Page 118 of Daughter of No Worlds

“Shh.” Nura’s touch smoothed away sweat with the cool skin of her palm. “Sleep. Your body needs to heal.”

A blanket of darkness began to fall over my senses, and my chest leapt in panic.

No. No no no. I didn’t want to go back into that river of dreams. Couldn’t. It would kill me.

A wave of pain converged with my waning consciousness, momentarily drowning me. When I swung back into tenuous awareness, I was clutching Nura’s hand so fiercely that our fingers trembled together.

I had lied to Zeryth. I was afraid. I was so afraid that I couldn’t breathe. My wide eyes shot to Nura, and I knew she understood my silent confession.

“You’re alright,” she whispered.

I gripped her hand as if it were the only thing keeping me tethered to the world — until that, too, melted into darkness.

“You’re alright, Tisaanah.” Her voice echoed, fading with me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

* * *

A Dream. A Memory.

“I’m not going anywhere, Max.”

I blinked. It took me a moment to realize what she had said from beneath the pounding of my headache.

The girl held out her hands and grinned from between sheets of straight black hair. A bright green snake coiled in her hands, looking at me with unnerving yellow eyes.

“You can look at me with that blank stare all you want. I’m not going anywhere. And neither is he.” She looked down at her companion and made an exaggerated pout. “It’s not his fault that you’re afraid of him. Put out your hands.”

We were in a small, dusty room, light streaming through one large window, walls lined with shelves that held gold wire cages and little glass boxes.

Kira lifted her eyebrows at me, the sarcastic point abandoned in favor of a curling smirk that was so uncannily my own that it still sometimes shocked me. Six months away and I had almost forgotten the degree to which we shared the same damn face.

“I don’t like creatures that don’t have the common decency to have limbs like the rest of us,” I said.

“You don’t like the centipedes either and they havelotsof limbs.”

“Something between snakes and centipedes is acceptable.” I eyed the snake, who stared back at me with equal trepidation. “Put that thing away.”

Kira let out a groan, but slid the snake back into his cage. It obeyed so quickly that it almost seemed like it understood what she wanted it to do. She did have an uncanny affinity with the things.

“He’s one of my favorite new ones. I’ve gotten so many more since you’ve been gone.”

One look around the shed had confirmed that. It had been half as full when I left, but she’d only been getting started. Father agreed to give her the shed out in the woods in exchange for her promise to never — under any circumstances, even the small ones,especiallythe small ones — bring any kind of living creature into the house ever again.

It had been the first thing she wanted to do when I returned home for leave. She hardly let me say hello to anyone else before she dragged me into the woods to show me the new additions to her collection.

She slid the green snake’s cage back onto the shelf, alongside at least a half dozen other serpents of various shapes, sizes, and colors. Then snatched a glass box from the shelf below it. “Look at this!”

I looked down at a giant, shiny black beetle, its shell reflecting purple and green against the light through the window.

“Nice.”

“Do you know what it eats?”

I shook my head.

“Rotting flesh.”

“That’s charming.”

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