Page 43 of Mother of Death and Dawn

I gave Sammerin a sidelong glance.

“How are you, Sammerin?”

One eyebrow twitched. “I am utterly fantastic.”

Sammerin’s sarcasm was like expensive whiskey. Subtle and refined, but plenty potent.

I leaned my head against his shoulder. The position gave me a better view of the notebook in his lap. He had been drawing a little Aran townhouse with a sign over the door, upon which Sammerin had scratched,Esrin & Imat.

It was his practice.

“I’m just tired,” he said, softly, after a moment. “We’ve been fighting for a long time. Traveling for a long time.”

I recognized the emotion in his voice. I had felt it myself, many times.

My people were fighting to reclaim their homes, while Sammerin had been wrenched away from his. The others liked him well enough, but he struggled with the language. And Sammerin’s life here, like all of ours, had become a monotonous string of battles and broken bodies and camps moved late in the night.

“You miss your home,” I murmured.

“I left a lot behind. My patients, my practice. Family.”

A pang of guilt twinged in my chest. “We will make sure you return.”

He gave me a small smile—the sort of smile that said he appreciated the sentiment, but didn’t entirely believe me.

But it would need to be true, I decided. I wouldn’t accept any alternative.

“It just takes time,” I said. “A wise man once told me that creating is harder than destroying.”

The corner of Sammerin’s mouth lifted, recognizing his own words echoed back to him.

“I suppose,” he said, “it will be worth it.”

Gods, I hoped so. I hoped so.

* * *

I was accustomed,by now, to strange dreams. But this was not a dream. It started as one, and ended as one. Whatever happened between was a cataclysm.

One moment, I was in a field of flowers watching a familiar left-skewed smile—a dream, of course—and the next, the entire world was falling apart, as if sight and sound and touch and smell and the invisible forces that held all of those things together were being ripped apart from the inside out. Somewhere far away, yes, but physical distance meant nothing here.The pain was immeasurable.

A thousand different moments collided.

Suddenly I was in a beautiful, unfamiliar room that I hated, looking up at the ceiling, gasping for breath.

Suddenly I was trapped between four white carved walls, beating at them with my fists, fire in my veins with nowhere to go.

That moment of connection existed only for seconds—less, even, and yet it made everything else stop.That was Max. I’d know his presence anywhere, even by a few fractured seconds through his eyes.

I needed to go back. Needed to reach him. I tried to harness this overwhelming flood of magic, tried to channel it, but there was no structure to it, no reason. It was a putrid flood that went in every direction at once. A fundamental shift in the world.

I screamed his name, but I had no voice, no words. Whatever wound was being ripped into the deep layers of this world tore wider. I was swept away.

* * *

“Tisaanah.”

I didn’t want to wake up. Didn’t want to relinquish my dream.

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