Page 23 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

Returning to the Abbey of Mount Devour through the Glass of Infinite Realms, I can’t gain my balance, and I totter down corridors, clinging to the slick walls.

Beams of light shine down on me, filling these hallways and shifting darkness.

I can’t tell my foot from the shadow of my foot.

Sometimes, I have to crouch and place my head between my knees. This shit’s making me sick.

Pale-skinned Raqiel sentinels stand every ten paces and at every four-way corridor.

These descendants of Mera and Onama say nothing as I stop, crouch, and lean, nor do their gray eyes shift in my direction.

Do they ever leave these dungeons that thread through this abbey?

Are they ever angry with their underground station in life?

Do they ever wish they could see a sunlit sky and hear sounds that aren’t merely echoes?

“And I used to travel through the Glass like that all the time?” I ask, my face hidden in the crook of my elbow.

Elyn, farther ahead, turns back to me. “You weren’t Diminished then. Come on—we’re losing time.”

“Give me a moment.” Ugh . My skin feels frustratingly clammy, even though I just took a bath.

I peek out again from behind my elbow to stare at the wall across from me…

a wall that soars overhead and ends somewhere in the sky.

To make matters worse, the ground is too soft, and it feels like I’m walking on air.

My sense of space and my need for boundaries is… gone . I can’t walk without nearly vomiting.

“Kai—”

“Yeah, yeah.” I slide up the wall to stand, eyes closed. After pushing out a few breaths, I throw myself into the middle of the corridor and start on my wobbly way.

Elyn looks at me over her shoulder—the corner of her lip lifts just a bit.

She wants to laugh. But she doesn’t, and in silence, she leads me through one tall iron door after another.

There are no longer torches or lanterns through these passageways.

Her gold eyes and dove amulet are lighting the way.

No light glows from my own eyes or from my moth pendant, and so I must rely on her. What powers did my father manage to restore if I still lack the ability to find my own way? I guess I’m more broken than I thought.

“Did you get the answers you needed from Lord Megidrail?” the Adjudicator asks, reading my mind.

I give Elyn a one-shouldered shrug and scan the hallway for pots or vases just in case my stomach surrenders. “I didn’t have a chance to ask him about our family or why he abandoned us. He didn’t ask about my mother’s end, either.”

Elyn snorts. “Your mother’s end ? You caused your mother’s end. You destroyed Ithlon. What questions did he need answered that weren’t answered during the trial?”

My cheeks flush. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I was thinking. Everything was happening so quickly.” I pause, then add, “I did want to ask about the generals who lied to me about Mother being off-realm. Where are they now? You must know.”

“Why must you know their locations?” Elyn asks. “Are you planning to kill them one day?”

I don’t answer.

Elyn doesn’t look back at me.

I tug my ear and clear my throat. “I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but I didn’t know that she was still on Ithlon when I launched its destruction. And I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

“If you’d known she was still in Gundabar Province, would you have called it off?” she asks. Even with her back to me, I know Elyn’s scowling. Because to the Adjudicator, it doesn’t matter that I’d been lied to. My destruction still hadn’t been blessed by the Council of High Orders.

“Of course I would’ve,” I snap. “Do you think I’m so maniacal that I’d kill my mother ?”

Elyn doesn’t respond to me but nods at the sentinels we pass.

“I’m trying to be better,” I say, stumbling on a thicker patch of air.

She hears my scuffling boots and peeks back at me. “Are you gonna make it there?”

No.

“Of course.” I flap my hand at her. “Keep going. We have only nine dawns-.”

“And you’re gonna use six of them trying to walk down to the dungeons.”

I chuckle. I have to stop and rest my hands on my knees again. “Do you know the significance of nine dawns and the nightstar’s cycle?”

Elyn shakes her head—how does she do that without stumbling or clutching her stomach?

“Something about the metals and gems and Selenova’s mass and…

” She takes a deep breath and pushes it out.

“Doesn’t matter. All I know is this: we don’t have much time.

For Agon to even agree to let us come down here and interrogate the Weapon tells me that this is serious.

We can’t stay long, understand?” She looks back at me again to confirm that I understood.

“No problem.” I give her a wobbly thumbs-up from my place against another wall.

And really: this meeting shouldn’t take long.

Waving my two middle fingers in the Weapon’s face: that will take ten seconds.

