Page 32 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

I hop out of bed. “What’s happening?”

How long have I been asleep? Waking up from my dream feels like bursting up from the depths of the coldest lake.

“You will not replace us!” a man shouts.

“Renrians eat babies!” a woman screams.

Neither asshole sounds like they’re outside. They sound close. Very close.

Philia shouts, “They got in!” She sees my bed and its rumpled sheets before looking back at me and frowning. “Were you sleeping ?”

My cheeks burn. I don’t answer her question as I shove my feet back into my tight boots .

“That’s how they broke in,” Philia says. “Because you…you were asleep.”

I mutter, “Yeah,” and buckle my greaves around my calves. I throw a quick look at the young woman now judging me in the doorway.

She’s dressed in black breeches, boots, and a long-sleeve tunic. Traveling clothes. She carries a backpack on her shoulder as well as a golden bow and a quiver of arrows, a gift from the Renrians.

“Philia,” I say, “I don’t think you should come—”

“Kill the redhead!” a man screams.

“She’s unnatural,” a woman shouts.

Never mind.

Philia takes a deep whiff of air. “Oh, no.”

I sniff, too, and hurry over to look out the window. “What did these idiots set on fire?”

Down below, a mob wielding swords, pikes, and torches crowds the walkway in front of the Broken Hammer’s porch. That effigy of me is now fully engulfed in flames. No more budget burning.

“You were sleeping?” Philia asks again, her face patchy-red, her eyes bright with tears.

I stop in my step and hold out my arms. “I’m sorry, okay?

I fucked up, and I feel like shit.” I sigh heavily, then rub my face, wincing at the sting of my peeling skin.

I pull on my scabbard heavy with Justice and Fury and twirl Tempest around my fingers before slipping the dagger into my ankle sheath.

My stomach growls as I check my armor once more—the dark gray is nearly invisible in this dim light.

“Did I eat?” I ask Philia as I grab the pack holding the Librum Esoterica from the bed.

She pauses and thinks. Then: “No. Your plate is still on the table downstairs, untouched.”

That’s right. I came up to wash and—

“This is new.” Philia taps the handle of Elyn’s surrendered sword. “Ouch.” She snatches back her now-red and smoking fingers.

“Never touch the weapon of an immortal.” I wrap my hand around Philia’s fingers. Her injury tugs against my skin like a fish caught on a line. Once I heal her, I release her hand and nod at the bow on her back. “You sure about this?”

She nods as she gapes at her healthy fingers.

“The Lady isn’t real!” comes the shouting from outside.

“Maelstrom is hate!”

“Praise his holy name!”

Praise whose holy name?

Philia and I run down the hallway and down the stairs.

Separi, dressed in a full set of rose-gold luclite armor, stands at the inn’s entryway. She holds out her hands and tries to appeal to the mob for peace.

Her brother, Vinasa, stands beside her. “Please,” he says, the strain evident even in his calm, deep voice, “this is not the way.” He’s twisted his many braids into one thick ponytail; if he’s the same stealthy fighter he was during the Great War, a stiletto hides in that braid, ready to slash.

Back in the sitting room, Ridget and the other Renrians adjust their white robes. Woven with luclite, these garments look like the rays of a daystar at dawn. The Renrians’ staffs hum and crackle with violet energy.

I fell asleep . Tears sting my eyes at the thought of what they’ve faced without me.

Separi looks back over her shoulder. She sees me, and her face relaxes, relieved.

Ridget hurries over to me, her eyes narrowed.

“They knocked long enough to find a way,” I say to her. “I should’ve stopped them instead of…” There are too many gruesome possibilities, so I merely say, “I’m sorry.”

Ridget shakes her head. “You and I both know that Separi would’ve talked you out of fighting. I did, too, but not out of any mercy. I just didn’t think these people were smart enough to find a way past our enchantments. Separi, though, relies on mercy like it’s air.

“I want all of this hatred to stop, but I think they’ll only stop once heads roll through the streets and their blood soaks the ground.” She hands me a wrapped bundle of food. “For your trip. Remember to eat.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I turn to Philia and say, “If we are separated, meet me at that flat rock outside of town, where we saw that bloody spy.”

Philia nods. “Yes, I remember it.”

On our last trek to Caburh, a traveler had passed us wearing a helmet too small for his head and a leather tunic caked in dried blood. Later, we learned that he was one of Gileon Wake’s spies.

I breathe a heavy sigh and march over to the doorway. The town stinks of fire, tar, and the musk of the frightened and the rage-filled.

I touch the small of Separi’s back— I’m here —and nod to Vinasa. I stand between them as the crowd roars.

“False god!”

“Kill Maelstrom!”

“Rip her apart!”

“Hear me now!” I shout to the amber-glowing crowd, the strength of my voice cracking the cobblestone streets beneath our feet.

This Kai-quake causes the commotion to dim.

“I’m leaving now. Thank you for your… enthusiastic farewells .

” Then I step down off the porch, knowing that I’m exiting Caburh far from peacefully.

I scan the crowds but don’t see Jamart and Lively.

I don’t see the Dashmala, Sinth, either.

What I do see alarms me as much as the absence of those who have been killed.

Poisons cascade like waterfalls from the heads and hearts of the angry people calling for my death, and their diseased organs are moments from bursting. Their teeth cling to rotten gums like beads of water to a melting icicle. This is all Jadon’s handiwork.

“You will die this morning,” a man wearing a red wool cap shouts.

“You’re a perversion, a disgrace!” A woman spits at my feet.

I crinkle my nose at the phlegm on the toe of my boot.

