Page 115 of Daughter of No Worlds

She was right. I knew it and hated it. Because back then, I had done the same thing. I’d sat in the Arch Commandant’s office as he offered me everything I’d ever wanted. Selfish things. Petty things. That’s all it took, and I signed away my soul.

I’d deserved it, at least. But Tisaanah– Ascended above,Tisaanah, and her noble causes–

I didn’t allow myself to think about the next words that flew from my lips.

“I’ll do it,” I said, desperately. “I’ll do it instead. Take it away from her and give it to me.”

Nura had been halfway down unbuttoning her jacket, but at this she froze, then slowly turned to me. For a moment, she looked genuinely sad, and the rawness of that glance might have been startling under other circumstances. “You don’t mean that.”

“I’ll do it now,” I said. My hands were already at my sleeve, exposing my forearm and the scar from the last pact I’d made all those years ago. “We have history. I’d be better at Wielding it. It will listen to me.”

Nura was shaking her head. “Max…”

“Justdo it.” I staggered forward. “This is what you’ve all wanted anyway, isn’t it? And I–”

“It’stoo late,Max.” Nura’s voice sliced through mine, loud enough to echo and hang in the air. She let out a breath and dropped her gaze. “It’s too late,” she repeated, more calmly. “And even if it wasn’t…”

I was still clutching my sleeve. I looked down at my shaking hand. At the sun tattoo on my wrist, at the scar just below it. All the signs of the commitment I’d once had for the Orders, and marks they had left behind after they had taken everything from me and thrown the rest away.

Just like they would do to Tisaanah.

And the horrifying truth was beginning to sink in – that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.

I didn’t look up, but I heard Nura let out a long breath. Heard her jacket fall to the ground. “And even if it wasn’t,” she muttered, “I don’t think anyone wants to play with that kind of fire anymore, anyway.”

Slowly, I lifted my gaze, only to avert my eyes again.

“Put some clothes on,” I muttered.

“Why, does this make you uncomfortable?”

She turned to face me fully, presenting her naked body…

…And the burn scars that covered it.

Every inch of that albino Valtain skin was mottled with red and purple, melted into something almost unrecognizable. The scars ran all the way from her shriveled toes up past her collarbone, over her throat, ending behind her left ear. She covered them up with her high-necked, long-sleeved jackets, but you could see the edges at the back of her neck if you knew where to look. The healers only barely managed to save her face. Practically peeled off all the skin and regrew it from scratch.

I didn’t answer.

I had seen her body like this only once before, after the end of the war — after Sarlazai, after my family. She showed up at the door of my apartment, and we practically devoured each other with frenzied, manic intensity. But everything about our tryst felt toxic, like we were trying to fuck something dead back to life and pretending we didn’t both smell the rot. We didn’t even speak. When we were done, she rolled over, put her clothes on, and I didn’t see her again for years.

The truth was, it did make me uncomfortable to see her this way.

And that felt wrong, because I was the one who did it to her.

“We both made our sacrifices,” she said, quietly.

I almost laughed.Sacrifices. If that was what we wanted to call it.

Murder. Slaughter. “Sacrifices.” Sure.

Eight years ago, on the second-worst day of my life, Nura and I had stood in bloody chaos in the mountains, fighting a battle we could not hope to win. And she had reached into my mind and forced me to decimate the entire city of Sarlazai. A betrayal that won the war, killed hundreds, and completely eviscerated me.

And yet, sometimes I forgot that when she made that decision, she fully expected to die for it.Sacrifices.

Just the thought of that day made my nostrils burn with the smell of burnt flesh. And we were about to step back into that.Tisaanahwas about to be thrown back into that.

Nura approached me, her features imbued with a softness that I hadn’t seen for many years.

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