Page 277 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“Keep talking to me,” I demanded, when Max had been silent for too long. “There must be something you can complain about.”

He laughed—a wheeze that chilled me to my bones. “Always.”

The next step, I practically had to drag him.

“More,” I pressed. “You have more to say. Youneverhavenothingto say.”

His breath was coming hard. I felt it against my cheek as his head bowed low, close to me.

“I love you, Tisaanah.”

Oh gods. No. Not that. Don’t say that.

“That isn’t a complaint,” I choked out.

“It was worth everything else,” he said, barely louder than a whisper. “This time with you.”

“Stop. Shut up.”

Silence. I was now practically carrying him. I realized that his blood completely soaked my shirt.

Three more steps.

My eyes burned. We stopped walking. The floor seemed like it was tilting.

“I love you, too,” I said, at last.

I could not look at him, or I would fall apart.

I drew in a deep breath, pushed away the pain of my aching back and bleeding wounds, and took another step.

“We are just going to keep walking,” I said. “Alright?”

“Alright.”

“Keep talking to me.” Once the tears began, I could not stop them. “Keep talking to me, Max.”

But the words never came.

CHAPTERONE HUNDRED NINETEEN

TISAANAH

The floors had been flat. There had been no stairs. Yet, somehow, we had been traveling down. When we reached the end of the hallway, I knew without doubt that we were underground. It was so dark that the light only came from below, seeping up between the cracks in the floor.

Before us was an arched door—the end of the hallway.

Max’s feet slipped, his legs giving out. I was too weak to catch us. We fell to the ground in a pile several feet before the door.

Max was barely conscious. I helped him lean back against the wall, and he had almost no strength to help me. Then I forced myself to my hands and knees, and crawled towards the door. My palm touched something wet, and I looked down to see that shallow, black water lapped up the hallway, slowly encroaching upon us.

I peered through the door.

Stairs led down curved walls into a deep room. The floor was covered in water, black and rippling calmly in a slow, impossible current. At its center was a sapling upon a perfectly circular mound of earth. Black leaves that pulsed with a faint white light sprouted from its young, fragile branches. Something was floating up to those branches from the ground, glowing as if coated in moonlight— more leaves, I realized, after a moment. Dead leaves, rising from the ocean and reattaching themselves to the branches. Withering, falling, rising, blooming, in a surreal, endless cycle.

I never knew death could be so beautiful. And this thing was, indeed, pure death. Even as my magic was drawn to it, every part of my body recoiled from it. The shards of the heart in my pocket hummed their strange, broken song, as if awakened by the presence of their siblings.

Siblings, plural—because the third Lejara was here, too.

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