Page 5 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)
Tears burn in my throat—the monsters came because I left this place. Because of that, this infant has no parents, and now, this young mother has yet another mouth to feed.
“I will fix this,” I say, cupping the woman’s cheeks in my hands. “This is my promise to you, to Nenefer and Tymy, too.” Her husband, Samose, lies in the dirt just steps away, lightless.
The work has started, and my promise soon manifests in sparkling water bubbling from new holes dug into the dried gully. Charred date palms burst with green fronds and plump fruit. The Eserime are doing what Supreme created their order to do: heal the land.
Villagers blue with life congregate around an altar just placed in the city square. Atop the altar, an alabaster statue of a woman with wavy hair holds a ball of light in her left hand and a sword in her right. The engraved plaque at its base reads, Celestial, Our Lady of Might and Life .
Zephar cocks his head and stares at me. “So… What happened?”
I take a deep breath and slowly exhale. Then I tell him almost everything—from being arrested in Maford and Veril Bairnell’s death to confronting Elyn Fynal and Danar Rrivae at the Sea of Devour.
“And I’m going back to Mount Devour,” I say, “and this time, I’m reaching the abbey and I’ll be demanding an audience with the Council of High Orders—”
“To reinstate—?”
“Everything.”
“Including Spryte? Because we can’t do our jobs if we can only move one step at a time.”
“Agreed.” I tap my amulet. “And I want this back with its full powers.”
“Or?”
“There is no ‘or.’ I need to do what I’m put here to do.”
“That’s right.” He grins and nods. “Destroy and rebuild Vallendor our way.”
I stop mid-step, crinkling my brows. “Actually, that’s not what I mean. I’m not here to destroy, at least not in the way—”
“Celestial!” More people arrive, their arms filled with baskets of dates, bottles of wine, breads, quilts, jars of honey, and gold coins. They place all of this before the altar. In their windows, doors, and posts, they drape colorful moth tapestries weaved in gold-and-red threads.
Zephar says, “Come,” and takes my hand again.
“But I need to get back,” I say, resisting. “There’s no—”
“Ssh. You just got here,” he says.
The massive sandstone walls of the Temple of Celestial stand, with each tiered level featuring heavenly and realm-bound scenes depicting both my light piercing the dark sky and my might as my sword lifts in battle.
Might and Life.
The grand hall boasts high ceilings and is lined with stone columns that stretch toward those ceilings like a forest of marble oak trees.
Flickering torches illuminate murals depicting legends—from the creation of Vallendor Realm and the battles Celestial waged to protect this world, to paintings of Zephar and me embracing, our immortal love rendered in crimson-and-gold paint.
Another alabaster statue of my likeness stands at the front of the sanctuary. Her arms are spread—she is the welcoming mother ready to provide safety, comfort, and moments of respite.
The Sisters of the Dusky Hills stand at the rear of the sanctuary and sing a new song.
In battles fierce, where shadows lie,
You rise, oh Xisi, Warrior high.
With strength unmatched, your blades ablaze
Through every storm, you lead our way.
I would call Zephar by that name, Xisi, and most of those times, I’d be naked, and his hands would be lost in my hair.
The daystar moves to the western skies.
I need to return to the abbey.
“We need to talk,” I tell Zephar.
He leads me to the Howling Wolf Inn, its wooden sign painted with a black wolf with jaws agape.
The inn stands two stories tall, and crushed date pits cover the floor of the sitting room.
I’d held court in this inn, taking meals with the farmers or the family heads or even the young people tapped as future leaders.
I’d told them stories about the ways of other cities—their successes and failures.
I’d offered lessons on diplomacy and conflict resolution.
But then tables of fifty people became twenty people, became five, and then no one came except for the innkeeper and his wife.
Now, that leather-faced innkeeper, Wolda, bows as his tiny wife, Sabenn, rushes behind Zephar and me with plates of date cakes, two glasses, and a pitcher of something dark and fruit-scented.
Zephar and I settle on a patio that overlooks the town, now being made perfect by the Eserime and Mera.
