Page 143 of Daughter of No Worlds

{Beautiful.}A faint whisper furled around my thoughts, shivering up my spine.{I forgot how beautiful it could be.}

My heart stilled.

I checked the threads of my mental web, preparing to push Reshaye back out if I needed to.

What?Engage, distract.

{The world. The air. Freedom. Fire. All those stories.}

I found it — faint, tired, weak, clinging to a few delicate strings.

{You treasure freedom as much as I do. No one desires it more than someone who has never had it.}

I felt it shuffle through my memories again. Memories of Esmaris the first day he met me, of the way his gaze unwrapped me like a gift.

Tomorrow we travel to my old home. You and I will give freedom to many people who have never had it, just like us.

{Threll.}

Yes.

{I knew that place, once.}

Again, the memory of grass against my hands. Backwards. Forwards. Again and again.

{Did you know that they locked me up for so many years? I had nothing, no one. I do not know how long. Many years. You would think it would be nothing for me. But even though I have lived so many lifetimes, I felt every second of it. They tried to give me many other bodies, many other homes. But I hated them. They felt like nests of broken steel.}

Its hiss raked down the back of my neck, then softened into a writhing caress.

{Not you, though. You are silk.}

I had to choke back my revulsion.

But I found myself asking,What were you? Before?

{I do not remember. Now I am only pieces of many things. Incomplete.}

Its pain rang out in my chest, a mournful, empty cry.

I am, too.

Fragments. Fragments of a Valtain, born of a country that no longer exists, bound to an Order that only partially accepts me.

{I know. Perhaps we will make each other whole, Tisaanah, Daughter of No Worlds.}

Perhaps.The lie took everything I had.

{What a beautiful broken butterfly you are.}

And I felt it touch the fingers of my mind, catch them where they sat poised to push it back into darkness, digging into them with bodiless claws.

{You betrayed me today.}

Panic lurched. It curled tighter around my thoughts. Pain sizzled in my spine.

{You cut me out. And if you do it again, my butterfly, I will open his throat and lick his blood from your fingers.}

And it melted back into silence, leaving my thoughts as I slid down the window into a shaking heap on the ground.

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