Page 120 of Daughter of No Worlds

Tisaanah

Igrew sicker and sicker. Had it been days or weeks or months? Years? Hours? I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I felt as if my own body was attacking me, like my own thoughts were devouring themselves. My strange, vivid dreams grew so real that I didn’t know at any given moment whether I was awake or asleep, myself or any of these strangers. Or, most vividly of all, myself or Max.

I spent most of my time sleeping or dreaming or vomiting. Nura was the only one who spent any significant amount of time with me, lulling me back to sleep or attempting unsuccessfully to shove food down my throat. She was in so many of my dreams, too, though she looked different then — rounder-faced, more expressive, her hair in loose waves instead of tamed into those many braids.

So many of my dreams were about him. In my dreams, Iwashim. Did I miss him that desperately?

You like his stories the best. I like his the best, too.

The voice curled in my thoughts, lower than a whisper, so faint that it disappeared into my mind like a furl of smoke — gone too quickly for me to identify.

“I’m worried about her,” I heard Nura say one day, at the other side of my door. “It wasn’t this bad when he did it.”

“Worried?” Zeryth’s voice was pleasant, disaffected. “If you are expressing an emotion beyond vague distaste, it must be serious.”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“I know she can do this.”

Can we do this, Tisaanah? Do we want to?

My consciousness threatened to slip away yet again, but I heard something that snagged my interest and I forced myself to stay alert.

“Maybe he can help. You’ve heard nothing from him?”

“Why would I?”

“My,” Zeryth purred. “All that moral aggrandizing, and he just up andleaves.”

“Don’t sound so smug, Zeryth. Even you can’t pull off that kind of hypocrisy.”

Do you think he’ll come back for you?

Gods, I hoped he didn’t.

And this time, I could have sworn I heard a small, confused voice say, very clearly, “Why not?”

And it was only then, in the genuine confusion of that question, that I realized the whispers I heard were not my own garbled thoughts.

I sat up.

“What?” My voice was so hoarse that even that one word cracked.

{Why not?}

This time the voice came fromwithinmy head. I couldn’t pin it to a sound — it was neither male nor female, unmarked by age, though the word was spoken with the confusion of a small child.

{You like him.}

Shattered pieces of memories ran through my mind, like pages in a book being flipped by a thumb, each visible for only a split second. The first chuckle Max and I shared together –“He could be your apprentice!” —the look he gave me when I saw his decision to train me snap into place, the first time I heard him laugh at one of my jokes.“If you go, I go.”

The sound of his voice as he begged me to leave with him.“You have me, Tisaanah.”

{And beyond that, you desire him.}

Another set of images, of sensations, now: my gaze sweeping over his body, the warmth of him the night we fell asleep beside each other in the garden, the trails of fire his fingers brushed on my skin when he gave me my necklace. His lips against the back of my neck. His chest against mine.“I could be made for this.”

{So why would you not wish for him to return?}

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