Page 254 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“I feel like I have spent my entire life afraid.”

“You feel everything.” He pushed a flying strand of dark red hair away from my eyes. “That is the bravest act in this world. To feel. I am often too afraid to do it myself.”

For all the times that I had thrown Caduan’s supposed cowardice in his face, it was little more than a sharp word I wielded as a weapon. Now, I cursed myself for it. He was the bravest person I had ever met.

And he was wrong about me.

Because then he ducked his head and coughed—delicately, quietly, as he always did. But when he turned back to me and gave me a small, reassuring smile, I saw the dark violet on his hand and at the corner of his mouth.

In that moment, I imagined Caduan standing in the doorway to another world, and I did not feel brave at all.

* * *

The days passed,and the Ela’Dar armada cut through the sea like birds treading a path through the sky. The air grew tighter, jokes replaced by quiet tension. Caduan spoke less and less. After several days, I realized it was because he was finding it more difficult to hide the labor of his breathing.

We sent Wyshraj scouts in bird form ahead to scout the distance between us and Ara. At last, they returned with a new sense of urgency. They had seen Threllian ships ahead—Aran ships. Nura, as we suspected, was crossing the sea as well, ready to retake the throne of her traitorous country.

“She has an army,” the scout told us. “She has assembled all of her Threll-based resources. And she has…”

Caduan put up his hand. He didn’t need to hear any more.

I had known something was… odd. I could feel it growing in a world beneath this one with each day we were at sea. What I now realized was that I had been sensing the presence of Nura’s stolen Lejara—the magic that had createdme.

“We go faster,” Caduan said decisively. “If we reach Ara before, or at the same time, she does, it will be easy to use their own chaotic infighting against them.”

Caduan’s command left no room for argument. The sails were let out, and the spells that quickened the ships through the water enhanced. Caduan returned to the bow.

We moved so fast now that I struggled to keep my hair bound. Meajqa did not even bother to tie his back, allowing the wind to whip golden streaks about his face.

Uncharacteristically, he had barely spoken during the trip.

“What is wrong?” I asked him, at last.

“I think this is a mistake,” he said. “I think we are in floating caskets.”

Then he turned away, face to the sky, and said nothing else.

CHAPTERONE HUNDRED FOUR

TISAANAH

There was an entire navy in the bay. So many ships blotted the horizon that I could see nothing but blood-red sails. I recognized those sails. These ships had once belonged to Esmaris Mikov—one of the grandest fleets in the world, even though his territory was landlocked. To Esmaris, the usefulness or functionality of such a fleet did not matter. He had the money for it, and the power to flaunt it, so it became his.

And then, in a cruel twist of fate, it became Nura’s.

When I saw those sails, my first thought was,Fitting. Esmaris’s final knife to my back from beyond death.

People stood in the streets in shock, mouths open in horror. At the armada, yes—but also at the sky. Red streaks ran across it like cracks through stone or wounds in flesh.

“Fuck,” Max whispered. “How did she get so many people?”

I couldn’t even speak.

It looked like the end of the world. Even the air was hot and cold, damp and dry, all at the same time. An indescribable toxicity filled my lungs with each breath, something that the deepest reaches of my magic recoiled from. I had felt this sensation before—in the presence of Nura’s failed experiments and in the presence of the Lejara. Even now, too, from the shards of the broken heart that sat at my hip, which seemed more volatile than ever.

Max and I looked at each other. He lifted our entwined fingers and kissed the back of my hand.

“Whatever happens now,” he said, “I’m very glad that we got to do that.”

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