Page 174 of Mother of Death and Dawn

It was almost darkly funny. He’d spent ten years trying to find one horror. I spent ten years trying to forget all of them.

“Besides,” he said, “don’t they deserve that? Don’t they deserve to have their last moments known, instead of lost like that? Even soldiers on the battlefield get to have their final words witnessed.”

“You know better than—”

“I should be able to do this for them.” It was practically a snarl. He turned around abruptly, his back to me, his shoulders rising and falling.

I don’t know why it had never occurred to me that he was suffering as much as I was. The realization struck me dully, now. It was hard for it to change anything when I was struggling to hold myself together, too.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The words were a little choked. I didn’t expect them to hit as hard as they did—just two words that encapsulated so much more than Brayan knew.

He let out a long, long breath and turned around. He no longer looked angry, only tired. “I—It’s not your fault.”

I bit my tongue so hard it bled.

He sighed. “It’s just a hard day.”

“It’s a hard day,” I agreed, quietly.

Maybe I could have said more to him. Maybe I should have said more. Instead, I swallowed the truth as far away from the surface as I possibly could, and the two of us worked in silence for the rest of the morning. We barely spoke again.

CHAPTERSIXTY-FOUR

TISAANAH

Iwas careful when we went into town. Without Ishqa, I couldn’t glamor myself—nor would I waste one on this—but I could still take care to make my appearance less obvious. I put on a jacket and buttoned my shirt up to my throat to hide as much of my unusual skin as possible, then wrapped my hair up beneath a hood. It wasn’t uncommon for people in Threll to cover up like this—protection from the sun in the middle of the day—so I blended in well enough as Sammerin and I went to the marketplace together.

In any other circumstance, I might have enjoyed the trip. The marketplace reminded me of the ones my mother would take me to when I was young—rows and rows of open-air stalls set up along twisting pathways, peddling anything and everything that one might think to want, some of it useful, and most of it junk. Where else in the world could you go if you wanted to pick up paintings, toys, scarves, shoes, weapons, seventeen different types of fruit, and questionable meat from an unidentified source?

Sammerin and I wandered the stalls, collecting ingredients for dinner tonight and enough supplies to keep us going for the rest of the journey to Orasiev.

“Should we get meat, too?” Sammerin asked, carefully.

I thought of Max and Brayan, and sighed. “Yes. Probably.” I suspected hunting would not happen today.

My chest ached at the thought. I should have found a way to get Max out of going with his brother. I couldn’t imagine how agonizing that must be for him.

Sammerin read my face. “He’ll be alright.”

“I know he will be.”

It wasn’t the future I was worried about. It was the past, and no one could do anything about that.

“I think it’s a good sign that he went,” Sammerin said. “For years I watched him avoid so much as acknowledging Brayan’s existence. Even in the early years, when Brayan was trying hardest to find him.” He lifted a shoulder in a faint shrug. “Perhaps this is… growth?”

Surely it was, by some measure. But what was the cost of that?

“I think their grief is bad for each other,” I said, quietly.

Sammerin was silent for a long moment before responding. “Maybe. Fire and oil.”

We moved on to the next booth—beautiful skirts that, despite myself and the direness of our situation, I found myself a little transfixed by. I had a crimson shade of red between my fingers when I heard a sound that stopped my heart.

I froze. Suddenly, I was thirteen years old again.

“What’s wrong?” Sammerin asked.

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