Page 78 of Mother of Death and Dawn

My legs gave out.

The creature pinned me. The tips of its limbs were exposed bone, bloody. One went straight through my forearm.

Slowly, it lowered. It was making sounds. Speaking? If so, in a language I had never heard, though the cadence of it sounded like a plea.

The fire was running wild, now. I should have been able to control it. But when I reached for my magic, once again, it evaded me.

The creature drew closer. I realized that it was decomposing in real time—one ear now falling off, skin rotting, burning eyes drooping.

My vision faded just as I heard voices in the distance, approaching fast: “Call that thing off before it kills him!”

That was all.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

TISAANAH

“This is a trap.”

I knew it was a trap.

I was careful to appear calm, but the paper in my hands trembled like a leaf in the breeze, betraying me.

We had been traveling for nearly a week. Ishqa, Sammerin and I stayed away from civilization, instead choosing to journey through the plains and forests. This was the first time we had stepped foot in a town in days—and this settlement barely qualified, more resembling a ramshackle collection of buildings put here by people who had stopped to rest along the road and simply never left. A cluster of homes, a single inn, a single pub, and a smattering of stores. We would get some supplies, we had decided. We would not stay the night—too risky, with such a recognizable group. In and out.

Everything had changed when I saw the news bulletin nailed to the post of the pub: “War criminal Maxantarius Farlione has been apprehended in Saroksa.”

Apprehended.

He was out of Ilyzath?How?

I was holding the paper so tightly that it crumpled around my fingertips.

“How did he get out?” Sammerin murmured, as if to himself.

I couldn’t even speak.

“This is a trap,” Ishqa said again, as if we hadn’t heard him the first time.

I’d heard him just fine, and I also knew he was right.

It wasn’t even a good trap. It was woefully transparent. This was not the sort of news that would be pumped out so far into the reaches of Ara’s Threllian colonies. Nura wouldn’t be eager to advertise the fact that she had let a prisoner, let alone one so high profile, slip from Ilyzath’s grasp at all. Not unless she had a good reason for doing so.

I was that reason. Even when she was distracted by the war with the Fey, Nura had never stopped hunting me. And here was her chance to lure me right to her.

“She’s making good use of her bad luck,” Sammerin said.

“If he ever escaped at all,” Ishqa said. “The entire thing could be a fabrication.”

I read the headline over and over again. There was a little line drawing accompanying the article—supposedly portraying Max, though the resemblance was questionable. Still. I found myself tracing the scratchy ink lines.

“We cannot go after him,” Ishqa said.

Sammerin let out a slight scoff, as if to say,That’s a ridiculous statement.

It was. Ridiculous.

I didn’t dignify it with a response, instead examining the article.

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