Page 113 of Daughter of No Worlds

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Chapter Thirty-Nine

Max

If I was a smarter man, I would have known from the very beginning that it was all trouble.

Even when I had known her for mere hours, Tisaanah was wringing concessions out of me before I realized that I was making them.

I’m inviting you inside, but only because…

You can stay here for tonight.Justtonight.

I don’t know why I believe you.

If you go, I go.

Always a step further, a step further. She drove forward with such relentless determination, always, no matter what. How could I not follow? And while every one of those steps hurt, like muscles creaking back to life after years of disuse, they still felt soright.A slow, tentative, utterly fucking terrifying return to a natural state.

Still, I didn’t realize.

Not when I agreed to let her into my house, or my mind, or my past. Not even when I realized that every time I was without her, I found myself collecting little stories and oddities to tell her about when I saw her again, like stones that I slipped into my pockets.

Maybe just adashof it seeped through my thick skull that night, when I stood behind her, barely touching and yet drowning in her scent and her skin and my own roaring blood:

Trouble, Max. Trouble.

But that was nothing compared to this moment. The moment that I stood there, watching her walk up the steps to the Towers, knowing that nothing I could say or do would stop her.

And could I blame her? There was still so much I couldn’t tell her. And it was almost poetic: that the very thing that had made me let her in that night, nearly six months ago — that determination, that powerful tenacity that made mebelievein someone for the first time in so long… That would be the thing to wrench her away.

Despite it all, I still admired it, even as I hated it.

And it was only then that it became clear: all of those little steps were leading us right over the edge of a cliff.

I didn’t see any of it until it was too damned late.

* * *

“Tell me that’s not hers.”

My voice came out in a frantic, desperate growl that I hardly recognized.

I am such an absolute fucking idiot.

I had stood there and stared at the doors long after she left, my fingers clenched at my sides. I felt like a piece of clothing with a loose thread, and she taken it with her, slowly unraveling me. It seemed like hours before I could even bring myself to move. When I could, I went to the Tower of Midnight, stood in the lobby, and I waited. And waited. And waited.

Hours had passed. The daily hustle and bustle of the Towers thinned, quieted. I stood, then sat, then paced, then sat.

I’m such an absolute fucking idiot.

When the doors to the main column opened and a familiar face greeted me, I took one look at her and felt like all of the blood had drained from my body at once.

“Tell me that’s not hers,” I said again, my hand catching Nura’s arm.

Nura looked down at herself, taking in the spatters of red across her white jacket.

“It’s fine. She got a little overly excited at her first blood pact.”

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