Page 44 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Was it a dream? It had felt so real. I reached out for my magic again, feeling for those roots that connected me to the world beneath—feeling for him.

Nothing.

“Tisaanah.”

My eyes snapped open and I jerked away. Ishqa slowly came into focus. It was dark. A single lantern lit my tent.

It took me a moment to collect myself. “You’re late,” I said.

“I apologize.”

I sat up as he approached my bedroll. With the flickering light of the single flame falling across him, illuminating his gold hair and gold eyes while the rest of him fell into shadow, he at first looked like some sort of apparition rather than a living being.

And yet, as he came closer, he seemed… oddly human. I blinked the sleep from my eyes. “Are you alright?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You seem…”Sad. “Tired.”

Only the corner of his mouth moved. “It has been a long hundred years.”

Was that a…joke?

My head hurt so, so much. I rubbed my temples. Everything felt as if it was tilting. When I rose, I half expected to tip over.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“You are not alright.” He rarely asked questions. He mostly made statements.

“I had… a strange dream.”

“A dream.”

I heard what he really meant in the tone of his voice. What he was really asking.

“You must be careful,” he said. “You do not know whether the king is still able to take advantage of your use of deep magic. And we can’t risk—”

“I know.”

I spoke more harshly than I intended, mostly because I hated that Ishqa was right. I knew how dangerous it was. I was there when it happened to Max—when Max drew deep from his magic during his fight with Nura, and the Fey king seized upon that passageway. I was the one who had cut that connection out of him at Max’s desperate request… even though I knew it could destroy so much of his mind.

The memory alone made me ill.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “It was… I don’t know how to describe it. A shattering.”

Anyone else might have acted like I was being nonsensical, and I wouldn’t have blamed them for it. But Ishqa just seemed concerned.

“Did you feel anything else?”

I wasn’t sure why I hesitated to say it. “A bit. A strange place I did not recognize. And…”

“Him.”

I nodded.

Ishqa looked uneasy. “We need to be careful.”

“I can’t turn away from any chance at learning more. Not if we’re to win this war.”

---