Page 284 of Mother of Death and Dawn

But I left her. I left her behind to such a terrible death.

She stepped closer, and when she closed the distance between us the scent of her surrounded me—citrus and warmth, like an embrace of childhood safety, when my mother was unbreakable protection.

“You should be going,” she said. “You have a new world to see. I only… ” Her fingertips brushed my cheeks, and for the first time, a hint of that sentimentality seeped into her expression. “I only wanted to see you.”

“No.” The word welled up in me before I could stop it. I didn’t want to leave her. Not for a second time.

She gave me another stern look. Just as she had that awful night, she flicked my tears away before they could fall.

“None of that,” she said. “You have survived, my daughter. Now live.”

She was already fading.

“Wait,” I called out, frantic. “Wait. Will I see you again?”

She smiled. “One day. A very, very long time from now.”

And she gave me one final kiss—the sister to the one she gave me that night, right between my eyebrows.

It burned long after she was gone.

* * *

I didn’t knowhow we got through those hallways. When I opened my eyes next, Max and I were on the outer platform of Ilyzath, collapsed on ivory stone that overlooked the sea. The floor beneath us no longer shuddered with unnatural life or ancient magic. Now it was still and quiet. Just one more skeleton left behind.

I felt a hand on mine, and I turned to see Max pushing himself to his elbows, face tilted to Ara’s distant silhouette. It was dark, calm. Empty ships, ships that had once held legions of undead soldiers, now floated in desolate silence.

Max turned my palm upright. The gold was gone, as was the mark on his hand. Even my magic felt different, like the most volatile parts of it had been closed away.

He let out a jagged sigh of relief. His eyes met mine, and I realized with a start that they had changed—no longer membranous blue, but the dark brown he was born with.

“It can’t be,” he rasped. “After all that, it can’t be.”

It’s over.

The words hovered between us, unspoken. I didn’t know how to believe them either. But at the same time we looked to the sky, softly tinted pink. There were no cracks, no smoke. No terrible magic. Clear, save for a smattering of lingering stars and the imminent promise of sunrise.

Max’s hand wrapped around mine, squeezed so hard our fingers trembled. I tried to speak but only let out a choked sob, which Max covered with a messy, desperate kiss. He tasted like a second chance.

We stayed like that, drowning in our elation, as the sun at last crested the horizon—bringing an end to a long, dark night.

Bringing dawn.

CHAPTERONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR

TISAANAH

1 WEEK LATER

Meajqa Sai’Ess looked very much like his father.

I had seen him before, in passing, but never as close as this. He, Max and I sat in the Palace drawing room for hours. The topic was, of course, the only one anyone was talking about this week:

What now?

That was a complicated question.

When we had sealed away the deep magic, everything created by it had simply… disappeared. Nura’s entire army of death, gone. From what Max and I pieced together from Moth and Sammerin’s accounts, that seemed to be enough to leave both the Arans and the Fey confused enough to re-evaluate what was happening. Meajqa and Luia, the two highest-ranking Fey leaders in the absence of Caduan, called back their troops into a tentative cease-fire when they realized that their king was missing.

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