Page 131 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“Everything alright?” Sammerin’s voice called from ahead.

“Peachy,” I replied, wiping the wound on my lip.

Brayan sighed, then offered me his hand. That was the closest I would get to an apology. Just the same as when he used to beat the shit out of me every day in the name of training when I was thirteen years old.

I pushed myself to my feet without taking it, and he rolled his eyes.

“You’re the same as you were as a child,” he muttered.

“Right, you too.”

“I’ve never understood what you were so angry at me for. Whatever I did, you’re in your right to feel it, I suppose.” We tramped through the underbrush. I shoved my hands into my pockets. He pushed ahead of me, not looking back. “I won’t stop you if you want to stay with them. But I’m going to Besrith. You can be emotional and short-sighted and remain here. Or you can think about it, recognize that I’m right, and come with me. Your choice.”

* * *

This didn’t feel right.None of this felt right, no matter how many times Brayan or Ishqa or Tisaanah—especially Tisaanah—insisted upon it.

You don’t even know who I am.

She was wrong. I was missing something—some critical piece of my past that was preventing me from understanding this. It was like a splinter under my nail, nagging but inaccessible. It was the only thing I could think about when we reached the split in the road.

“The wayfinder is pulling me this way,” Tisaanah said, pointing in one direction.

“This road leads north, to Besrith,” Brayan said, nodding down the other path.

We all looked at each other, the unspoken weight of our separation hanging between us.

Brayan uttered a stiff, tight-lipped goodbye and migrated down the road, leaving me alone with them. I said goodbye to Ishqa first, which was easy because we didn’t especially like each other. Tisaanah wandered into the woods, her back to us, as if she didn’t want to allow herself to be seen before she was ready. So I turned to Sammerin.

He was an enigma to me in many ways, always calm and quiet. But I knew that we’d been close friends once. Some imprint of that familiarity still nagged at me when I looked at him.

Even now, a part of me considered telling him that I was going to stay with them.

Yet, as we traveled, Brayan’s words had echoed incessantly in my head.You’re going to get her locked up there, too. You make them more of a target.

They were louder than ever, now.

“So,” Sammerin said. “You’re going.”

Despite myself, I couldn’t bring myself to confirm it aloud. Sammerin seemed like he heard the internal struggle I didn’t voice.

“We’ve been friends for a long time,” he said. “Twelve years. When we first met, you were an egotistical, prematurely promoted Captain, and I despised you.”

He said it so matter-of-factly. I scoffed a laugh.

I wanted to ask—no,demand—that he tell me about those years. Really tell me, including all the things that I knew he and Tisaanah were holding back. But the moment my lips parted, the pain that skewered my skull took my words away.

“The thing is, Max,” he went on, “they were not all good years. I have been doing a lot of thinking about those times. The good days. The bad days. And some of the bad days were very, very bad.”

The hair prickled at the back of my neck. That image—the image of Sammerin saying, “That was a very bad day.”—brought with it the ghost of a memory, gone before I could grasp it.

“I want to know,” I said.

But the moment the words left my mouth, the fire poker lodged in my brain twisted, and white-hot agony pulsed through my head. I nearly doubled over, my hand at my temple. Sammerin gripped my shoulder.

“You alright?”

“Fine.”

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