Page 94 of Mother of Death and Dawn

I was back in a stone room, paralyzed. I would be tortured. I would be dismantled and everything would be taken away and I could do nothing.

I could do nothing.

I no longer felt my heartbeat.

Someone touched me and I let out a weak attempt at a scream, lashing with my fading strength. A human. A human was touching me and they would rip me apart and I could do nothing and—

“It’s me. It’s me, Aefe.Stop.”

Someone pulled me close, holding my shoulders. Took my blood-soaked hand and pressed it to smooth skin. Beneath it was the faint thrum of a heartbeat.

“It’s me, Aefe,” Caduan murmured, his forehead against mine. “Keep breathing.”

Fear. I heard fear in that voice.

“You are safe,” he whispered.

I thought,You can not lie to me.

I realized I was sobbing. I realized I couldn’t breathe.

But he held my hand against his chest, and it was the last thing I felt as I faded.

“Keep breathing, Aefe.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY

TISAANAH

My eyelids fluttered open. Blades of grass tickled my nose. The air was silent. Peaceful, even.

It took a few long seconds for the events of the night to return to me.

I shot upright. I was in a field beneath a starry sky. I’d been holding onto both Sammerin and Max when Sammerin executed his Stratagram, but neither were beside me now.

I struggled to my feet, frantic.

“Sammerin? Max?”

My voice was weak, at first.

“Max?”

I couldn’t have lost him again. Not again.

Then there was movement in the grass. To my left, the long-haired man—Max’s brother, gods,thatwas a story I needed to hear—rolled over and pushed himself up.

To my right, Sammerin sat up from behind a pile of rocks, rubbing his temple.

“I cannotbelieveI just did that,” he muttered, as if to himself. “A Stratagram with four people. Ascended.”

And then, at last, Max emerged from a cluster of trees.

He moved with a slight limp. His clothes were torn and burnt, his dark hair much shaggier and longer than it had been before, one cheek smeared with blood. He was leaner. And it was only now, when I had the time to get a proper look at him, that I realized the tattoos covered every inch of him but his face—Stratagrams on top of Stratagrams.

His eyes—those beautiful, milky blue eyes—lifted to meet mine, and it was those eyes that were my undoing.

I ran to him, threw my arms around his neck and buried my face against his shoulder. Though he had lost weight, he felt the same, every angle and curve and swell of his body falling against mine in a way that felt like home—myhome, and gods, I was never leaving, I was never letting go, I would live here, in the scent of him, in the feel of his breath against my chest, forever.

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