Page 196 of Mother of Death and Dawn

We hit the ground hard, Caduan and I on top of each other. I felt a shift happen immediately, felt the sudden tear in the magic below, like sand falling away beneath my feet.

I rolled over. Caduan was not moving. Panic crawled up my throat.

“Caduan.”

He did not move.

My senses screamed as the tear grew wider.

The Lejara. They were using the Lejara.

“CADUAN!”

His eyes snapped open just as the rip burst, as light began to bubble around the house, similar to what we had witnessed in Niraja.

It all happened at once.

Caduan rolled over me, pushing me to the ground beneath him. I felt him struggling with his magic as he tried to carry us away. But he was weak, injured. His own power resisted him.

Blinding light surrounded us.

He wouldn’t be fast enough. I needed to act.

I lifted my hands, summoned every scrap of magic inside of me.Protect us protect us protect us—

“Don’t let go,” Caduan ground out, as his magic gave one final, powerful push.

White light consumed everything.

* * *

When I opened my eyes,everything was different.

Caduan and I lay together in a tangle. We were not in the house any longer. Somehow, he had managed to complete his spell. We lay beyond the walls of the main building.

I pushed myself to my knees and looked around. The aftermath of the Lejara’s power surrounded us. Walls had been rearranged without being broken, buildings now spotlessly half-buried in the ground.

The house was ahead of us. It was barely recognizable, a leveled pile of white rubble. Before it, the ground had cracked and shattered, rough stones jutting up into the air like the rocks at the bottom of a waterfall, rising so tall that they blotted out the late-afternoon sun. At first glance, it reminded me of a white version of the Obsidian cliffs.

No part of the terrain had been untouched. It was as if the hand of a god had reached down and simply rearranged the earth itself.

I looked down. Caduan was on the ground, not moving.

Panic. I forced myself to my knees, shaking him.Wake up, wake up,I shouted, or thought I did, because I could not hear myself.

My hearing returned with a loudPOP,and my own screaming rang clear in my ears.

Now I heard what I couldn’t before: “AEFE!” Meajqa skidded to a stop beside us, covered in human blood, his sword in his hand.

And with his shout came a hundred, or a thousand, other screams, here and in the distance. Wails of pain or shouts of soldiers trying to find their comrades. Cries of sheer shock at what they had just witnessed.

At last, Caduan’s eyes opened.

Hours ago, I had been telling myself how much I hated Caduan. Now the sight of those eyes, open, piercing through me, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Meajqa helped us to our feet. Caduan was weak, barely able to stand. When Meajqa released his arm, he nearly fell back to the ground.

“Are you hurt?” Meajqa asked, brow knitted.

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