Philia shrieks, “Kai!”

I look up in time to see a man lunging at me with his ax held high.

Shit! I kick him in the chest. He stumbles back, resets, and rages forward again.

I kick him a second time, knocking him off-balance, before yanking his ax from his hand. I slap his face so hard that he hits the ground. One of his rotted teeth comes loose. I straddle him and raise my fist to punch—

“Defender!” Separi shouts.

I freeze right before my hand lands on the man’s windpipe.

Another man leaps onto the porch with a howl, brandishing his broadsword.

Vinasa screams, clutching his belly and the sword now impaled there. Blood gurgles from his lips. Separi shouts, “Vin!” and rushes over to him.

Another man leaps at Separi, his spiked club ready to beat her down. I throw Ax-Man’s hatchet at the club-wielder, and it slams into his forehead.

Separi reaches her brother in time to catch him before he hits the ground.

Someone else entangles the man who killed the Renrian in a web of lavender lightning.

I ram Tempest into the gut of a woman swinging a meat cleaver at me. Another woman tries it with a hoe, but that’s my trick; her blood soon wets Tempest’s blade.

The sea of angry city-folk swells and roars with wild energy, and the bloodthirsty tide rolls toward us.

Philia’s first golden arrow sinks into the face of a man an arm’s length away from me.

Separi hoists a woman from the ground and thrusts her skyward on the end of her staff. Another wreath of crackling lavender coils around a woman’s throat, and her skin turns purple as she struggles to breathe.

I pull Justice from my back, ready to dispense it.

These people aren’t fighting me because I stole their houses or their goats.

They aren’t rebelling because I’ve forced them to bow and worship me.

No, they’re fueled by hatred and distrust and belief in a strange new god.

They’ll kill not only me, but Philia and the Renrians, too, if I let them.

Justice lands her first kill. But tides of hatred bear more angry townspeople toward us. They fight like we stole something of value from them, like their very lives depend on killing us.

I can’t hear myself think over their cries and curses nor can I see clearly, not with all the sizzling lavender light glinting off metal, blood, and stone.

“You’re dying, bitch!” A man wielding two curved swords rushes toward me.

I can barely see him through the curls melting into my face. I slide Justice into his gut and push my hair from my eyes. Then I shout, “Enough!”

The ground quakes again.

“Enough!”

Everyone, including the Renrians, freezes. Two men hold torches to the foundation of the inn, which starts to burn.

I thrust my hands at them, blowing out their torches with a gust of wind, and then I send the arsonists flying into the building next door with a violent blast. I throw a ball of fire at that storefront, followed by another fireball, and another and another…

“Lady,” Separi shouts. The blood of her enemies and her brother streaks her breastplate. The sight stays my desire for destruction. I nod to Separi and turn to the mob.

“Hear me now! I don’t know who or what you believe in now, but I don’t need you to believe in me to save you or to destroy you.

I can destroy you. Your homes, your shops, your lives—” I lift my right hand, and fire swirls from one finger to the next.

“I can become the maelstrom you call me. Leave, now, and do not test me further.”

A little girl with messy blue ponytails scampers from behind the crates closest to the fire.

She hides behind the skirts of the woman holding a battle-ax, the same woman who’d shouted just moments ago, “Kill the dirty whore and rape her corpse.” Standing with them is Dalbald, the boy with the bow, my would-be assassin.

A sour-faced Renrian man holding a sword made of luclite stands behind this woman, the girl, and Dalbald.

Another young boy peers at me from beneath a cart, and other faces peek from windows that look down upon this square: young mothers nursing infants, Renrians holding frightened children. Elderly, stooped Renrians whom I’ve known since Vallendor’s creation.

If I destroy Caburh— burn this place down to new dirt —I raze a town founded by the forebears of Veril Bairnell and Separi Eleweg. I would destroy a hub of industry and alchemy, of thought and education, a town polluted by outsiders who came and saw its greatness and claimed it for themselves.

I would destroy Nosirest, now named Caburh because of Leward Caburh’s lies and violence.

I can’t destroy this town, the home of those I love. Nor can I kill those who harbor hatred against those I love.

The angry townspeople closest to me retreat, their gazes still fixed on the burning men who attempted to destroy the Broken Hammer on my watch.

“Loyal Renrians of this city,” I shout, “hear me now. In the name of the gods who watch from above, I shield you with eternal love, with my sword and my light. I cast my protection upon you so that nothing else will harm you in this town. You shall no longer fear any outsiders’ blade.”

A glimmering sheen of bloodred-and-gold light envelops each Renrian, who bow their heads in reverence. I’m relieved that it works, that my gift, this aura of protection, has been restored to me by my father.

I point at the remaining humans who still simmer with hate. “By seven dawns from now, you must leave this town. If you refuse, I’ll return and remove you myself. Go forth and find your own space, your own path to prosperity that does not exploit the work of the Renrians.”

“And where do we go?” a woman in the crowd shouts.

“I don’t know or care,” I say, “but you gotta leave.”

The shouting resumes at my pronouncement, and a man dares to draw his sword.

With a burst of wind, I send him sprawling. Then I hurl a ball of lightning just inches away from his body. The ground cracks open, knocking everyone off their feet. My amulet glows so hot that everyone shields their eyes from its blinding light.

“Do you not hear me?” I ask. “I will kill you . This new god you worship doesn’t care that you will die by my hand, that you are only spared today because I’m not the Maelstrom you fear.”

I gaze at the sky, now orange and red in the early dawn. “You all have a choice to make: Do you choose to live? Or will you die for your unworthy god?”