Page 36 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

Elyn can’t Spryte us all to Brithellum.

“I thought you were all-powerful,” Jadon quips.

The Adjudicator cocks an eyebrow. “I am, but one in your party wouldn’t survive being folded through time and space right now.”

We all peer at Philia’s injured leg, which remains the color of cornsilk.

“We need a moment anyway, to figure out…” I press my fingers against my temples. “To figure out any semblance of a plan and prepare for what comes next.”

Elyn can return the horses to their stalls in Caburh. I offer them apples and my thanks for their swiftness and loyalty.

I beckon Elyn to walk with me. Once we’re out of earshot of the others, I touch her elbow and whisper, “Thank you.”

She cocks her head and regards me with those gold eyes. “For?”

“Healing me back in Fihel.” I shake my head and stare out at the forest. “I’ve never…”

Tasted so much of my blood. Been in that much pain. Felt so weak during a fight.

I swallow. My mouth still tastes like old coins. “You helped me out, and I appreciate it.”

She nods. “I’ll be back.” Before I can take another breath, Elyn has Spryted to Caburh with the horses and returned holding a knapsack.

“The family sends their love,” Elyn tells Separi. “And they told me to let you know that Vinasa will receive proper rites. And Ridget also said that you must braid the Lady’s hair in her stead. She said to use this—”

Elyn pulls out a skein of rose-gold luclite thread, a comb, and a tin of peppermint oil. “She says to take great care, as Kai is tender-headed.” Elyn pauses. “You all do hair, too?”

Jadon huffs, his agitation palpable. “Can we get going—?”

Elyn holds up her hand. She stares at Separi and awaits an answer.

Separi takes the supplies. “Yes, we do hair. Would the Adjudicator like me to?” The Renrian eyes Elyn’s frizzy white braid.

Elyn’s eyes widen. “Could you? And do something new? I’ve had this braid a long time.”

I laugh and weave my arm through Philia’s. After the battle against the Devourers, we need the comfort, especially as the realm remains on the brink of destruction.

Little time passes, though, before our moods shift back to somber. Reality bites.

A jailer overseeing her prisoner, Elyn doesn’t talk much as Jadon marches beside her.

The cool forest air flares with heat as Jadon follows several paces behind me.

Blue jays shriek, “Lady!” from their nests in threadbare trees. Orange-and-pink butterflies flit over sunflowers that lift their parched heads as I pass. The hard-packed earth turns soft under my boots.

But then the birdsong falls silent as the remaining leaves wither all at once on the trees, their branches turning brittle and snapping, sending those nests tumbling to the ground.

The butterflies’ wings stiffen into dull crystal, and they fall from the sky to their deaths, dashed against now-dead sunflowers.

Burned seeds tumble onto the desiccated earth.

It’s as though I was never here.

It’s him. Jadon. Miasma.

What a cruel trick. My arrival brought the promise of life, only to be snuffed out by the weapon passing through twenty paces behind.

“Why don’t we walk behind him?” Philia asks. “That way, you’d heal everything he’s killing.”

“We’d be in Miasma’s wake,” Separi says, shaking her head.

“You’re still healing from the burnu attack,” I say. “You’d be walking into certain death even if we waited for the wind to weaken his power. Even the wind dies when he meets it.”

Philia’s face crumples as she looks back at her old friend. “Poor thing.”

Jadon, his eyes bright with regret, offers her a sad smile. He knows he’s death. Beautiful death.

Soft rain soon falls through the pines and cedars. I breathe in the scent of wet, living wood.

Separi chews on licorice root as she tells tales of her days as a young and dashing Renrian.

Once, she’d enchanted an abandoned chest of geld to resemble a pile of horse dung.

“The bandits didn’t know what to do,” she says.

“It looked like shit, but I’d forgotten to add flies, and there was no smell. ”

“So, did they believe you?” I ask, letting laughter bubble out of the tension of my throat.

“I convinced them that the horse that left this shit pile was on a special diet developed by the elves of Itheria.” She blinks at me. “There are no elves of Itheria. There is no Itheria.”

…

Once again, we make two camps, with Elyn and Jadon’s camp downwind.

The pine needles are cushion-soft under my tired feet.

I sit between Separi’s knees as she washes and oils my hair and then detangles my curls with the wide-toothed comb.

Then she weaves those luclite threads into my braids.

Under her ministrations, my neck feels strong, and my mind stops racing.

I feel less prickly as I watch the fire glow orange against the dark sky.

“How can I feel… comfort right now?” I whisper to Separi. “Especially with Elyn and Jadon, who both betrayed me, just a stone’s throw away?”

