Page 67 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

Jadon Rrivae Wake stands high above the desert, on the Rim of the Shadows. The ink that had started on his right hand now covers his torso and shoulder blades, but his left arm remains unmarked.

He wears my stolen pendant around his neck, and the moth now burns as bright as the daystar.

He wears Veril’s stolen fox amulet in a brace around his bare left arm, and the Wake family’s signet ring that unlocked the Librum Esoterica squeezes his left ring finger.

His eyes shine lavender, the second-most vivid light in Selenova’s fullness.

Staring at him, Elyn says, “I thought your amulet was dead.”

“I did, too.” My gaze stays on the most powerful being conceived on Vallendor Realm.

“So what is feeding it?” she asks.

We both turn to my father, who has joined us for this last battle.

“Linionium,” he says.

“From the signet ring?” I ask.

Father shakes his head. “Without Celedan Docci, the ring itself does not contain linionium.”

“But if it’s not in the ring,” I ask, “where is the linionium?”

Father doesn’t speak—is it because he doesn’t know… or because he does ?

“So what now?” Elyn asks.

I turn to her. “I talk to him.”

“We can’t use Jadon in the fight,” she says, “not beyond using him as a threat against Danar.”

I nod. “If he dies, we all die.”

“We need Danar’s amulet first,” Elyn says. “Kill the traitor and then…”

“Kill Jadon before he can absorb Danar’s power,” I say.

She and my father peer at me with uncertainty. Can you do this?

My cheeks flush. “I will do what must be done to save this realm.”

…

Elyn hangs back as I approach Jadon up on the bluff. She’s a quiet anchor behind me. She gives us space, but she’ll never be out of reach. “No stripping this time, please,” she quips, a parting shot as I walk away from her.

I stop several paces away from Jadon, the distance between us too much and not enough.

All that’s happened between us lingers in this gap.

I fear breathing the air around me. I’m not sure if he still has the power to weaken me.

He’s bigger than before, his frame wider, his muscles bulkier, but he retains that same elegance.

He wears steel-gray mail tinted a subtle blue that shimmers like the ocean in a storm.

“I’m here to fight,” Jadon says, his voice deeper, gruffer.

The greatsword he holds looks meaner than his old sword, Chaos—this new blade’s teeth gleam with menace and hunger.

“You’re here to fight,” I say, “but for whom?”

Jadon gazes at me, his blue eye and lavender eye both flaring with pain. “I’m here to fight for you ,” he says. “To fight for us .”

“I wish I could believe you,” I say, “but you’re wearing my amulet. You also held a knife to my throat as we stood on this very bluff. Yes, you’re ready to love me, but you’re also ready to kill me.” I pause and then add, “All of Vallendor will soon witness your ultimate choice.”

He remains cursed with Miasma— no , he is Miasma, he is the curse—and his power rolls toward me and pushes against my armor like the tide against the shore.

I take another step back. I’m no fool. Tides wear down mountains that stand in their way.

“I’ll do anything for you,” Jadon says.

“Now is the time to prove it,” I say. “Everything’s different. Times have changed because there is no time, not anymore.”

“You killed the emperor,” Jadon notes. “My father was a strong man.”

“And your true father is stronger,” I say. “And you’re stronger than him.”

Jadon holds out his arms. “You have nothing to fear—”

“You tried to kill me,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him. “You took that from me.” I gesture to the moth amulet hanging from his neck.

“Obviously, you didn’t need it,” he says, his blue eye glimmering. “Here you stand.”

“It wasn’t yours to take,” I say, ice pooling in my heart. “And then to steal Veril’s amulet from Separi? How much lower can you go?”

“As low as I need—and it’s worked. Because here I stand.”

“Unwilling—or unable—to help in this fight but hanging over us like a poisoned sword.”

Jadon says nothing, but he doesn’t look away—nor does he respond to my accusation.

I stare at the tattoo that continues to creep across his skin. Fire and water, earth and ice, circles and circles all slithering up his neck and down his left shoulder.

“You’re willing to sacrifice yourself at the end of this?” I ask him.

“I’m willing to do what must be done.” He presses his lips together and clenches his jaw. Both of his eyes brighten him. “And I will do it for love, for change, for all that yet breathes.”

Caught off-guard, my breath catches in my chest as my eyes burn with sudden tears. He’d said that to me in my dream right before the world around us exploded. “We’re done here,” I say now, turning away from him.

