Page 81 of The Cruel Dawn
Elyn holds up her hand. She stares at Separi and awaits an answer.
Separi takes the supplies. “Yes, we do hair. Would the Adjudicator like me to?” The Renrian eyes Elyn’s frizzy white braid.
Elyn’s eyes widen. “Could you? And do something new? I’ve had this braid a long time.”
I laugh and weave my arm through Philia’s. After the battle against the Devourers, we need the comfort, especially as the realm remains on the brink of destruction.
Little time passes, though, before our moods shift back to somber. Reality bites.
A jailer overseeing her prisoner, Elyn doesn’t talk much as Jadon marches beside her.
The cool forest air flares with heat as Jadon follows several paces behind me.
Blue jays shriek,“Lady!”from their nests in threadbare trees. Orange-and-pink butterflies flit over sunflowers that lift their parched heads as I pass. The hard-packed earth turns soft under my boots.
But then the birdsong falls silent as the remaining leaves wither all at once on the trees, their branches turning brittle and snapping, sending those nests tumbling to the ground. The butterflies’ wings stiffen into dull crystal, and they fall from the sky to their deaths, dashed against now-dead sunflowers. Burned seeds tumble onto the desiccated earth.
It’s as though I was never here.
It’s him. Jadon.Miasma.
What a cruel trick. My arrival brought the promise of life, only to be snuffed out by the weapon passing through twenty paces behind.
“Why don’t we walk behind him?” Philia asks. “That way, you’d heal everything he’s killing.”
“We’d be in Miasma’s wake,” Separi says, shaking her head.
“You’re still healing from the burnu attack,” I say. “You’d be walking into certain death even if we waited for the wind to weaken his power. Even the wind dies when he meets it.”
Philia’s face crumples as she looks back at her old friend. “Poor thing.”
Jadon, his eyes bright with regret, offers her a sad smile. He knows he’s death. Beautiful death.
Soft rain soon falls through the pines and cedars. I breathe in the scent of wet, living wood.
Separi chews on licorice root as she tells tales of her days as a young and dashing Renrian. Once, she’d enchanted an abandoned chest of geld to resemble a pile of horse dung. “The bandits didn’t know what to do,” she says. “It looked like shit, but I’d forgotten to add flies, and there was no smell.”
“So, did they believe you?” I ask, letting laughter bubble out of the tension of my throat.
“I convinced them that the horse that left this shit pile was on a special diet developed by the elves of Itheria.” She blinks at me. “Thereareno elves of Itheria. Thereisno Itheria.”
…
Once again, we make two camps, with Elyn and Jadon’s camp downwind. The pine needles are cushion-soft under my tired feet. I sit between Separi’s knees as she washes and oils my hair and then detangles my curls with the wide-toothed comb. Then she weaves those luclite threads into my braids. Under her ministrations, my neck feels strong, and my mind stops racing. I feel less prickly as I watch the fire glow orange against the dark sky.
“How can I feel…comfortright now?” I whisper to Separi. “Especially with Elyn and Jadon, who both betrayed me, just a stone’s throw away?”
“Anyone can break your heart, Lady,” says Separi. “Anyone can disappoint you. It’s in your power, though, to figure out who you’ll hurt for.”
I silently accept a dinner plate of ham and potatoes with leeks and long beans from Philia. The ham tastes gamey, and the potatoes taste like dirt. I force myself to swallow the few bites, as I know I need the strength.
Separi’s lavender eyes soften, and she chuckles softly. “You’re not eating, Lady. Would you like Philia to prepare something else?” She tugs at the fox amulet hanging from her neck.
I take her hand. “It’s not that I’m not hungry. It’s just that…” I bite my lip. “I’m changing, Separi. I feel it. We need to get to Brithellum soon. And we will.”
After dinner, I grab my satchel and wander away to survey Vallendor from a higher vantage point. I follow a drying brook upstream, where eventually it swells and brightens with silver fish darting through its waters. Bees hover over night-blooming jasmine and tuberoses. Though Jadon has walked behind me, destroying all that I’d revived, forthesefew moments, I witness what can be, whatwillbe if I kill Danar Rrivae.
The traitor. But he hadn’t been the only one to rebel.