“Anyone can break your heart, Lady,” says Separi. “Anyone can disappoint you. It’s in your power, though, to figure out who you’ll hurt for.”

I silently accept a dinner plate of ham and potatoes with leeks and long beans from Philia. The ham tastes gamey, and the potatoes taste like dirt. I force myself to swallow the few bites, as I know I need the strength.

Separi’s lavender eyes soften, and she chuckles softly. “You’re not eating, Lady. Would you like Philia to prepare something else?” She tugs at the fox amulet hanging from her neck.

I take her hand. “It’s not that I’m not hungry. It’s just that…” I bite my lip. “I’m changing, Separi. I feel it. We need to get to Brithellum soon. And we will.”

After dinner, I grab my satchel and wander away to survey Vallendor from a higher vantage point.

I follow a drying brook upstream, where eventually it swells and brightens with silver fish darting through its waters.

Bees hover over night-blooming jasmine and tuberoses.

Though Jadon has walked behind me, destroying all that I’d revived, for these few moments, I witness what can be, what will be if I kill Danar Rrivae.

The traitor. But he hadn’t been the only one to rebel.

We were all charged with watching over our mortals, and some grew bored with tending perfect worlds like this meadow and this brook.

They enjoyed the destruction of a world too much or despised the realms they’d discovered.

They started whispering into mortal ears, tempting them to fight, to steal, to make chaos in the quiet.

But who’d grow bored of meadows and brooks like these?

Who could despise beauty, truth, good health, and riches beyond geld?

Those who wanted disruption corrupted the realms with otherworldly, with sickness, with polluted waters and dying animals.

They loathed Supreme, and they gained strength through their chaos and destruction.

They won’t stop, not until every realm is destroyed—even if I succeed in killing Danar Rrivae.

I peel my armor off, and my stinging skin feels like it has also peeled away in strips. I step into the cold waters of the brook and sigh with relief as I apply soothing peppermint oil. Clean and scented, I wash my clothes, then twist the towel that Separi brought with her around me.

The trill of a fife drifts from the camp below. Veril! My heart leaps, but then I remember: my counselor and friend has moved on.

“Hey.” Jadon smiles at me from his spot near a small waterfall—the stream has slowed to a trickle even though it was flowing just moments before his arrival. But he looks lovely with his damp hair and clean-shaven face. “You’re thinking too loud,” he says.

I snort.

He walks toward me but stops a few paces away. “May I?”

Wary, I shrug and say, “Maybe.” I sit up straight as though good posture will block Miasma.

Though I can feel the trouble he brings, I want to be near him again. He risked his life for us and fought beside me again, and the courage he showed melts most of my hatred.

“I won’t stay long—I know what I am.” He sits beside me. He takes my hand and brushes my knuckles over his cheeks. “Your skin-…”

“I know.” I blush, and the damaged parts of my face burn.

Jadon’s gaze roams my neck. His eyes linger.

“There, too?” I ask, my fingers finding a patch along the curve of my neck.

He nods.

“Fuck,” I say and tug at that unsightly flap in futility.

Jadon keeps staring at my neck.

I point to a far-off tree. “Hey! Look over there.”

He laughs.

I don’t. I fight off sudden tears.

“You smell good,” he says.

It’s up to me to figure out who I’ll hurt for. But the ache along my thighs and hips isn’t from pain.

I squeeze his hand.

We sit there, in the silence.

“I’m terrified, Kai,” he whispers, at last. “I’ve never admitted my fear to anyone except you. At the end of all of this, where will you be? And what about me?”

I can’t make promises. Even if I knew we would both survive, I don’t know what comes next. “If we destroy TERROR and WISDOM,” I say, “that will help us destroy him—”

“But destroying my father…”

Destroys Jadon.

We stare out at the valley, its carpet of green grass speckled with wildflowers.

He says, “Back when we fought those… What were they?”

“I call them Devourers,” I say.

He nods. “Would you have turned me over to him?”

I don’t look at him. “I have to save this realm at all costs.” My words hang heavy between us, and I wonder if Jadon truly understands what they mean.

Jadon is not burdened with the job of saving anything.

Even the grass beneath him dies, turning brittle and brown as if scorched by fire.

Death spreads, clawing through the earth until it reaches me.

A chill seeps into my skin, and the sickness stops with me.

If I wasn’t sitting here, Miasma would’ve continued to creep on… devouring .

“You see it, don’t you?” Jadon raises his marked right hand, and then his left. “Everywhere I go, it follows. The land feels the death that I carry.”

I nod.