Page 142 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“I’ve come here to wield you,” I said. “Help me understand how.”

A laugh in many voices. The stars—not-stars—above me lit up in ripples with the sound.

You are welcome to try,a voice said—the voice of a young girl.

And then a young boy.But you are only one half of a whole. You cannot fly with only one wing.A giggle.Or, maybe you can! You want to try, anyway?

The dark had become all-consuming. I wanted to flail my hands out to steady myself.

Hey.The whisper was so close that lips brushed my ear.Did you know that caterpillars become nothing before they become butterflies? Gross, right?

I knew that voice. Kira. I turned, expecting to see Max’s sister as I remembered her in his memories.

Instead, my mother stood before me.

The sight of her knocked the breath from my lungs. Ten years had been greedy, eating away my memory of her face. Her dark hair was wild and unkempt around her shoulders, but I no longer recalled the distinct shape of her eyes or the line of her chin, her features reduced to vague guesses.

You wish to wield this?Her voice was a hundred variations at once. Every time I looked at her, her face was slightly different.Then wield it, my love.

She extended her hand, palm up.

It’s a trap,I told myself.This is not real. It’s not her. This is some pit of magic that is trying to consume me.

But my thoughts were sticky, like a moth caught in a web. I found myself moving before I could stop myself.

I took her hand.

Immediately, the magic overwhelmed me.

CHAPTERFIFTY

MAX

Iran until every part of my body burned. In the beginning, Brayan was following me, not that I slowed enough to let him catch up. I left him behind when, on nothing more than impulse, I tried drawing a Stratagram—and this time, itworked. I was too grateful to care why. I made one jump, then another. The ground beneath my feet shifted from the damp earth of the forest to the swamp of the shore to the stone of long-abandoned streets.

I was already drawing my next Stratagram when I landed between two soldiers, right in the path of swords mid-swing. I cursed and rolled out of the way seconds before their blades clashed. The movement nearly flung me right into another skirmish, clawing the dirt to stop myself.

I was in the middle of a fucking battle zone, surrounded by a tangled mass of flesh and steel and magic—horses screaming, humans screaming, Fey screaming. The uniforms were all so bloodstained, in red or violet, that I couldn’t even make out who was fighting who. Chilling shadow creatures that I recognized as the Fey’s monsters tore through handfuls of soldiers as if they were rag dolls. Mangled beasts on stilted legs—Nura’s creatures—roared through the battlefield, gutting whoever crossed their path no matter what uniform they wore.

Fuck.I groped around the bloody cobblestones for my sword.

I didn’t have time to ruminate on how this mess had happened. I just needed to find—

BANG!

The ground shook. The sound rattled my skull. Ruins that had been stable for hundreds of years groaned warnings of imminent collapse.

The fighting paused only momentarily. Those who stopped too long to look around in confusion were cut down.

But none of these things earned my full attention. It was what lay under it—a sudden chasm that had opened in a world that I sensed deep beneath this one, a disruption that was just as tangible, just as real, as all of this.

I knew where I needed to go.

I grabbed my sword and drew one more Stratagram.

* * *

I landedin an inch of black water. The sudden quiet was jarring. I could hear the battle happening not far from here—coming closer, as both armies tore through the ruins, alerted by the explosion—but it was oddly dampened, like my ears were stuffed with cotton. I struggled to see. Even the scent of the swamp seemed muted.

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