Distantly, I sense the shadow that spins out of the battle seething around us. It slides a blade across the back of my legs, hamstringing me, and I drop—not understanding what has happened. The shadow knocks my scim free and whirls in front of me.

Then it throws its hood back and I am face-to-face with my own handiwork, a ghost out of the past, and my mind goes blank. For the first time in a long time, I am surprised.

“You die by my hand, Keris Veturia,” whispers Mirra of Serra, very much alive and still wretchedly scarred, her blue eyes burning with murderous fervor. Her blade is at my throat. “I wanted you to know.”

I could stop her. The Blood Shrike sees and screams a warning at Mirra, for instinct had me drawing a blade the moment she stepped out of the fray.

But I think of my mother. She waits for you, Keris.

And Mirra’s blade finds its mark.

Pain burns through my neck as the Lioness shoves the dagger into my throat, as she drags it across. She does not know my strength, that even bleeding out like this, I can stab her thigh, tear a hole into her that will leave her dead in moments. Even dying, I can destroy her.

But quite suddenly, I am not on the battlefield anymore. I rise above it, above my body, which is nothing but a shell now. Weak and useless and growing cold in the mud.

A great, violent maelstrom swirls down toward my army, tearing through it, annihilating it before my eyes.

“Lovey?”

“Mama.” I turn. And it is her, my mother, who I have mourned in the forgotten corners of my soul. Her smile is radiant, hitting me with the force of a sunrise. I reach out my hand to her.

She does not take it. A gasp escapes her, shock rippling through her vitreous form as she backs away.

“K-Keris?” She peers at me, bewildered. “You are not her.”

“Mama,” I whisper. “It’s me. Keris. Your lovey.”

She drifts farther from me, those familiar blue eyes enormous and stricken.

“No,” she says. “You are not my lovey. My lovey is dead.”

I reach for her, and a strange, strangled sound comes from my throat. But something else approaches. That great, earth-shattering roar, as if a thousand hounds have been unleashed on my heels. I turn to find myself facing the maelstrom. It consumes the horizon, swirling and ravenous.

I have never seen its like before. And yet, I know it.

“Nightbringer?”

Keris. He utters my name, though he doesn’t sound like himself.

“Nightbringer. Bring me back,” I say. “I am not finished. The battle yet wages. Nightbringer!”

He does not hear me—or he no longer cares.

“I fought for you,” I say. “I would never have forded that river or fought a foe on higher ground if not for you. I trusted you—”

The storm rolls on, and I know then that I am dead. That there will be no return.

Fury consumes me—and terror. This betrayal at the last from the only creature I ever trusted—this cannot be borne. This cannot be my death. There is more—there must be more.

“Mama—” I call out, searching for her.

But she is gone, and there is only the hunger and the storm and a suffering that, for me, does not end.

LXVII: Laia

The maelstrom has teeth, and they sink into my mind, injecting me with memory. My father, my sister, my mother—everyone who has ever been taken from me.

The memories fade, replaced by others I do not recognize. First a few, then hundreds, then thousands swirling around me. Story upon story. Sorrow upon sorrow.

Though the bodies of the dead have disappeared, I am still corporeal, and I let myself fade into the nothingness. This is a jinn-made madness and I have had a jinn living within me for a long time.

But she is in you no more, the maelstrom hisses. You are alone. I will consume you, Laia of Serra. For all is suffering and suffering is all.

Flickers alight near my vision. Sweet laughter, and small figures of flame—Rehmat’s children, I realize. The Nightbringer’s children. Though I want to look away, I make myself watch their family, their joy. I make myself witness their light go out.

This maelstrom—it is all him. He has subsumed the suffering of generations, combined it with his own. He was right. For him, the world was a cage. Now he is everywhere. Living in all of these memories, all of this suffering. Lost in it.

But even a maelstrom has a center. A heart. I must find it.

