did you escape my temple?”
He flushes, and this time, he blinks. “I struck up a conversation with Ancress Tisen from behind the closed door. I told her that she was beautiful even wearing that robe and stupid head covering. I asked her for more wine. She brought it over to me, and she and I stood there, hoping that something would happen between us. But then she realized that your warning about her dying if she came toward me was no rhetorical flourish.”
He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “She died, and then I left.” That is Jadon Rrivae’s brutal truth.
“Who armed you?” I ask, lip curling.
“The Gashoan guard that I killed. And I took his armor, too. I’ve grown since then.”
“Did you summon those Devourer soldiers?”
He laughs. “Fuck no.”
“Who did? How did Syrus Wake know to send soldiers there?”
