Page 104 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“That was unnecessary,” Tisaanah muttered as we pushed through the crowd. “Too many people were looking at us.”

She wasn’t wrong to worry. We were an unusual group, and Tisaanah’s skin tone made her especially recognizable. I certainly would have preferred that we made it through Zagos without being recognized.

Brayan’s face was completely still, which I knew meant he was furious.

“Who was that?” Sammerin asked.

“And did you really fuck him?” I added. “Literally or otherwise.”

That earned an actual scowl.

“No one important,” he said. “An old colleague from the Roseteeth Company. We collaborated for a time when we both went independent. I got some assignments he didn’t, and he never got over it.”

So not only had we been recognized, we’d been recognized by a mercenary. Terrific.

Tisaanah’s steps faltered. “You were in the Roseteeth Company?”

“A long time ago. Perhaps a decade.” Brayan said it with the tone of one humbly downplaying an obvious accomplishment. He didn’t realize that Tisaanah wasn’t exactly fawning over his accomplishments.

“Where did you fight?” she asked.

“Essaria, mostly. Why? Do you know someone who fought with them?”

“No. They just helped conquer my country.”

She didn’t miss a beat. Just kept walking.

My eyebrows twitched.

Brayan looked a bit like he had been struck. “I…” He cleared his throat. “It was an assignment. I didn’t get to choose.”

“I know.”

I refrained from pointing out that hedidchoose, actually. He chose to join the Company.

“What happened to the Essarians was unfortunate,” Brayan said. “We all wished it hadn’t gone that way. But commissions are business. It wasn’t… personal.”

She gave him a calm, cold stare. “It never is.”

Brayan shut up after that.

* * *

By the timeTisaanah and I made it to the door with the lily, it was just the two of us. Ishqa never returned from his detour. Brayan had slipped into a weapons shop, declaring something about stocking up on supplies, though I suspected he just wanted to get away from Tisaanah. Sammerin’s neck had nearly snapped when he spotted a beautiful blond woman drinking alone at a pub table, so soon enough he was gone too. Secretly, I was relieved. I didn’t know what we were going to find here. And if Ishqa’s contacts were able to restore my magic, and my mind… I didn’t know what breaking open that door would look like. I would be lying if I said that vulnerability didn’t make my palms sweat. Maybe he knew that.

The building was unassuming. It was built beneath collapsed ancient stone, the doorway constructed under two tipped-over columns. There was no sign, only a lily burnt into a plain wooden door.

I raised my hand to knock and hesitated.

“Good luck, Max,” Tisaanah said, with a small smile that I instantly returned.

“Good luck, Tisaanah.”

I knocked. The door swung open right away. A white-haired man with faint points on his ears greeted us with a wide smile.

“Welcome, welcome. Tisaanah Vytezic and Maxantarius Farlione, we are so very excited to meet you.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-FIVE

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