Page 13 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Someone yanked me backwards. I flailed out, teeth bared, knife swinging. I struck something.

“Stop.Stop.”

The tighter the hold became, the more I thrashed. A hand gripped my wrist, twisted, and the blade went clattering away. I didn’t care—I fought just as hard, with my teeth, my fingernails—

Until my back slammed against the ground.

The world slowed. My breath heaved.

Caduan leaned over me, his hands pressed to my shoulders. Violet slashed his left cheek, the blood threatening to drip on my face. His eyes, bright like the sun through leaves, grabbed my attention and refused to relinquish it. They were solid. Real.

My breath slowed.

“She tried to kill me!” the maid shrieked, across the room. Low murmurs joined her. Footsteps. Others were here.

Caduan did not look away. I did not understand faces and all the wordless things they said. Most of the time I did not try. And yet, in his eyes, I saw something that made me want to squirm away. I welcomed a strike or a shout. Caduan’s piercing observation was more frightening than any of those cruelties.

“Let me go,” I snarled.

“I will if you allow me to.” His voice lowered. “It was only a dream.”

My face snapped back towards him, anger flaring.

Howdarehe say those words.

“No,” I hissed. “It wasrealfor so many days.”

Something shifted in Caduan’s eyes. “Not anymore. You are safe.”

You are safe,Tisaanah used to whisper to me, in the mind we shared—a mind that now belonged to no one but me.

“I am notsafe!”

“Aefe—”

“Do not call me that. I am Reshaye.”

“You are more than this,” he murmured.

“Let me go!”

At last, he obeyed. I scrambled away from him, pressing myself to the corner, my eyes darting around the room.

My bedchamber was large, with tall ceilings that let in fractured light through warped glass. Some said it was beautiful. Servants commented on the fact that I had been given a prime location, on the top floor of the castle. They said it with an odd tone, as if there was something strange about it.

I didn’t care. I felt nothing when I looked at this place. Beautiful things were abstract shapes meant for a different soul.

Now, half a dozen people clustered in this room, looking at me. Two of Caduan’s advisors helped the blond maid from the floor and a guard led her away.

I disliked the way they were looking at me.

“She shouldn’t have been here,” Caduan said to them, quietly but firmly. “No one is supposed to wake her. And I specified no blondes.”

The two advisors looked at each other. One was a woman, short and delicate with cropped gold-copper hair—Luia, the Chief of Military. The other a dark-haired man with broad shoulders and a strong jaw—Vythian, the Chief of Coin, though he looked better suited to the fighting ring than a coin room.

“My King…” Luia said, quietly.

“Not now.” Caduan turned to me. I stared at the ground, but I felt the searching weight of his stare bearing into me. “I’ll be back soon, Aefe. Rest.”

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