Page 153 of Mother of Death and Dawn

As if on cue, we all looked at the table, and the mysterious item that sat at its center.

By the time Tisaanah and I were pulled from the swamps, we barely clung to consciousness. We had hardly looked at the thing we’d dragged back with us. Now, in the harsh light of day, I could appreciate just how unnerving it was.

It was a heart—an anatomical heart that looked as if it had been carved from white marble. Sammerin had examined it thoroughly and told us, with some unease, that it was incredibly accurate, to the point where he suspected it was an actual human heart that had been… preserved? Petrified?

Certainly, it was no normal object. It spoke to some deep power within me, deeper than my flames and even deeper than Reshaye had once drawn from, strange and volatile and… inhuman.

“So is this it?” Sammerin asked, quietly. “Is this what Ishqa had sent us to go find?”

I didn’t have an answer to that question that I liked.

Tisaanah looked at her hand—the mark no longer glowed quite as brightly, but it had spread, now crossing the boundary of her wrist. “It’s what the wayfinder led me to,” she said.

Ishqa had spoken of magic that would spell the life or death of nations. Could this thing do that? It seemed, at once, equal parts impossible and inevitable.

“Ishqa had better get back here,” Sammerin muttered.

We all shifted uncomfortably at that. No one had seen Ishqa since Niraja. Sammerin said they had gotten separated when the chaos erupted. While Brayan had found Sammerin, neither of them had been able to locate Ishqa before they were forced to drag Tisaanah and me away.

“He’ll find us,” Tisaanah said. “He’s like a cat. He always makes his way back.”

She had a bit more faith in Ishqa’s trustworthiness—and durability—than I did. Still, I hoped she was right. I didn’t know how we would learn anything at all about this thing without his help.

After a long, awkward silence, Brayan rose, cracking his back.

“We should be safe here for a while,” he said. “We give Ishqa three days. After that, we assume he’s dead.”

Harsh, but fair. We had few other choices in wartime.

“In the meantime,” he went on, “I suggest we all get some rest. We aren’t in any condition to do anything useful now.”

Sammerin nodded. He looked exhausted.

“Good,” Brayan said. That was as much of a goodbye as we were going to get. He left without another word.

I glanced at Tisaanah. She was still looking at the heart with an intense concentration etched into her face, a tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows. A dizzy flood of affection fell over me at the sight of it—because it was such a familiar expression, and I loved that it was suddenly so familiar.

Yes, a lifetime of memories was a heavy weight. When they returned, I had thought some of them might break me.

But then, some of them were this.

I brushed my hand over the small of her back. I hadn’t been able to help myself. Those little touches had been sprinkled throughout this conversation, like I needed to remind myself that she was here. She looked over her shoulder and smiled, and that made all this other ridiculousness seem inconsequential.

Sammerin stood. “This is disgusting.”

“What?”

He gave me a deadpan stare. “Wait until I’m out of the room before you rip each other’s clothes off.”

“You should be so lucky.”

He scoffed as the door slammed behind him.

And finally—finally, finally, finally—we were alone.

Tisaanah stood up and stretched, then gasped sharply. “There has been a terrible mistake.”

I leapt to my feet, alarmed. “What?”

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