Each step takes an eon as memories shriek past me. Laia. I whip my head around, for it is Darin’s voice howling out of the darkness. He says something, and I cannot understand it. I know if I reach out to him, we will be reunited. Death will have claimed us all—Darin and Father and Mother and Lis and Nan and Pop. When was the last time the seven of us were together and happy?

When was the last time we were not running, or hiding, or whispering so the Empire would not catch us? I do not remember. All I remember is fear. Mother and Father leaving and the ache of their loss. The knowledge, that day when Nan howled for her daughter, that I would never see my parents again.

But Mother came back. She came back and she fought for me, and I hold on to her words. I love you, Laia. I immerse myself in her love. For, tortured as it was, it was still love, in the only way she could give it to me.

All is suffering, the maelstrom says. And suffering is all.

How many more has this cyclone swallowed? Is anyone left? I force myself to think practically. There must be. And as long as even one person remains, they are worth fighting for.

One step in front of the other, I battle my way through the swirling wind. If I stop fighting, for even one second, I am lost.

But then, the Nightbringer is also lost. Perhaps if I accept it, we will end up in the same place.

I let go.

I expect the storm to tear at me, but instead I float up and drift, a leaf in the wind. The Nightbringer’s memories flow through me. All the years and loves I did not see. All that he has endured. My heart shudders at the loneliness. Once before, I saw a glimpse of this, when I gave him the armlet. Now the abyss of his pain yawns before me, and there is no place to hide.

I realize I am circling something—the center of the maelstrom. Once, twice, each revolution shorter, until the mist settles and I can make out a scrap of bright white—a tear between worlds, through which sorrow after sorrow explodes. Each one breathes, and they claw at each other in a frenzy of cannibalistic hunger.

At the heart of the rent, a thin scrap of soul writhes in torment, vaguely human-shaped, a thousand bruised colors.

The Nightbringer. Or whatever it is that he has become.

“All the world will fall,” I whisper to him. If I cannot get him to close the tear between worlds, we are lost. “And I know you do not want that. You must stop.”

“What would a child know of such things?” the Nightbringer says. “You are dew on a blade of grass fresh born. I am the earth itself.”

The maelstrom buffets me, and I move closer to the Nightbringer. I call his name. But he ignores me, enmeshed in his pain. Rehmat’s words come back to me.

His strength is in his name. And his weakness. His past and his present.

Nightbringer was the name humans gave him. Along with the King of No Name. But before that, he had another name.

“Meherya,” I say. “Beloved.”

He howls then, an echoing cry that breaks something inside me. But still, he hides away, for he is not the Beloved anymore either. He has turned his back on his duty and humanity. On Mauth.

But in truth, humanity turned against him first. And Mauth, who should have loved the Meherya best, did nothing when his son and all that he cherished were destroyed. The Nightbringer gave Mauth everything—and Mauth repaid him with a thousand years of torment.

And how did I, the one she loved the best, repay her? How did I thank the human who gave me everything?

Mamie’s words, as she became the Nightbringer and told me his tale. As she told me of the woman Husani. The first—and perhaps only—mother the Nightbringer ever knew.

“Nirbara,” I whisper. “Forsaken.”

He turns.

“Forsaken by humans and by Mauth,” I say, and the maelstrom grows more violent with each word. “Forsaken by the Scholars, who you sought only to help and who stole all that you loved. Forsaken by Rehmat, who left you alone with all of your pain. What a terrible thing love is, when this is the cost. But it does not have to be this way. There are millions who might yet live, who might yet love, if only you returned this suffering to Mauth.”

“It is done,” the Forsaken says. “You do not know pain like mine, child. All is suffering and suffering is all. Let it destroy the world.”

“I know suffering,” I say, and he raises his head, a hiss on his lips. But I hold open my hands. “You think because you were a jinn, you felt more deeply? Because you were the Beloved, your grief is greater than my own? It is not, Nirbara. For I—I was beloved too.”

I struggle to speak, to put all the darkness in my life, all the things I have never understood, into words. “I was beloved to my mother and my father. I was beloved to my sister and my brother and my grandparents. I was beloved to Elias. I was beloved to you.”