“All magic is beautiful,” she said, “and terrible. Do you not see the beauty in yours, or the terror in mine? You can stop a heart, and I can stop your breath.”
She is heir to a Sultanate that once ruled the world. He is an unwanted prince with the power to destroy.
She is order and intellect, a woman fit to rule in a man's place. He is chaos and violence and will stop at nothing to protect his people.
His magic answers hers with shadow for light. They need each other, but the cost of balance may be too high a price. Magic is dying and the only way to save it is to enlist mages who wield the forbidden power of death, mages cast out centuries ago in a brutal and bloody war.
Now, a new war is coming. Science and machines to replace magic and old religion.
They must find a way to save their people from annihilation and balance the sacred Wheel—but first, they will have to balance their own forbidden passion. His peace for her tempest, his restlessness for her calm…
Night and day, dusk and dawn, the end, and the beginning.
cw: dementia
“If I let go“—Naime sucked in a shaking breath—”we will spend this time picking up all my broken pieces.”
“I want them,” Makram said. “I can help you carry them.”
&
“Don’t bear it. Let it go. It’s broken, let it be broken,” he said. “You have to let the broken go, so you can begin again. That is the cycle, isn’t it? Winter to spring. Death to life, old to new.”
“I won’t be able to put it back together,” Naime said into her hands, which were fisted against his chest, her head resting next to them.
“Let go of it.” He hugged her tighter, and tendrils of his magic encircled her, shadow and smoke, whispering about rest and peace. “Break,” he commanded. “I’ve got you.”
&
“I have missed you like a drowning man misses air...”
&
“A stray?” His eyebrows lifted. “Not a terrifying death mage? Not a foreign prince? Not a commander of armies?”
“Those things too. But you always seemed a little lost.” She reached to touch his freshly shaven jaw. His lids lowered at the touch, an edge coming over his expression.
“I was,” he said.
“No longer?” Her voice dipped.
He shook his head, twice in slow motion. “I have found a light to guide me.”
Comments