Page 184 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Meajqa scoffed. “After we ceded to their demands. After so many of our own and one of our greatest generals died on their battlefield. They turn and stab us in the back.”

“Is anyone truly surprised?” muttered Luia.

“I admit that I thought they would see more value in our alliance than to treat it this way,” Vythian said.

I was not surprised. I still held Tisaanah’s memories within me, as vivid as my own. I could feel that whip upon my own back, marks placed there by the betrayal of someone she had thought loved her.

Humans betrayed. They lied. It was in their souls.

Caduan’s lips thinned. “And our options?”

“We could give them the opportunity to explain themselves,” Vythian said. “Knowing, of course, that they could lie. But it would give us the chance to find out what information they know while preserving the alliance.”

Meajqa scoffed again and took another long drink of wine.

“Or,” Caduan said, coldly.

“Or we destroy them.” Anger made my words quick and sharp—they left my lips without my permission. My anger was everywhere at once, bubbling over at Caduan for abandoning me, at the Arans for centuries of torture, at the Threllians for their betrayal now.

But I did not have to accept such things. I knew how good vengeance felt. How much pain could be soothed with the iron taste of blood.

I stood, my fingernails biting my palms.

“We are more powerful than we were before,” I snarled. “I alone killed hundreds of human men at Niraja. We are beyond needing the Threllians’ pathetic resources. It’s time to stop beingcowardly.” I spat the world across the table like an arrow. “We are stronger than them. You set out to make a strong move against the humans. None of them are more disgusting, less worthy of life, than the society the Threllians have built. We have spent too long being cautious. We’ve spent too long hiding because we are afraid of what we are capable of.”

“If we do this,” Caduan said, calmly, “there is no coming back.” He did not look at anyone but me. He barely blinked.

“You claimed that you would destroy human civilization because it brought nothing but pain and death. You claimed that we would put an end to them. Your country has rallied behind you in that. Last week you read three hundred names of Fey dead by human hands. What does it matter whose color they bore? The Threllians would have killed them just as willingly as the Arans. Let us avenge them.”

I was not talking about the three hundred dead Fey.

The vengeance,Meajqa had said,is for you.

And as I spoke, I saw that fire, that hunger, seep into Caduan’s eyes.

“Are we ready?” he said.

I knew what he was really asking. If we were to do this—wage our war in earnest, rely on our own power instead of the numbers provided by the Threllians—he needed me. Needed my power. Needed my rage.

“I am ready,” I said, without hesitation.

Something like pride flickered across Caduan’s face. He rose and turned to the map on the wall. “Then we destroy Threll,” he said.

He pressed his hand to Threll then swept it away, leaving behind a smear of crimson over the parchment—human blood.

“We are done being cowards.”

CHAPTERSIXTY-NINE

MAX

We moved fast. It took only two days to get to Orasiev, and I had spent every second of them thinking of Tisaanah and what she was going through in captivity. At times, my worry was so overwhelming that I was ready to throw away this entire stupid idea in favor of storming the gates myself and bringing her home with me, even if it meant getting myself killed, war be damned. I wanted her—needed her—safe with me. The faster we got to Orasiev, the faster that came to being a reality.

When we arrived, I could have fucking wept for it.

It was strange to think that Orasiev was once a Threllian Lord’s estate, the sort of city that would look exactly like all the other white stone cities built by the Threllians. The rebels had done so much to separate it from that legacy. The ivory had been splashed with paint, creating a cacophony of colors that reminded me of my garden. Strips of colorful fabric hung from the city walls—flags, I realized as we approached. Many, many different flags. When the breeze blew, they flew into the air like wings, revealing deep cracks beneath them, jarring scars from the siege that the rebels had only just managed to survive.

Once you noticed those cracks, you started to notice all the other signs of war, too. The haphazard spears stuck to the tops of the walls—some broken, some bloody. The boarded-over doors. The guards that milled about at the gates, though they barely even looked like soldiers so much as random collections of half-starved, battle-scarred people who happened to wear the same scarves around their necks: red.

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