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November 10 - November 24, 2025
This is the tale of how a fallen one ascends.
Magic had always felt easy when nothing else was.
“You came for me,” she murmured. “I told you that I would.”
“Mische Iliae, Dawndrinker or Shadowborn, living or dead, I will never let you go.”
“You thought that I didn’t want this?” She smiled weakly. “When I’m like this.” Incomprehensible. “Don’t say stupid things.”
“I’m not worried at all.” I was definitely worried.
“I’ve traveled to a lot of places and met a lot of people. After all that, you learn that everyone is the hero of their own tale.”
“Forgive me if I’m not exactly eager to throw you out there to go tickle the Shadowborn military to death.”
“What do most people need to hear?” For some reason, I had to speak past a lump in my throat. “They need to hear, ‘Even if it is your fault, I will love you anyway.’
It was for her. I wanted to bury myself before her. I wanted to cut myself open for her, let her take whatever she wanted, and treasure the scars for the rest of my pathetic life.
Allowed. Cute.
“How?” she choked out. “I don’t care.”
Uhhhhh, this is kind of important......
She tasted like redemption.
Like the sun and moon meeting in an eclipse.
“I think the key to survival will be a little more complicated now than just you and me learning how to enable each other’s madness.”
Im way more emo about this convo with Raihn than i have been about Asar.
“He makes me want a happy ending.”
But I couldn’t help the sense that perhaps we were like two celestial bodies in the sky. Him arcing from mortality to divinity. Me, from death to life. The two of us colliding for only a few ephemeral moments, magnificent in their impermanence.
“Surely you cannot expect me to call you ‘Highness.’ ” “The rumor is that I’m the queen of the dead. And you are dead. Therefore . . .”
“Be ruthless, Highness,” he said.
“You left me a crown. An eye. A heart. In the underworld. How did you know to do that?” {Some knowledge transcends logic,} the heart whispered, so distantly I thought maybe I imagined it.
“I told you that strength is measured by the sacrifices we refused to make,” she said softly. “You were mine.”
“It’s hard work, to make the choice to do better every single night for the rest of your life. Maybe that’s why acolytes are always so obsessed with dying in a fiery blaze of martyrdom.”
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s wrong to be happy,” I said. “When so much is still so wrong. And so much of it is—” My gaze found that eternally dark sky. The sky I had made that way. Raihn, of course, knew what I meant.
“I think it’s perfectly fitting,” he murmured. “You have resurrected me, Dawndrinker.”
