Page 96 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“I have so many questions.” Sammerin rubbed his temple. “How did you get out of Ilyzath? We’ve been trying to break you out for months.”

They had?

If explaining my memory loss was difficult, explaining the bizarre circumstances of my escape seemed downright impossible. “That answer is… complicated.”

A wrinkle deepened between his brow. “Did Nura do that to you? The memory loss?”

He was a friend, I thought. A good friend. I could feel the imprint of that too, even though the details, again, remained locked behind a wall I couldn’t breach. Even if I hadn’t felt the echo of that relationship, then the slight, restrained anger in his voice at Nura’s name would have betrayed it.

The winged Fey came closer. His stare made me uncomfortable—that ageless bright gold seemed to pick me apart. My gaze lingered on the points of his ears. He was clearly an ally to these two, but I knew Fey only as the creatures that I watched tear Ara to shreds over the last months.

“May I?” he asked and took my wrist before I had the chance to answer, pushing my sleeve up my arm.

“Excuse you,” I muttered.

He ignored me as he examined the tattoos. The ones on my wrists and hands blistered fiercely.

“What are these?” the Fey asked. “Human magic?”

“Stratagrams,” Sammerin offered. “Visual manifestations of magic to help Wielders execute complex spells.” His eyes flicked to me. “Did she put these here to bind your magic? I’ve never seen so many on one person.”

I nodded as I pulled my arm away, oddly self-conscious.

The Fey looked dissatisfied with this answer. “But you used your magic in the battle.”

“I can, sometimes. Only for a few minutes at most. Seemingly at random. I don’t know how or why.”

What I didn’t say is that when I came here, when I fought beside this stranger, my magic felt more alive than it had in months. I still paid for it, and it was still unpredictable, but it wasn’t even that hard for me to slip Nura’s chains.

“Interesting,” the Fey murmured.

Sammerin’s fingers lingered at his chin, deep in thought. “And your mind… the Stratagrams did that?”

“I don’t think so. That came—”

“Before.”

The woman looked at me with wide eyes, then broke my stare and went silent.

I cleared my throat, awkwardly. “Maybe. I don’t— it’s hard for me to say.”

“But your magic… it’s not gone. Only locked.” Sammerin surveyed the tattoos.

“Yes.”

“You drew from a deeper level tonight,” the Fey said. “That is why you were able to use it. You drew from it before, and that magic does not obey the rules of your human—”

“Wait.” I held up my hand. “I could draw from it before? What does that mean?”

The Fey went silent. He looked to Sammerin, then the girl. “You and Tisaanah are capable of drawing from these streams of magic.”

Tisaanah.

The sound of her name just… fit. I glanced up at her. She was silent, her arms crossed around herself.

“Why?” I asked.

A tiny whisper in the back of my head:

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