Page 264 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“No,” she said. “No, I can’t stop. I can’t be weak.”

“Nura, please—”

We had been so fucking close. But through my connection to the deepest layers of magic, I felt Nura reaching for her power.

I raised my weapon.

Yet, I was secretly grateful when it was Il’Sahaj, not my own blade, that sliced Nura’s throat.

I stepped back from Nura’s falling body. I moved quickly this time, replacing her grip around the amber stone the moment it loosened. I buckled under a wave of intoxication as its magic slithered through me.

Nura had already been so badly wounded. Maybe her magic or even just the sheer strength of her will had been keeping her upright at all. The moment the Lejara left her grasp—the moment she lost its magic—she collapsed.

For a few seconds she fought death, erratic sputters of shadow at her hands. Her gaze fell to me one last time, and I couldn’t look away.

A ghost of a smile twitched at her mouth.

“I knew you would. Eventually.”

I felt no joy as I watched Nura die.

I felt nothing at all.

CHAPTERONE HUNDRED TEN

MAX

Icouldn’t help but hope that the corpses would fall as soon as Nura did, like puppets limp from the loss of their master.

Sadly, this was not the case. Seconds after Nura died, Tisaanah had to drag me away from the quickly encroaching hordes of monstrous soldiers. The haze of exhaustion and anger and sadness cleared enough for a single question to surface:

Now what?

Those were the first words out of my lips when Tisaanah and I managed to steal a few seconds of quiet again, behind a half-broken house. My eyes were drawn down to the amber, which I clutched like my life depended on it.

Your life does depend on it,the magic seemed to sing.Everything depends on me. Come with me and we can create a new world. You and me.

I hadn’t been able to see the details of it before, when it was tightly held in Nura’s grasp. The thing inside it resembled a misshapen fetus, white as if carved in ivory, curled up at the center of the amber stone. It was barely a suggestion of a person at this point, no features, no fingers, no toes, but disturbingly humanoid. It was disgusting… and yet, entrancing.

The power of it thrummed beneath my skin. The heart had felt staggeringly powerful, too, but erratic and ever moving, like a river rushing around us.

This? This was more… enticing. Like a beckoning hand.

Create the world you wish,it seemed to whisper.Create life. Do you know what does that? A god.

“What do we do with that thing now?” Tisaanah said. She was breathing hard, her forearm around her body, clearly cradling an injury.

I glanced over my shoulder to see sheer hell unfolding around us. The magic at my hands tingled.

We could use it.The answer was on the tip of my tongue.We could use it to win this war and every one after it. We could use it to build the world of our dreams.

I snapped my chin up, blinking hard.

Ascended above. No wonder this thing had driven Nura to a new level of madness.

“We absolutely shouldnotuse it,” I said.

Tisaanah nodded emphatically. Then she lifted her gaze to the night sky. I followed her stare and noticed that the streaks of unnatural light arcing across it had only grown brighter, stronger.

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