Telling him to kiss my ass: five seconds.

Bathing in the toasty satisfaction of turning on my heel and abandoning him in this dungeon: timeless but only seven seconds.

“I know you’re angry that he betrayed you,” Elyn says, walking backward now, “but it’s up to you to not let that betrayal ruin the rest of your life.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I throw myself to the middle of the corridor, overshooting and blundering into the wall across from me.

She’s right, though. Holding on to that hurt means living like these dungeon-dwelling Raqiel, guarding my hurt feelings and never feeling the warmth of freedom kiss my face.

Elyn smiles as she watches me bumble from wall to wall.

I laugh. “Stop looking at me and showing off—I’m gonna throw up on your shoes.”

If I vomit in her presence, I know she’ll never let me forget that.

Elyn tries not to smile and jams her lips together. She turns away from me and marches on in silence.

But silence makes me have to think more as I navigate these janky-lit hallways.

“Why don’t the sentinels down here cover their faces or wear red ribbons like the cardinal-bird ones that follow you around?” I ask.

Even as a free defender, I’d rarely interacted with the Raqiel.

Living with the Fynals, though, I’d see the guard all the time.

I had a crush on one—Eston, son of Athigor.

He smiled at me once, and it had been the smallest, most inconsequential lift on the left side of his beautiful mouth.

We held each other’s gaze for the moment it takes one to blink…

“Just a different branch of Raqiel,” Elyn says now.

“They’re all trained in warfare. The cardinals just have additional skills.

They understand more languages. Can identify a mortal threat quicker than the Raqiel of the dungeons.

The other ‘red-bird’ ones serve all the Adjudicators throughout the Aetherium—and have done so since the first conflict ages before even our own parents’ births.

” She pauses, having provided a distraction from my sorry state. Then she asks, “Better?”

I say, “Yes,” and I am better. I haven’t lurched or weaved in twenty paces. Sure, I’m taking tiny half steps, but I am forging ahead.

We walk in silence on that hard-soft ground, through those tall corridors that have no ceilings, and into deeper shadows and shifting, glowing light.

Elyn slows her pace—the darkness has grown even darker here, and her eyes can barely penetrate the gloom.

The temperature in this passageway has also dropped.

Frosty clouds puff like dust from our noses and mouths.

“Does keeping the prison this cold somehow stop him?” I ask.

“Yes, the cold weakens Miasma and whatever spells Danar Rrivae has endowed him with,” Elyn whispers.

“The holding cells we passed didn’t have prisoners,” I say, just realizing. I look back over my shoulder but only see darkness. “I remember jailing several immortals who broke the laws of Vallendor. You tried those cases.”

Tiny Aver, a Dindt, flayed the skin off a mortal woman who’d rejected him at a tavern.

Ryany Ashtod, another Dindt, killed a mortal family in the saffron fields of Peria.

Three Mera Diminished—Maxilla Sonuaria, Nicata Eulinari, and Lanicon Laniconia—burned down a village just because it was there. Six people died.

A pack of rowdy gods on holiday terrorized, tortured, and raped mortal women over the course of three dawns.

A few of these losers had even claimed under oath that they were doing my bidding.

But even on my worst days, I never tolerated rapists, and Elyn actually had to direct the Raqiel to keep me from beheading the leader of that assorted pack of evil.

“They have been moved to cells at the Abbey of Threka Realm,” Elyn says. “We don’t know enough about the Weapon to guarantee those prisoners’ survival here. This may be a jail, but we aren’t cruel.”

“I’d be okay with leaving the rapists down here,” I say.

Elyn turns to grin at me. “As the Adjudicator, maybe I’ll take the Lady’s recommendations once— if- —she’s reinstated and bring them back.” I manage a small smile in return.

We stop at the end of the corridor and turn toward the only occupied cell in the dungeon.

“You have a visitor,” Elyn announces to the darkness.

Nausea—the first sign of Miasma—coils in my belly once again, but this feels different than the motion sickness I’d finally recovered from.

This nausea feels like tiny, shrimp-like creatures swirling around my guts and chomping away at me with razor-like teeth.

Yes, this queasiness bites. As I tiptoe closer to the cell, my skin pebbles from the cold.

In this darkest darkness, a weak glow thrums from my pendant.