Page 122 of Daughter of No Worlds

It sounded further away. Every word unleashed waves of pain, as if my own thoughts and blood were rebelling against me.

That isn’t true, I thought.

{Perhaps not anymore. Now, we have each other and you.}

I blinked and struggled to open my eyes again. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at the ceiling. I didn’t know when I had fallen back in bed.

{You and I both grow tired.}

Tired was an understatement. I felt as if I were dying, losing both my body and my mind.

{You are more concerned with what you are losing than what you are gaining.}

A manic smile twitched at the corners of my mouth. I thought of Serel. Of my friends in Esmaris’s estate. Wrong. I was more concerned with what I was gaining than anything else.

I felt curious fingers pause at that thought. Turn it over. Freeze the image of Serel’s face and replay sensation of his goodbye kiss on my cheek.

I felt the question before it was solidified into words.

“You see but do not understand?” I whispered.

{I understand what it is to want.}

Not to want. To love.

{To love is to want.}The whisper dipped me into darkness.{I loved Maxantarius very much.}

The bed split beneath me, sending me falling, spiraling.

{Perhaps I could love you, too. What a story we would write together.}

Darkness and flames devoured me.

* * *

A Dream. A Memory

Flames devoured me, licking my skin, filling my nostrils with the putrid scent of burning flesh.

Skin bubbled when it burned, and those bubbles burst and gushed beneath the rough grip of hands or the more vicious bite of a blade. This, I had learned, was universally true. It was true of Order Wielders, it was true of Guard soldiers, it was true of Ryvenai rebels, and it was true of the men, women, and children who were none of those things.

It was true of Nura, who — even after what she had done — was the first body I crawled to in the ashes of Sarlazai. I was certain that she had to be dead. When I handed her off to the healers, I was so relieved to hear her release a little, agonized whimper as sheets of her skin clung to the toothy fabric of my jacket.

Relieved. Ascended, what a fucking word to use.

I watched my fingers pick apart layers of fabric, threads fraying between my fingernails—

“Max, I thought you might want to see—”

And I was back. Back here, in my bedroom on the Western shores, lying on my stomach on my bed. Looking down at that red bedspread and melting right into it.

I blinked and looked up to see Kira standing in the doorway, smiling at me with an unusual hesitancy. She held one of her glass boxes in her hands.

“Look. I raised this one. Just came out of its silk today.” She lifted the box to show me a little red butterfly, fluttering anxiously at the top of its enclosure. I barely glanced at it.

“Pretty.”

“I thought you might like it because it has a reasonable number of limbs.”

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