Page 167 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Caduanand I danced for a long time. He was right—there was something pleasurable in useless movement, especially with Caduan’s scent surrounding me and his forehead pressed against mine. I felt like my understanding of the world, and this life, had changed dramatically—like a mysterious equation had, at last, been solved, and I reveled in the answer.

Eventually, though, I grew tired. The blur of wine combined with the sheer overwhelming volume of sights and sounds and sensations began to wear on me. Caduan must have seen this, because he pulled me closer and murmured in my ear, “We can go somewhere else.”

I was relieved to escape.

We walked away from the party, tracing the paths that wound behind the palace where the stone met the forest. We’d gone this way once before, I remembered, when Caduan took me to the training house at the edge of the grounds. Then I didn’t notice such things, but now I found myself transfixed by the wild, untamed elegance of the gardens back here. Flowers of clashing colors, wildly overgrown, crept over the trails.

I watched Caduan carefully as we walked.

“You are tired,” I said.

“Hm?”

“You are frequently tired.”

He smiled wanly. “I’m getting old.”

This statement startled me. It had not occurred to me to think of Caduan as old. As Reshaye, age did not exist. Time was a flat line stretching out in all directions. Humans changed, but I remained the same.

I remembered Caduan in another life, as a young man with a crown too heavy for him. But five hundred years had passed between then and now. Caduan had borne the weight of every one of those years.

Caduan would die, one day.

I did not like this thought.

“Do you fear death?” I said.

He did not react to this question, as if he did not find it at all surprising. He was silent for a long moment before answering. “I fear only what it could take from me.”

I realized that I feared Caduan’s death.

“I wanted to die,” I said.

His expression changed slightly. “I know you did.”

“You do not understand how painful endless existence is. Existence that should not be.” I shook my head. “It’s torturous.”

Caduan said, softly, “I do understand.”

“I wanted to rest.” I swallowed. My time as Reshaye felt like a whole other life, just as my time as Aefe before that did. I answered to both names now, but neither of them felt like me. I carried both sets of memories, but they were like windows into other lives. “I thought I was dead already, before you brought me back. I gave up my life to save Tisaanah’s.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“A curse demanded payment. A life. And there were two of us, in her. My life as Reshaye was nothing but rage and desire, and that was my sole reason for living. Even then, a part of me was afraid of death. I knew only want, and death is the end of wanting.”

“Why did you do it, then?”

My brow furrowed. It felt so long ago. Deciphering my past intentions seemed impossible. “I had made many marks on the world,” I said. “But all of them were scars. I wanted to leave ink instead, like the stories I used to wear. Tisaanah sometimes made me feel that… that there was more in me. I had committed centuries of violence. But in that moment, I felt…” I swallowed. Pressed my hand to my heart, without thinking, like I did every time I needed to remind myself that I was no longer Reshaye. “I felt for the first time that I had a choice in what I wanted to be. Centuries of violence, and just one act of sacrifice. One act of generosity.” I gave him a weak smile. “That and… I wanted to rest. I was ready to rest.”

He looked at me solemnly. “You wanted control over who you were, because you never had it before.”

“Of course I had control. I defeated entire armies by taking control.”

“No. That was destruction,” Caduan said. “But that is not the same as control. You were still at their mercy. The real claim of power was letting it go.”

I stopped walking.

This realization shook me. As Reshaye, I had craved power. But there was no true control in that. It was wild and greedy, and that desire had dominated me.

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