Page 54 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

There’s no one here.

Just me and a sea of sand.

Ancress Tisen is nowhere to be found, nor any other woman who could’ve sounded like her. Just rocks and dirt and wind.

I’m alone.

A sandstorm brews on the horizon, rushing closer to me…closer… I lift my chin, unafraid.

The sand melts, and Zephar Itikin strides toward me.

His smile is too wide and doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Dark, empty eyes without empathy, with no trace of the person they once belonged to.

His eyes have seen too much, and he’s felt too little.

There is no warmth in them, no spark of recognition—only the cold, hollow gaze of a man transformed into something else, into someone else .

His leather tunic and breeches fit like a second skin. His twin blades—forged of catherite—rest across his back, their hilts gleaming faintly in the dying light. Zephar embodies control and discipline, but a dangerous emptiness clings to him now. He keeps smiling at me.

I wait to meet my newest ex-boyfriend.

“Don’t we need to leave for the Sea of Devour?” he asks, grinning strangely.

“What are you doing here, Zephar?” I ask.

He cocks his head. “Looking for you, Beloved.”

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” I lift my hand to preempt his response. “Of course you think I’m stupid, and you always have. For so long, I was stupid. Not anymore. Today is a new day, a new dawn.”

He shakes his head in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“How did you know that I was here?” I ask. “At this random point in the desert?”

“Does it matter? I’m here now.” He sighs and rolls his eyes. “What are we bickering about this time?”

“Orewid Rolse is a Crusader,” I say, “and you’re conspiring with him to kill me, Beloved . That’s what we’re bickering about this time . ”

His expression remains neutral. “Then you know why I’m here.”

“No,” I say, “I’ve only heard rumors, but you have said nothing to me directly. I can’t wait to learn why I must die—and why you must be the one to kill me.”

Zephar’s smirk fades.

“While I was away from you, I…” I swallow and continue. “I found companionship with someone else.”

He doesn’t react.

I want him to react, so I take a step toward him and say, cruelly, “I fucked Jadon Rrivae Wake. Last season and then two nights ago. I regret neither occasion.”

His cheeks burn bright as he clenches his jaw.

I cock my head. “Now. Tell me all that you’ve wanted to say but have only whispered behind my back.”

“For Vallendor Realm to reach its true potential,” Zephar finally replies, his voice hard, “you must no longer be its Grand Defender.”

“You question my leadership, then?”

“Your leadership is simply a symptom of the larger disease,” he says. “Your father, Izariel—”

“You will respect your lord’s name,” I snap, my words hot enough to gather the storm clouds now forming above us.

Zephar’s eyes flare, but he waits, inhaling and exhaling.

He squares his shoulders, then says, “We no longer recognize his position in our order. Izariel broke his vow to his order when he sought companionship within another order, a weaker order, and compounded his offense by conceiving a daughter.”

“Me,” I say, bristling. “So?”

“Only Mera can be defenders and destroyers,” he says.

“My mixed blood is no fault of my own—”

“I never claimed it was.”

“And I’ve proven myself to be Mera—”

He snorts and rolls his eyes. “You’re here because you were given Vallendor as Izariel’s daughter.”

“And you were my second because you’re the son of Bezeph Itikin, my father’s old friend, and because he and your mother wanted me to be your bride.”

Bezeph, a former captain, had waged war beside my father since their first campaign.

They’d been best friends until Bezeph’s marriage to Mablinel, a Mera socialite whose family paid others to fulfill their required service.

Once Father started to secretly see my mother, Mablinel conspired to expose their relationship.

That is, until Father joined the Council of High Orders.

Then she fostered the friendship and eventual courtship between Zephar and me and even allowed her daughter, Naelah, to fight alongside us.

Naelah is no more, and Zephar remains a prisoner on the realm that he’d been assigned to protect with me.

“What did Orewid Rolse promise you and the other Diminished?” I ask.

Zephar doesn’t answer.

“Will you fight with me against Danar Rrivae?”

He laughs but doesn’t say “yes” or “no.”

“Zephar,” I say, “he is the common threat right now. Can’t you put aside this stupid purification test in the face of the danger we’re in?”

He folds his arms and lowers his chin to his chest.

“Orewid Rolse does this, Zee,” I say. “He stirs up Mera like you who have otherwise been disciplined, and he appeals to your anger and desire to strike back. He blames those of us with the blood of other orders for your station in life, and you believe him. There are so many Mera in jail or wandering Anathema because of this man, someone who’s never been jailed or punished in any way. ”

Still no response from my former lover.

