Page 111 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“I think what my partner expresses so rudely is that you two have pushed yourselves far past the point where rules make sense.” Klasto turned, retrieving paper and a pen from the bookcase. “You two have shared magic, yes?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I glanced to Tisaanah.

Klasto, misreading my hesitation, laughed. “No need to be shy about your sex life, darling. In fact I applaud your taste. It’s delightful.”

That conjured an extraordinarily vivid image.

“I— We have. Yes.” Tisaanah glanced at me before quickly looking away. “But it wasn’t… sex.”

I’m ashamed to admit that just hearing Tisaanah say the word sex did something to me.

“Well, that’s an oversight on your part, but no matter. So that means you were actually using your magic together, yes? Drawing from each other?”

Tisaanah nodded.

“Were you, by any chance, connected in that way when the connection to your magics collapsed?”

A pause. Tisaanah nodded again, slower this time.

I had tried so many times to remember what had happened that day. It was gone.

“Well, that explains it,” Klasto said. He drew several parallel lines across the parchment before him. “The levels of magic. Valtain, Solarie, Fey, et cetera et cetera. And, of course, this chaotic mess.”

He added a bunch of squiggling lines at the very bottom.

“Deep magic, which no one seems to know all that much about. Under normal circumstances, everyone stays in their designated stream, and we go on our way. But, sometimes, people make things complicated.”

He added two figures at the top of the page, above the streams of magic—hilariously crooked, with massive swollen heads and stick bodies.

“You two,” Klasto went on, “started complicating your relationship to the streams. First, you started drawing from deep magic.” He drew lines from the figures to the chaotic scribbles at the bottom of the page. “And then you started drawing from each other, even though you both Wielded different types of magic.Andif you were actually making use of that magic together, then you were accessing deep magicthrougheach other.” He drew lines between the two figures, and more that ran from each figure, to each other, to each of the streams, to the scribbles, and back. It quickly devolved into a tangled mess.

“It may look messy, but this actually would have worked fine for you if you’d managed to avoid getting A’Maril and dying. But…” He drew a slash across the page, cutting through all the lines. “If something were to disrupt those connections, especially if, as you say, you were together when it happened, then it’s much more likely to affect both of you.”

This all seemed, frankly, ridiculous.

“So what does this mean, exactly?” I asked. “You’re saying that if we’re going to fix this, we need to do it together?”

“You don’tneedto, but it would be the easiest path.”

“What do we do?” Tisaanah already looked prepared to face down the world. It was a little charming.

Klasto smiled. “We’re going to be a bit unconventional, darlings. I hope you forgive me.”

* * *

He putus in a fucking closet.

It was pitch black. I sat cross-legged on the ground, at the center of a Stratagram, per Klasto and Blif’s instruction. Tisaanah sat directly in front of me, facing me. I couldn’t see her in the darkness, but it would be impossible not to sense her. I could practically feel her warmth. And of course, there was that scent.

“They locked us up,” Tisaanah chuckled quietly. She was whispering—the darkness and silence made it seem like we should.

“Well, naturally,” I replied. “It’s the obvious solution.”

“Perhaps he got so annoyed with us that he will just lock us away forever.”

Her voice was closer, highlighting the mere inches between our faces. I thought about how easy it would be to close the gap. Wondered if she tasted like citrus, the way she smelled of it.

Klasto’s voice floated through the air, everywhere and nowhere at once. “You think so little of us, after we’ve built such a friendship.”

---