Page 58 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

Jadon squints as though he can barely see me.

His color-shifting eyes are now bloodshot slits.

Other than the uncertainty in his gaze, he looks as though he already owns more than half of this damned realm.

He’s grown since I saw him last: he’s as tall as the shortest Mera warrior now, and his cap-sleeved leather tunic and breeches are tighter on his muscular frame.

His thick hair looks like he was carried here by the wind.

The damning marking has spread past his forearm, now nearly at his shoulder, and it glows on this dawn like a newly created realm.

His skin has deepened to the light tans of a peeling eucalyptus tree.

He smells of smoke and sweat, and his voice crackles like flame in my direction. And then he smiles.

Trouble has found me.

My stomach twists, and saliva fills my mouth.

The protective shield that Elyn wrapped around me back on the night the abbey fell has dissolved. Now, the power that Jadon carries in his mere existence smothers me.

“I’m not sitting, I’m kneeling,” I say, crawling away from the slain windwolves and staggering to my feet. “Do I look like the type to surrender?”

Jadon chuckles and nods toward the dead otherworldly. “You didn’t look like you were having fun.” He pauses, and his smile broadens. “Was it something they said? Or…” He cocks his head, and his gaze drops to my hand. “Is it because you’re no longer wielding my gift? Where’s Fury, my love?”

My love?

I say nothing and take a step away from him.

My thoughts grow foggy, and I can’t tell if that is the effect of my own confusion or the insidious, creeping Miasma.

The air around me feels heavy, pulsing against my chest and back like a living thing.

My skin is damp and sweaty, my underarms sticky.

The remaining pieces of armor that I still wear creak with every breath I take, those once-sturdy plates barely protecting me as they once did.

A sudden, biting draft near my hipbone reveals a new breach that appeared when I killed the windwolves.

Just as I feared, bruises have spread across my side. The dull throb in my ribcage and the pain in my lower back are more than just external damage—death seizes me from my very core, just like the Voidful who’d surrounded the Broken Hammer. Apples rot first from the inside.

Jadon’s blue and lavender eyes sparkle, and his smile becomes more of a sneer.

“I didn’t expect to find you here alone, Kai, not with only two dawns left.

” He takes a step toward me, closing the gap between us.

“We need to talk.” He points to my new sword.

“As beautiful and as powerful as she looks, you might as well put her away. You can’t kill me—”

“Yet.” I swallow the bile now burning up my throat. “And I’d rather not put her away. Thanks, though, for your suggestion.”

This man standing before me, with those eyes and glowing skin… I don’t know him. I wonder if I ever did. I’m trapped here with him, a beautiful disaster, without a solution, without an ally.

Not that any of my friends were allies.

Jadon exhales and squeezes the bridge of his nose.

“It was never fair that you and I were pitted against each other. We’ve come so far.

” He shakes his head. “I’ve missed you so much, and it nearly broke me, willing you to come up here so that we could be together again.

And now you’re here, and now we’re free to… to…”

He shakes his head again. “To love each other, especially since you and Zephar can never be. I may not be immortal, but I’ll live a long life with you. I’ll protect you—”

I hold up my bruised and now-swollen hand.

“This isn’t about your protection. Nothing is ever that simple.

There’s the realm and all the life that is mine to defend.

That was my purpose, Jadon. That was my destiny, as futile as it might be.

But my own fate? If Vallendor dies, I, too, will die.

Living a long life with you has always been a dream. In the end, neither matters.”

Jadon snorts. “How romantic.”

And now it’s my turn to stare at him. “My job never mattered to you?”

“ You mattered to me,” he says, his arms outstretched toward me. “You still matter to me.”

“And Vallendor—?”

“Vallendor,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“‘Vallendor’ means not only you,” I say, “but also Philia and Jamart the candlemaker and Farmer Gery’s dog Milo and Tazara the king of the night-dwelling creatures, and these canyons and that fucking tree down there…

I loved and cared about it all, and even though we know this fight is over, part of me, the part that most wants to live, is still trying to figure out how I’ll save this realm—even if I can’t kill Danar Rrivae, who is bent on destruction just so he can challenge Supreme. ”

I step closer to Jadon even as nausea roils through me.

