Page 115 of Mother of Death and Dawn

His pronunciation was terrible, actually, but it still brought me great joy to hear Max saying “dick-sucking asshole” with all the focused deliberation of someone learning ancient prayers.

He chuckled, and I watched the path his smile tread over his face. It disappeared when he looked at my drink. He picked it up, sniffed it, and made a face. “You’re going to be very unhappy tomorrow.”

“I am perfectly sober.”

“Ah yes. You’ve convinced me. You’repuffechtly soober.” He smeared the words into an exaggerated slur.

In all seriousness, I hadn’t realized how drunk I was until this moment.

“How did you find me here?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Luck. But…” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad that I did. I owe you an apology. For today.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

He scoffed. “That isn’t true.”

“It is true.”

You don’t even understand how much.

I leaned against the table. My head was foggy, emotions close to the surface. When I opened my mouth, I had intended to say something innocuous. Instead, I said, “Tell me about Ilyzath.”

Max’s face changed. I cursed myself immediately, wishing I could take the words back.

“It was more or less what you’d expect an ancient magical prison designed for torture to be.”

“I tried to get you out,” I said. I couldn’t stop talking. Gods, I was drunk. I was never, ever doing this again. “Many times. I hope you didn’t think we had forgotten you. That I had— had let you go. Even when you were in there, you were not alone.”

A wrinkle formed between Max’s brows. He gave me a weak smile. “The truth is, I didn’t think much of anything, in there. It strips you of everything that tethers you to reality. Takes away any connection to the physical world. Surrounds you with things that look real and smell real and feel real, but are figments pulled from your own head. It’s terrible, but at least it’s just one long dream.”

“When you saw things, did you…”

“Did I understand what I was seeing? No. Not really.” He gazed into the dark. I wondered what he saw within it. “They were horrible images.”

I remembered visiting Ilyzath with Max. It had shown me my mother, dying, begging me to save her—so real that even though I knew it was an illusion, I found myself questioning every rule I knew of reality.

“But they were like shadows,” Max said. “I knew they must be related to my life in some way, but not how. Maybe that was a sick sort of gift.”

A gift. Perhaps. Perhaps the walls that had so horrified me today had been the only thing shielding his sanity.

“I’m so happy you’re free,” I murmured.

His eyes flicked back to me, abandoning the past for the present. “Me too.”

“I missed you.”

“I—”

“I still miss you.”

My voice cracked.

Don’t cry, you idiot. Don’t make such a fool of yourself.

I had gotten so skilled at locking away every shred of vulnerability inside of me. Until Max. Until I allowed him to see those weaknesses and unspoken fears. I hadn’t known until then how much I needed it, how much strength came from the act of sharing weakness. I was so tired of being strong.

And the man in front of me, so close that I could feel the heat of his body and smell that agonizingly familiar scent of ash and lilac, barely knew who I was. He was not my lover. But gods, he looked just like him. And right now, I wanted to pretend.

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