Page 42 of Mother of Death and Dawn

I tucked my hands into my pockets and kept walking. There was a little ridge at the edge of the encampment, which had become one of my favorite places to sit alone at night. But as I approached, I realized someone had already beaten me there.

I hesitated, then approached.

I sat beside Sammerin, who was smoking a pipe and scratching little ink drawings into a beaten-up notebook. We sat in silence for a few long seconds.

Sammerin spoke first. “I never intended to give up on him.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. It was justified.” He let out a long breath and set down his notebook. “I fought against that decision, Tisaanah. At least, as hard as I could, considering the language barrier. But I made my position very clear.”

“I know,” I said, quietly.

“I wanted to have another option by the time you returned. Another path forward.” A humorless smile twisted the corner of his mouth. “The cruel thing is, I have never been a good idea person. Back in our military days, that was him.”

It didn’t matter if Sammerin was an “idea person” or not. I had been racking my brain for hours, and I was beginning to think that we had simply run out of options.

I would never, ever say that aloud.

“The thing is…” A long puff of smoke. “I may not agree with their decision, but I do understand why they’re making it. Perhaps if I were them, I would make the same one.”

I fought the urge to argue with him—never, I wanted to say. And yet… I thought of Jaklin’s children, both under ten. Thought of Melina’s dead body.

“It makes me sick, Sammerin. It actuallyhurtsto think of him suffering in that place. I can’t just… give up.”

“I know. But you’re only one person.”

Despite myself, I choked a bitter laugh. “People are always telling me that. I don’t understand why.”

Sammerin gave me a deadpan look out of the corner of his eye and released a long exhale of smoke. “I wonder indeed.”

It felt good to laugh, even half-heartedly. But my smile faded fast. And it was the first time I had ever given voice to this confession—this precious, shameful secret—when I said, “Before the Arch Commandant fight, he asked me if I ever thought about what it would be like to stay with him forever.”

I could still remember it so clearly—What if it wasn’t just two weeks? What if this was our lives?

He had said it the way someone spoke of a dream, with all the vulnerability and joy of giving life to something precious. He had handed me his heart.

And what did I give him in return?

My eyes burned. “And I saidnothing. I didn’t answer him. Because I was afraid.”

Because I was too cowardly to let myself believe in a future. Too terrified of my own selfishness. Too overwhelmed by how much I wanted him and the dream he offered.

Shame curled in my stomach.

“What if he’s in that place, alone, and he thinks that I have abandoned him?”

What if he didn’t know that I was here, loving him so much I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t live?

“He doesn’t think that.”

“How can you know?”

“When Max believes in something, he gives it his whole self. It’s his greatest strength and greatest weakness. And you, Tisaanah, were the first thing he had believed in for a long, long time. It takes more than four walls to break that kind of faith.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, like it was nothing more and nothing less than the truth.

My composure threatened to unravel. Like I had so many times, I collected myself, closing away my pain like a wound that had been stitched up too many times. The stitches would break again later, in private. They’d hold long enough until then.

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