Page 124 of Mother of Death and Dawn

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By the timewe reached the Fey banners, the smoke was thick enough to blot out the sky. There was little movement. I feared the worst, and Meajqa did too, based on his tense silence.

We crested a hill and saw a cluster of soldiers, silhouetted in the mist. My heart leapt. At a flash of copper, I began to walk faster. When we approached, one of them turned around—to my utter relief, Caduan.

His face changed immediately when he saw us. “What are you doing here?” he asked, as soon as we were close enough.

“Five days with no word,” Meajqa shot back. He didn’t bother to hide his annoyance, though with it came a visible breath of relief. “Of course we would send reinforcements.”

“We had no time to write letters. This is the longest we’ve gone without a clash in a week.”

Meajqa’s gaze flicked across the field, and the soldiers that surrounded Caduan. “My aunt? Is she—”

“She needed to fly south to handle another conflict, before this one began. She is safe.”

Caduan took several steps through the wreckage towards us. Though he ducked his head, I noticed the wince, and though he moved slowly, I saw the pain in his movements.

“You’re injured,” I said.

“No. Just tired.” He looked to the horizon line, and it was only then that I saw beyond our encampment to what was happening in the valley below. Threllian and Fey soldiers clustered together. Before them, uniformed humans stood in straight lines, hands bound behind them.

Someone shouted. The humans knelt. And then, before I had time to react to what I was seeing, the Threllians and the Fey walked up and down the lines of rebels, executing them. The bodies flopped into the dirt one by one like discarded rag dolls.

Further in the distance, our soldiers yanked humans out of houses, door to door. It was all very methodical, systematic.

Once, nothing had been more comforting to me than to be surrounded by death. I could hide my powerlessness beneath my wrath and make the entire world just as stagnant and empty as I was. Even now, shameful as it may be, it felt like slipping back into clothing that had once fit me perfectly.

But this? This cold, mechanical taking of life? It seemed wrong.

Caduan had moved closer to me. “I did not—”

“To the east!” One of our soldier’s shouts cut through his voice. We turned to see him pointing up.

I looked up and saw a flash of gold in the sky.

My breath hitched. I recognized Ishqa right away, even from this distance. You memorize everything about your nightmares.

Meajqa cocked his bow.

“What the hell is he doing here?” one of the soldiers muttered.

“Shoot him down!” Caduan commanded.

Meajqa let his arrow fly before the words were out of Caduan’s mouth.

Ishqa’s graceful movements lurched. The arrow missed, but only barely, nicking his left wing. He ventured lower, coming closer to us.

Caduan’s lip twitched. “I am surprised he has the nerve to approach us.” Then he glanced at me. “Are you alright?”

I understood all he was asking with those three words.

“Yes.”

“You can leave.”

“I want to see him.”

In five hundred years, I had not confronted my fears. I knew Ishqa’s face, or at least I thought I did. In my dreams he was as still as marble, his gold eyes unnervingly bright, his mouth frozen in perpetual disinterest. It was the face of someone who had not even cared—had not even thought twice—about betraying me.

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