Page 265 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“Do you feel that?” she murmured.

She pressed her hand to her chest, as if trying to steady something untethered.

I did feel it. A disruption, like waves churning in the magic far beneath us. Noxious.

Her brow was furrowed in thought. “What if Vardir was right?”

I hated Vardir. But knowledge was never his problem. He was almost certainly right.

“Then what?” I said. “We have this.” I nodded down to the amber. “And that.” I nodded to Tisaanah’s pockets, where she still held the shards of the heart—what little we could recover, even though it now seemed so volatile that the very thought of using it chilled me. “But there’s a third, and if Vardir is right, then we need it in order to stop all of this.”

Death magic.

Right. And also, there was that.It’ll probably kill you!Vardir had said, so fucking cheerfully.

I ran my hand through my hair, letting out a grunt of frustration. “This is all so—”

Tisaanah’s eyes went wide. She grabbed my wrist hard enough to make me stumble.

“How did you not notice this?” she gasped.

I looked down. She held my hand out between us, where Ilyzath’s mark was burned into my palm—where Ilyzath’s mark was nowmoving. The chaotic lines trembled like the Ilyzath’s carvings in the shadows. Faint puffs of purple shadow quivered around each stroke.

Ascended fucking above. My hand had hurt, but so did the rest of my body, and I’d spent the last several hours with my hands wrapped around my spear’s staff.

“I was a little distracted, but that’s— that’s—”

Tisaanah lifted her own hand. The gold mark now spread several inches up her forearm. Shimmers of glowing light ran from her palm to her fingertips, glowing towards the amber—but when I looked more carefully, I realized those lights moved in a second wave, too, fainter strings of gold moving towards her little finger. She turned, slowly, and the light grew bolder as her hand pointed to the sea.

Pointed in the direction of Ilyzath.

“Fuck, I’m an idiot,” I breathed.

All at once, pieces clicked together. Ilyzath’s words echoed in my head, now suddenly so much clearer.

Hands reaching into forces that should not be wielded,it had said,and thinning boundaries that should not be torn.

I, too, have lost pieces of myself,it had told me.

I stuck on those three words:Pieces of myself.

The Lejaras.Thatwas what it had been talking about. And this, what was happening now, was exactly what it had warned of.Mortal hubris.

Ilyzath was built upon ancient magic that no one understood. It was semi-sentient, just as the Lejaras seemed to be. And if any location could hold death itself… well, that was it.

The final Lejara wasinIlyzath.

Tisaanah and I looked at each other, wide-eyed, the realization hitting us both.

“I can go alone,” I said.

“That is a stupid idea,” she said, without hesitation, and reached out to take my hand.

I knew better than to argue with her. A few scribbles on a sheet of paper, and we were gone.

CHAPTERONE HUNDRED ELEVEN

AEFE

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