Page 149 of Daughter of No Worlds

A realization clicked into place. “And you didn’t tell me any of this because you were bound to silence,” I whispered. “You made a blood pact.”

“Yes. They said that it needed to remain secret. And at that point, I would have agreed to anything to get it out of me. Hell, it didn’t seem like such a terrible thing, to never speak of it again. And their final gift was the perfect cover story. My father was a Ryvenai noble who was a close personal friend of the king. There were plenty of people on both sides who would have loved to see the Farlione family wiped out for that alone. And just like that, the murder of the Farliones became just another unfortunate wartime tragedy.”

His voice lowered, guttered, bit into the words like claws against stone. When he looked at me again, his eyes were serious and sad.

“I wish I could say,” he said, slowly, as if he were making a terrible confession, “that I wanted to tell you. But I didn’t, even if I could. I didn’t want you to know any of it. Not until I watched you walk into those towers and I realized what not knowing would cost you.”

His fingers tightened around mine until they trembled, folding me into a silent apology.

And I echoed it with one of my own. “I wish I had listened.”

I meant it.

Because it could just be us, right now. And I knew it was unrealistic. But it was such an appealing fantasy.

I will lick his blood from your fingers.

The memory of Reshaye’s words slithered through the darkness. I felt its presence in the back of my mind and shuddered.

“It hates you,” I murmured. “It threatened you. It already hurt you. And Max, if—”

My words tangled. What ones could I possibly choose that would express everything that had been roiling in me for the last two days? How could I explain what it would do to me if I hurt him — more than I already had? How could I tell him how much it meant to me that he came back and yet how quickly I would trade that for the promise of his safety?

Words were nothing, compared to that. It would be like trying to move the sea with a spoon.

I lapsed into silence and didn’t resume. But a wrinkle formed between Max’s brows, and I saw the understanding seep into his eyes.

“When we were in Tairn, at the foot of that tower,” he said, quietly, “and you asked me to let you help, my first thought was,No fucking way. Too dangerous.But it turned out that our only shot at beating that thing was doing it together.”

Bittersweet warmth suffused my chest, punctured with a pang of guilt.

I didn’t deserve him. Gods, I didn’t. And yet, traitorously, the deepest recesses of my soul were so happy he was here.

The faintest beginnings of tears stung my eyes.

“It turned out that we were a decent team,” I whispered.

A little smile warmed his voice as he replied, “Yes. We were.”

Chapter Fifty-One

Max

With the help of the three Valtain moving the wind over the seas, we were set to arrive at Threll in a matter of a week instead of weeks, plural. I still found the boat, and all of the circumstances surrounding our place on it, simultaneously oppressive and terrifying. Yet, since our moonlight meeting the first night at sea, there was something that felt a little lighter, a little easier, about my interactions with Tisaanah. It had been the first time in eight years that I had carved those stories out of myself. There were still shards of it that were buried within me, yes, and there were still things that I hadn’t been able to force myself to acknowledge aloud.

But still… she knew more than almost anyone else did. And I never thought that would feel good, but here we were.

Reshaye, mercifully, was mostly quiet. I suspected that its display a few days ago in the sparring ring had sapped its energy. It was early to be taking control like that, to be using magic. There were times when I’d see Tisaanah’s face harden, her eyes go far away, and I knew that it was whispering to her. But days passed, and it didn’t go further than that.

Tisaanah and I spent most of our time practicing her combat. Reshaye’s trace memories from previous hosts had given her some fragments of innate knowledge that, together, we pieced into something more complete. And at night, once everyone went to sleep, we would creep up above deck and sit beneath the sky. It felt cleaner up there. More free.

But on our third night at sea, she was so exhausted that she passed out the minute she hit the pillow. So I went up there by myself, drilling my movements over and over until my muscles reclaimed the memories.

I was out of shape.

These last few days of training had, embarrassingly, strained me to the point where the muscles of my arms and back groaned in protest every time I moved, unaccustomed to the way they had to work to control a weapon. Better now, I supposed, than a week from now.

“No apprentice tonight?”

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