“I’ve seen the living-dead Mera,” I say. “Are you in favor of these abominations?”

“Mera warriors stronger than even you?” he asks. “Do you expect me to say no to that?”

“Are your followers interested in being living-dead?” I ask. “Do they get to choose?”

He squints at me.

“Orewid Rolse won’t just stop at your fighters,” I say.

“Soon, it will be your turn to die and be returned to walk again. Is that what you want? You’d be the most powerful dead man on Vallendor.

When I kill you, do you want me to bring you back, not as Zephar Itikin but as something you’re not?

Do you aspire to become a diminished Diminished? ”

He snorts again and lets his gaze wander the red sands. “Anything else?”

“You continue this way,” I say, “and you, too, will be punished. You will be destroyed. The Adjudicator will see to it—and so will the Council. So will my father. So will I.”

He swallows, and his jaw tightens. Fear lights his eyes for a moment, but then he narrows his eyes and nods. Without a word, he turns back to the desert and strides into the storm of red sand.

…

My heart hurts.

I’ve lost him. His sword. His love.

My chest feels numb; all of me feels numb. Every time I take a breath, something inside of me rips and fills my eyes with water.

Moths flutter around me as I Spryte to the Abbey of Mount Devour. Though their numbers have dwindled, the moths that remain brush their wings across my cheeks before they depart. They are a soft and tender reminder that delicate things still exist here.

Elyn paces outside the Abbey of Mount Devour, her eyes scanning the horizon. Justice glints from the scabbard on her back. When she spots me, her manic eyes soften. “You’re here.” Her shoulders droop with relief.

But then she frowns as she takes in my crumbling breastplate. “I thought you were changing armor?”

I push my hand through my unraveling braid. “The plans have changed some.”

The wind howls, and the long grass and bluebells surrounding the abbey tremble. Long ago, my mother told me that winds are the people’s desperate prayers to the gods. Who do desperate gods pray to?

Two dawns have come and gone since I was last at the abbey. From the outside, this building rises like a spire from the crest of the mountain, a fortress overlooking a turbulent realm. But the abbey has become a mausoleum.

The sky above us churns with gold-and-algae-green light, swirling like oil on water, a sick sky.

“You find Jadon?” I ask Elyn.

She shakes her head. “You talk to Zephar?”

Hands clammy and lungs tight, I tell her about Zephar, the Crusaders, and the living-dead Mera.

“The Eserime are being forced to become resurrectors,” I say, shaking my head.

“I saw them at the Sanctum: dead-eyed, mottle-skinned Diminished. Those fiery crossed swords have been branded onto their chests.”

Imlodel and Dayjah both have Yeaden blood, and they’d stood in my tent… dead.

Elyn gasps. “How did they learn…? Are they working with Danar Rrivae?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. But someone’s read the Librum Esoterica— ”

“Or they have some other book that we don’t know about,” she suggests.

“The Eserime working as resurrectors,” I whisper.

“Who thought of that?” Elyn asks as we hurry down the long hallway.

“Did I unknowingly recruit them to my team?” I wonder.

I’ll tear it down, rebuild it, and even bring your lost ones back to life, just believe in me.

“Did I do this, not realizing there could be disastrous consequences? Or did I recruit them, knowing full well the dangers but charging ahead anyway…?” Even as I walk, I squeeze the bridge of my nose, trying to remember…

“Kai,” Elyn says, shaking her head, “I’m telling you: the Eserime coming here to work with Mera like this? It wasn’t your idea.”

“It must have been Zephar’s idea, then.” My heart hurts even more.

Zephar had already resented me: Orewid Rolse just gave him a direction, and the powerful imagery of fiery crossed swords to symbolize his hatred. Will he choose to hide his Mera markings, the ones he’s so proud of, beneath those branded swords?

“Zephar also knew about Jadon and me,” I say as we reach the now-abandoned great hall. “So I confessed to him. That’s been fueling his animosity, too. To think that loving him was easy, once upon a time.

“Maybe I couldn’t remember that I loved Zephar because deep in my heart, I knew that he didn’t love me. I don’t know what I could’ve done to prevent this. I should’ve paid more attention…”

“This isn’t your fault, Kai,” Elyn says. “Don’t justify his hatred and violence because he can’t get over you choosing someone else—”

“This is more than jealousy,” I say, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“You’re right,” she says. “This is pure…”

“Hatred.”