Page 249 of Mother of Death and Dawn

He spoke so calmly, but it was the sort of calm that balanced on the razor’s edge of sanity, promising collapse.

“Look,” he said, still not turning from the view.

I did.

When I had walked through the streets of Ela’Dar, the violence had invaded my lungs like fog. But from up here, you could see it in the streets—see the humming energy in each crevice of the city. Every person was moving. The sun glistened against metal blades, small as stars. It was a city on the precipice of change, the desire for it swelling like a roiling wave.

“It is for you,” Caduan said. He spoke so calmly. Still, he would not look at me. “It is all for you. I never said that. But I found myself regretting that I never told you. When I thought you wouldn’t come back.”

Why didn’t you fight for me?I had asked my mother.

I watched his profile, strong and sharp, looking over the city. With a gentle touch, I turned it towards me.

He looked so different even than he had when I left. Darkness sank into every hollow of his face. I now noticed little black veins around his eyes, so faint that they could be mistaken for shadow, visible only because of the fragile pale of his skin.

Still—he was beautiful. My gaze caressed every dip and plane of his features, traversing from his tight brow to his nose, following the curve of his lips.

And the way he looked at me…

He murmured, barely louder than a whisper, “Let me touch you.”

A plea.

I nodded.

His hand rose to mine, which still cupped his cheek, and he covered it with his own. His thumb traced each muscle, so gently that goosebumps rose over my arm—tracing one delicate string of bones, and then the next, and then the next.

It was so soft, as if he was afraid that he might break me, that all the breath left my lungs when some thread of restraint snapped, and he pulled me into a desperate embrace. Like he couldn’t stop himself. Like he couldn’t believe I was real.

I wrapped my arms around him and welcomed it. I didn’t know how much it was possible to miss someone.

I pressed my lips to his throat, his jaw, his cheek. He tilted my face towards him and captured my mouth in a kiss, his tongue meeting mine, every part of me melting against him.

This was what I had so wanted when I was pushed into another body, and another, and another. My flesh was my own, but I felt more connected to a separate soul now than I ever had as Reshaye—and yet, so far apart.

Pulling away from him was a struggle. Every impulse within me screamed against it. But I did it anyway, stepping back just enough to look at him. I pushed him back through the door, back into his chambers, and then my hands were at his shirt, fingers working at his buttons.

His hand went to my wrist quickly, as if to stop me on instinct alone.

I gave him a long stare, and he released it.

I unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall open, revealing the expanse of his body. Shadows painted rivers and valleys over the muscles of his torso. The darkness drowned out all of it. Had I forgotten how bad it was, or had it gotten worse since I had left? Now the thinnest capillaries extended all the way to his shoulders, his hips, his sides, so that few parts of his body were left untouched.

I touched the marks and resisted the urge to pull away. They made my own fingertips burn—like they were coming into contact with something noxious, a thousand worlds beneath this one. Something that my own magic recoiled from, and yet… also called to.

I realized what that sensation was. It felt like death.

“How much time?” I asked.

“Enough to right a millennium of wrongs.”

No. It was not enough.

I looked up at him and the force of his stare nearly sent me staggering—so intense that it hit me like a strike. There was so much fury in his eyes, burning bright as fire, even as the rest of his face remained perfectly still.

I felt foolish.

How had I not seen this earlier in him? How had I not felt it? I always had thought that Caduan was so much calmer than me. He wasn’t. He was just as angry. He had lost just as much.

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