Page 137 of Daughter of No Worlds

I felt no satisfaction from my victory. No, I was hungry, hungry, hungry.

Not enough. Never enough.

“That wasn’t all yours,” he said. “I recognize some of those movements.”

I wasn’t listening.

His hands gripped my shoulders — as if to hold me in place, stop me from moving any closer.

“Tisaanah, look at me.”

Look at me, look at me, look at me.

My head lifted, slowly raking my way back up his body, all the way up to his face.

And with that same movement, I realized my hand was clasped around the broken sparring stick, the sharp end pressed to the underside of Max’s jaw.

And I realized that it was not my voice — notmyvoice — that flowed over my tongue as I said, “I am looking, Maxantarius.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Tisaanah

And just like that, all of the control was sapped from every thread of my thought, every line that connected me to my muscles. Like a wall jumped up from the ground, slamming me behind glass.

I tried to move my hand, tried desperately…

Nothing. Not a twitch.

“I still find it so strange,” my lips said. My eyes still roamed across Max’s face. A face that was so still, so pale. “Seeing you out here. You are so soft and mortal.”

My hand pressed the broken stick harder against his throat, coaxing forth a single drop of blood.

His fingers dug into my shoulders, but he didn’t move. He was so rigid that he could have been carved from stone.

Within my mind, my fingers clawed at that glass wall. Panic rose and rose and rose.

Let me back in.

{You have had your fun. Now I have mine.}

My left hand — the one not occupied with the stake — traveled up Max’s body, trailing my fingertips across his chest, then shoulder, then throat with curious, feather-light touches. “I did not understand at first,” my voice mused. “The nature of her interest in you. But now I see. It is a sex thing. Humans are obsessed with sex. I find it very strange, now, though perhaps there was a time when I did not.” My head tilted. “I find myself curious. Do you think of her the way she thinks of you?”

I felt that curiosity — that genuine question — ripple through my mind. But I was too consumed with my suffocating paralysis to be embarrassed. I clawed at the force that trapped me. With every meaningless impact, I felt myself begin to question whether I existed at all.

Max’s eyes bore into me with frigid fire. “I see you, Tisaanah,” he said, quietly, deliberately. “I see you still. You’re still there.”

I clung to that brief reassurance even as my lips curled, letting out a wordless snarl.

“You speak only to me now.”

“I speak to the only person here that matters.”

A hiss. Another drop of blood. “Youabandonedme, and you address me with such cruelty?”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“I am showing you how I felt when you locked me away. What it was to be cast out.” My knuckles were white around the wood, the muscles of my arm trembling. “What it is to be powerless.”

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