“My love is bigger than yours. My commitment is bigger . My loss is bigger . This is just the truth. Do you understand? I want companionship. I desire friendship. I crave love. Once upon a time, for a blink of an eye, you gave me all of those things. But you lied to me, and you are still lying to me.”

“What have I lied to you about now?” he asks, eyes wide.

I stare at him, at that tattoo of the elements slowly slinking up to his shoulder, eating away at his mortality. His markings boast of power while my bruises shuffle me toward death. This, too, goes against the natural order.

“Ask me anything right now,” he says, “and I’ll tell you the truth.” He pauses, then adds, “If he lets me.”

I squint at him. Him, Jadon Rrivae.

“Did you ever hold people hostage in that horrid Beaminster jail?” I ask.

He doesn’t even blink. “Yes, and I regret it all,” he says, as Jadon Wake.

“How did you escape my temple?”

He flushes, and this time, he blinks. “I struck up a conversation with Ancress Tisen from behind the closed door. I told her that she was beautiful even wearing that robe and stupid head covering. I asked her for more wine. She brought it over to me, and she and I stood there, hoping that something would happen between us. But then she realized that your warning about her dying if she came toward me was no rhetorical flourish.”

He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “She died, and then I left.” That is Jadon Rrivae’s brutal truth.

“Who armed you?” I ask, lip curling.

“The Gashoan guard that I killed. And I took his armor, too. I’ve grown since then.”

“Did you summon those Devourer soldiers?”

He laughs. “Fuck no.”

“Who did? How did Syrus Wake know to send soldiers there?”

He shrugs. “Fuck if I know.”

I pause, sensing dishonesty. “Have you seen your father Rrivae since you’ve left the temple?”

“No.”

There’s no hesitation, but something isn’t quite right in that simple reply.

He sighs. “Are you done asking questions—?”

“Do you know that the traitor had other children?”

He opens his mouth, another flippant reply at the ready, but blinks at me then, lost for words.

“Three boys and a girl,” I say. “A wife named Indis. They were killed when their failed realm, Birius, was destroyed. Danar Rrivae believes that they’re still alive, somehow, somewhere.

He truly thinks his family is being held hostage somewhere in the Aetherium, so he’s destroying realms to force the Council of High Orders to return them to him. ”

Jadon Wake lowers his head.

And now he knows: to neither of his fathers will he ever be enough.

What does he think of that? I could read Jadon’s thoughts once upon a time. I try to now, but all I can hear is bone grinding against bone, his clenching jaw and gritted teeth.

“He created me with my mother,” he whispers, “to spite the Council of High Orders. Not because he desired Vallendor—or my mother—for their beauty.”

I shake my head. “Danar Rrivae wants Vallendor for vengeance against my father, who approved the destruction of Birius. Every realm the traitor claims is important to members of the Council of High Orders. I’m High Lord Izariel Megidrail’s daughter, and my father and yours hate each other most of all.

You wouldn’t even be here, in this predicament, if it wasn’t for his spite, for his envy. ”

I pause, then add, “He never loved your mother, and he certainly doesn’t love you.”

Jadon smirks, but a scowl quickly replaces it.

“Then I’ll fight for you —I’ll fight for the one who does love me.

But then we must first build an army. I’ll go to every kingdom not under my mortal father’s rule and demand that they stand with us or die.

There’s King Exley of Kingdom Vinevridth in the south, and Queen Alinor of Kingdom Goldcrest in the east and…

” Jadon’s face hardens, and the cords flex in his neck.

“I’ll even enlist the last Gorgas and Jundum, Otaan and Dashmala throughout the provinces.

If I must threaten them all with slow, agonizing deaths, then I will.

It’ll be their choice, their destiny. But, Kai, you need fighters, so their fates must be tied to yours. ”

I can’t help but smile. “I do need fighters.”

He’ll do everything he just vowed because I can tell that Jadon Wake makes this promise.

Jadon gazes down at the canyons now carved by the harsh light of the new daystar.

Those brutal rays cut through the dark sky and cast long, jagged shadows, twisting the landscape into something…

otherworldly . The land below is a vast expanse of red and ochre, scarred by deep fissures and cracks—like the realm has begun to bleed under the intensity of the light.

Dust swirls in thick, choking clouds. The canal is completely dry, the beds just lifeless grooves in the earth.