57. One Day at a Time
ONE DAY AT A TIME
DAWN
In the aftermath of the flux surge, things changed.
Birdsong returned to Valta for the first time in living memory.
Peaceful creatures reappeared. And shifters who had been locked into fixed forms for four centuries found, without warning, that they could change shape again.
We didn’t understand the full implications at first.
Dawn walked back to the lower halls, the stone stairs cold on her bare feet. The citadel was quiet now. No hum of illusions. No heartbeat in the walls. Just shadows and echoes.
She eventually reached the place where Ehrue had burned out.
Nothing remained but a patch of silky ash. Dawn sank into a crouch. For a second she thought something flashed as the ash caught the light, but it was just ash.
Dawn scooped a handful in her palm. It clung to her skin, gray against her fingers. Too insubstantial for all the years of love and grief.
“Sorry,” she said. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
She found a scrap of cloth and folded the ash into it.
Wrapped it tight. Held it close to her chest. Then she left the extraction chamber for the last time.
She had planned to die here, but she had to live to find that clutch of eggs, to safeguard their children.
Ehrue had given her that one last task, and she wasn’t going to fail.
Outside, the air was cool and clean. Mist curled around broken statues as Dawn crossed the sloping garden. The unicorns moved among the overgrown brambles. The herd parted for her when she got to the field.
Dawn knelt in the wet grass. “This is better,” she said quietly. “You shouldn’t be alone in the dark. Now you can see the sky and the sparkly horses.”
She dug a shallow hole with her hands. Put the bundle in and covered it with soil. Pressed her palm to the mound. That was all she could do. One of the elegant creatures bent its head, touching his muzzle to the disturbed dirt. She let herself take it as a good sign.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “You’ll like this.”
The tightness in her chest didn’t crack open again. It eased. Just a notch. Enough to breathe around. She stood, wiping mud on her new pants. The sun was trying to break through the clouds.
Movement caught her eye. Talia and Riven walked across a balcony, standing close. Riven had his fingers in Talia’s hair. The girl leaned into his touch.
Dawn snorted. “Took them long enough.”
She watched Talia smile just a moment longer than she needed to. Then she turned toward the citadel—still broken, still standing—and made her way back up the path.
She met her two friends upstairs. They were pretending things were normal, but Talia’s heartbeat was thrumming with joy.
“Hey,” Talia said. “Everything okay?”
“Nope,” Dawn answered. They’d promised no secrets.
Talia nodded.
“We should get moving,” Dawn added. “I’d like to sleep somewhere that smells less like death.”
Riven looked over. “We can be ready in an hour.”
“If you two drag your feet, I’m flying away without you,” Dawn said, brushing past him.
He huffed a breath. “Half an hour, then.”
She kept walking. Thinking.
She’d spent her whole life pretending to be mortal, choosing life on the streets over wearing a collar. When Valrotala fell and the channels exploded, pretending became the only option. Four hundred years locked in one skin.
She rolled her shoulders. Her dragon was right there, coiled and ready, like a muscle she’d forgotten how to flex.
She could fly them home in an afternoon if she wanted. Ironic, after all they’d been through, that it could end this quickly. They’d be back in Gateway tomorrow.