Page 237 of Mother of Death and Dawn

Don’t leave me,I had begged him.

“I knew from the beginning the side effects of handling magic this potent. Doing it for so long. And I was always willing to—” He reached for me, but I batted his hand away.

How quickly, the pain turned to rage.

“How could you do this?”

“Aefe—”

I hated the way he said my name.

“You brought me here just to abandon me. You— you brought me here and gave me this empty body and this empty heartbeat and you— and all the while you—”

He stood a step closer, and I wanted him to say something, I wanted him to scream at me, I wanted him to hurt me, because every piece of warmth within me had now become this horrible, blistering fire that I only knew how to feed.

Don’t leave me,I had begged, and he had told me,I am not going anywhere.

“You— Youliedto me,” I spat. My vision was blurry—why was my vision blurry? “You betrayed me. You betrayed your entire kingdom.”

He stepped closer again. “I never wanted—”

Lie. He did want. He had been nothing but want that night.

“Youmade me love you.” My words were jagged and raspy with sobs.

He reached out for me, such a gentle, tender touch. “Aefe, please. We need you.”

I backed away.

He said, more desperately, “Ineed you.”

Once he had said that to me and I had hated those words because I thought he needed me the way one needed a weapon. But now I knew a different sort of need—the way he needed me the night I let him into my body. The way he needed me when we held each other at the sunrise.

I knew, no matter how angry I was, that when he said,I need you,this was what he meant.

And that, that genuine affection, hurt deeper than all of it.

“I hate you.” I hurled the lie at him like a throwing knife, and I did not let him say a single tender word to me again.

CHAPTERNINETY-FOUR

TISAANAH

Max looked like a ghost.

When Brayan left, he turned to me and asked, too calmly, “Did he hurt you?”

As if one enraged non-Wielder man could hurt me. Even if he had, whatever scratch he’d given me was laughably inconsequential to whatever Max was going through.

“No. Are you alright?”

Of course he was not alright. He was so far from alright, and all of it was written all over his face.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, let out a long breath, paced the length of the wall. “Fuck, we— we won’t have the Roseteeth anymore.”

“We do not need to worry about that this second,” I said, quietly. “That isn’t what I asked. Areyoualright?”

“I’m alright.”

---