I drop my cape, unbuckle and peel off my breastplate, greaves, and vambraces.
I pull off my tunic, and now I’m standing in just my bandeau and leather breeches.
I let my head fall back as light from the daystar nourishes my skin.
Feels like freedom and victory and fucking, and I never want to wear armor again.
Zephar’s eyes sweep across my body, and he watches my hands rub life into skin that hadn’t felt light like this since last spring. “You leave me breathless,” he whispers.
My head rolls to the side, light-drunk. “Prove it.”
“You want me to die for you?” he asks, biting his lower lip.
I meet his gaze. “Umhmm.”
“I will. Tonight. Little deaths, over and over again.”
I raise my eyebrows. “It’s like that?”
“It’s been that, love. Since last spring.”
My smile wants to die, but I force it to remain on my lips. I didn’t deny myself the pleasure of Jadon’s touch, but how the fuck was I supposed to know ?
Zephar lifts his full glass. “To finding our way back.”
Yes.
The beverage tastes of fermented figs and apples, and the honeycakes taste more luscious than any I’ve eaten since waking up in that forest outside of Maford.
“So what do we need to talk about?” he asks.
“Even though I withdrew my favor from Gasho,” I say, “I didn’t leave them altogether vulnerable. You said the guards are dead. All of them?”
“I dissolved the company with your permission because Gasho forgot,” Zephar says, shrugging.
“Yes, the otherworldly played a role in destroying the city, but the Gashoans are also at fault. They mistook their success as something they did. They believed that it was their genius that led them to create this perfect place, that their mere imaginations invented ways to irrigate their crops and harness the daystar’s power.
They believed that we , the gods, were only here to ensure that their dates ripened, that their goats made milk, that we didn’t give them everything they had.
“And so they stopped praying to us. They stopped asking for advice and giving thanks. They knew what they wanted, and they knew what they were doing, and they didn’t need us and so we, the gods , said, ‘Fuck it.’”
He grins as he lifts his glass. “Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t take shit like that well.” Zephar drains his wine. “The otherworldly came to remind them that they are masters of shit . They did call upon us for help, in the end, while you were away.”
“So…you didn’t answer the call?” I ask, squinting at him.
“Your instructions were, and I quote…” He dramatically clears his throat. “‘Fuck these people and all this fucking sand, they can kiss my sparkly ass, and Zee, don’t you dare help them without an okay from me.’” He pauses, then adds, “But you moved your head a lot more when you said it.”
Shit, Kai. I stare at my glass of wine, unable to drink on my suddenly sour stomach. I couldn’t have meant that. How could I say those things after I’d blessed all those babies and loved all those mothers and the Sisters and the old people? Today’s attack happened because I…because I…
Because I was an asshole.
Zephar pours himself more wine. “And here we are, together again. We can pick up where we left off. I’m thinking Shelezadd, north of here. They call it the ‘city of dawn,’ but there, too, they’ve turned it into a shithole.”
As Zephar describes the tar-stained town now overrun by bandits and rapists, my mind wanders.
I will have to tell him that I didn’t come back to Gasho to destroy it or any other town.
No, I’m here to save my people and Vallendor from Danar Rrivae.
But if I’m to do that, I must first return to Mount Devour and demand the restoration of my powers.
This realm—from the babies to the battabies—matters to me.
Even in their imperfection, they deserve to not just survive, but to thrive.
“…because I’m far behind in destroying where my father was at my age,” Zephar is saying now, tapping bare skin where a realm’s symbol should be.
Zephar’s markings mean less to me now—the Kai from before would’ve cared about his ink as well as her own.
Now, though, Vallendor must be restored and protected from the traitor at all costs.
No more orphans. No more invasions. Zephar may bristle hearing this at first, but he will understand.
And he will stay with me until the end, and then, if he wants, he can leave Vallendor to destroy the truly fucked-up realms like Gropool, Myala, and Alex.
He can earn so many tattoos that he’ll run out of space on his beautiful body.
There are 67,000 known realms across the Aetherium, and a number of them can go.
But Vallendor is mine.