Page 95 of Mother of Death and Dawn

My breath was ragged. I probably looked like a blubbering mess. I didn’t care. I was too happy.

How long did it take me to realize he wasn’t hugging me back?

CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE

MAX

The woman hugged me, and I just stood there, not sure what to do.

I bowed my head and was struck with the overwhelming scent of citrus. With that scent came the ghost of a thousand other memories. It smelled like home. I wanted to fold my arms around her, bury my face in her hair, hold it in my lungs like smoke from fine tobacco. This stranger.

Instead I settled for that single hand laid gently between her shoulder blades.

My eyes flicked up and landed on Sammerin’s face. He was looking at me like something was wrong.

Eventually, the woman went stiff and still, as if the same realization had fallen over her. When she stepped away, I resisted the sudden urge to pull her back again.

She looked up at me.

Ascended fucking above, she was stunning. Her eyes were mismatched, one silver and one amber-green. Moonlight pooled in the silver iris.

“Max?”

The way she said my name made me stop breathing for a moment. Two syllables, spoken like a melody.

“I don’t…”

I don’t remember you.

No. That wasn’t right. Not really. I didn’t know this woman’s name, or how I met her. I held no memories of her. ButI knew her.I knew her somewhere intrinsic, deeper than flesh. That part of my past called to me, and fuck, Iwantedto reach for it—but even that instinctual drive for my past was met with a wall and a sudden spike of pain through the back of my skull.

I was bad with words at the best of times, let alone now, as I struggled to explain something I didn’t even understand myself.

“There’s a lot that I don’t remember,” I said, at last.

A wrinkle deepened between the woman’s eyebrows. “Like… what?”

“I remember my childhood, mostly. But anything after seventeen or so… it’s just… gone.”

Even that didn’t describe all of it. The way I felt the imprint of the past but couldn’t recall the details that made it that way.

“Gone?” she repeated. “I don’t understand.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it, increasingly frustrated with everything I couldn’t put into words. “What’s your name?”

For a split second, the woman’s face just collapsed—first in shock, and then in devastation. She took two steps backwards, and I closed the distance again without thinking.

“You are not asking me that,” she choked out.

She quickly forced her face back into neutrality, but I could still see her heart breaking, and the sight of it made mine ache, too.

I stepped closer again. I wanted her to say something more, but her mouth was now tightly closed, like she feared whatever might slip out.

“But before, he remembered nothing at all,” Brayan added. “This is an improvement already.”

Sammerin let out a small breath. “So your memory is coming back.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t think that was necessarily true, even if I hoped it was. I still couldn’t take my eyes off that woman, who now stood with her arms crossed tight over her chest, as if shielding herself.

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