Page 158 of Daughter of No Worlds

{She is gone.}

Yes. She died a terrible death, just like the rest of my family.

I let it see the ropes, the chains, the wide-brimmed black hats. I let it see the broken bodies I saw come through slave marketplaces, people too old or weak to work in the mines to be sold off for scrap. I let it see the scars.

I felt it pick up and inspect each image like a curious child examining a new toy, intrigued but unmoved.

Fine. New approach.

Tomorrow, we go back to my homeland. And I want revenge. Thatwas a concept I knew it grasped. It killed Max’s family to punish him. It understood anger, even if it wouldn’t understand my love.Is that what you want, too? You know what it is to be angry.

A skittering chuckle.{Yes. It is the only solid thing that remains. Everything else has rotted away.}

My memories withered like Max’s flesh beneath my fingers. I had to fight my revulsion.

Then help me. I’ll need you, when we get there. Only you. When I call for you, will you come for me?

And Reshaye shivered, shuddered, writhed, sinking further and further into my terrible memories until it hit the sharpest one of all: Esmaris’s face, his sneer, the blood flicking his cheeks. It watched the images again and again, agonizingly slowly, as if dissecting them.

{You were betrayed by someone that you thought loved you.}

I could not bring myself to voice my confirmation, even though I knew, in a terrible, twisted way, it was true. Instead I asked again,

Will you help me when I call for you?

A long consideration.

{Yes,}it whispered, and slithered back into darkness.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Tisaanah

The Stratagrams that Zeryth had laid out were staggered throughout Threll, intended to give him a network of touch points that he could leap between for quick and flexible travel. Still, “quick” was relative. We jumped to so many that my head was spinning by the fifth leap.

“When you’re unfamiliar with the land,” Max explained, between stops, “you can lay out Stratagrams to use as hooks to grab onto between jumps. But they can’t be very far apart, a few miles at most.” Even he, at this point, was starting to look a bit pale.

The first jump took us through the port city. The second, through the rocky ravines. The third, into a lush, looming forest.

But I didn’t think it would hit me so hard, so deeply, when we made what must have been close to our tenth leap and we were greeted by rolling grasslands. Land that once, long ago, would have been Nyzerene.

The sight of those grass-covered hills, golden with brushes of autumn’s mortality, dusted with distant hints of wildflower color, stole the words from my head and the breath from my lungs. If I squinted enough, I could see my family in the distance. Little silhouettes of a village brushing the horizon, a waving figure calling me home from miles away.

My home,I thought, the words lonely and mournful.How could I have forgotten?

The rest of the group shuffled away, moaning about their headaches or preparing for the next leap. But I just stood there, staring.

I felt the familiar presence of Max halt beside me.

“Welcome to Threll,” I murmured. “Welcome to Nyzerene.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Pride and sadness melded in my chest.

“I’m glad you got to see what I see when I remember my home. Before we go witness all of the terrible things that it has become.”

“Me too,” Max said, and we stood there for just a moment longer, letting the ghosts wrap around us, sinking into the beauty of my sad lost world.

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