“You may not believe this right now, but—” Jadon’s nostrils flare, and that lavender eye flickers. “I do love you, Kai.”

I look back at him over my shoulder. “I know.”

…

Ithlon had been the last realm where I’d witnessed the awesome descent of my order in their god-sizes.

That day had been an urgent cobalt blue and bright gold, swirling and luminous.

That day smelled of copper and iron, of leather tanned over fire.

The towns and cities and hamlets of Ithlon had shuddered beneath that falling sky.

I remember shrieking, wailing, burning. Collapsing.

Mera Destroyers, each of us as wide as six oxen and as tall as the oldest trees, stalked across the provinces, our giant red hands wielding two-pronged staffs tipped with fire.

There were no shields. There was no obstacle great enough to stop this destruction.

Flames wreathed our heads and around wings as crimson as blood.

Our chests were adorned with countless swirling markings that glowed like flowing lava.

With fire and molten rock falling from our mouths, we’d lifted whole houses as if they were loaves of bread.

The Eserime had stood in every city center across Ithlon, their faces twisted in horror as we marched over ridgelines and into their lives.

They’d worn no armor, and their garments, light as air, could not protect them as they were launched into the sky.

The air grew hotter as each steward flew higher, closer to Ithlon’s daystar, Sandall.

The god’s glare was concentrated into a singular beam so bright that no being on the realm of Ithlon would ever see color again.

No being on the realm of Ithlon would ever be again.

Dark clouds of deadly hot gases washed down every street, every river and mountain and across meadows and through canyons. There was no air to breathe.

This was death.

My mother, Lyra, had served as the Grand Steward and had settled in Gundabar, one of the biggest cities on Ithlon Realm.

At that time, she’d been presiding over the start of fall harvests in this wealthy town covered in mosaics and statues.

Most of the realm had been corrupted by greed, as some of its people gained immense wealth from trade and land.

Even before the Mera came, festivals that were meant to celebrate community had become deadly traps of selfishness and vice.

Slavery, rape, and murder spread like mold, consuming every home.

Ithlon had failed and had fallen…but still not enough to be destroyed, according to the Council of High Orders.

But I grew convinced that the Council made the wrong decision—and other Mera Destroyers had agreed with me. So we destroyed Ithlon.

And then we were all punished, and I was alone.

Now, though, my father stands beside me as I fight for Vallendor’s survival.

The nightstar begins her slow and deliberate rise, as if reluctant to begin her necessary journey. Full now, she glows with an eerie light, the orange of ripened pumpkins and the white of seashells bleached by salt and heat.

And beneath that dusky gleam are dead soldiers and Diminished scattered across rocks and new cliffs, impaled by spears, hacked apart by swords. In the city of Gasho: a dead prince. Dead priests, dead families, dead soldiers. No water. No food.

Amber light flickers from survivors of the last attack who had taken shelter in the Temple of Celestial. As Selenova rises above the horizon, windwolves and hydrasalts stalk them—another threat to this realm’s existence.

The army of Devourers floods the land, stark-white giants with those blank red eyes, their pale skin stretched thin across their hulking forms. Their long arms hang lifelessly at their sides, their bloody-taloned fingers holding swords poised for battle.

They wear chest panels made from the shells of the crocodile-like otherworldly, naperone, and loincloths stitched from the leather of every cow, lamb, goat, deer, and bison left on Vallendor.

The land is marred by their passage and the march of otherworldly everywhere, scarred and broken beneath their colossal weight, and once-fertile fields lie in ruin surrounded by splintered and twisted trees.

The aqueduct has run dry again. The silence of this dead land is broken by the low, distant growls of Devourers standing in formation.

They are the new river flowing across the desert floor and foothills.

“What has he done?” Father whispers, his gaze sweeping across row after row of countless living-dead warriors.

The leather-winged resurrectors circle above it all with their long snouts and sharp eyes, ready to give life to the fallen.

Like the creatures at the Sea of Devour, the otherworldly here have swept through Gasho for supper, and they feast on the Gashoans who’d built me tubs and altars and praised my name.

I exhale long and loud, then look over to my father.

“You must finish the work,” he says.

I cover my mouth with a shaky hand. I feel the weight of eyes on me: the eyes of soldiers who’d left Wake’s army to join mine. I feel the eyes of Renrians who’d given everything to fight for Vallendor, for me. I feel the eyes of Raqiel sentinels, and Mera warriors, and Elyn Fynal.