Page 160 of Daughter of No Worlds

“It’s up to you, Tisaanah,” Max said, quietly. “One word and the place goes up.”

We were so close to Serel. So close. And the odds here were not in our favor. Fifty men, compared to the seven of us.

But—

I looked at that child, her head craned up to squint at the building before her. I tasted her fear down to my bones. Her blood ran through my veins, and mine in hers.

And then my eyes fell on one of the many black-clad figures, a tall, thin man who turned to look over his shoulder at us, and my breath caught. Even from this distance, I knew that figure.

You ever buy unripened fruit at the market?he had said, looking at me like I was something to be devoured, in words that I would hear repeated in eight years’ worth of nightmares.

“One of the men who took me as a child is here.”

When I met Max’s stare, fury rolled over his features like storm clouds, dark and cold and lethally still. He drew his staff from his back and readied it, warmth pulsing faintly where his fingers crossed its designs. Coiling. Waiting for my permission. “This belongs to you. I only move when you tell me to.”

The hoof beats were nearly upon us.

I reached behind my back and wrapped my fingers around Il’Sahaj’s hilt.

I saw those hats, their assessing gazes, the bodies of my slaughtered kin. And I wasangry.

{Now?Now?}

“One word, Tisaanah.”

My blade was out, the edge as sharp as the terror of the girl I was and the rage of the woman I became.

My eyes snapped to that one slaver and stayed there.

“Yes,” I breathed.

Reshaye let out a triumphant laugh.

“Are you fucking deaf—” The approaching Thereni voice rose to annoyance, then sliced to sudden silence. Max’s staff seared through flesh as if it were paper, a wicked, eager satisfaction settling into his face as we all flung ourselves into hell.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Tisaanah

The two approaching slavers fell as if they were made of sand. And just like that night, it was quieter than I expected it to be. Their words strangling into silence, their bodies falling with dull thumps onto the ground.

For a few seconds, everything was suspended. My and my blade, Max and his, the Syrizen and their unsheathed spears. Sammerin, Nura, Zeryth poising for action — all of us ready.

And then, all at once, something snapped, and we plunged into dirt and blood. I buried myself into it with unexpected glee. I had not killed since Esmaris. Even at Tairn, I had managed to avoid it. But as my eyes snapped to that one man and stayed tethered to him, I wanted nothing more than blood.

I screamed out a rough, frantic command to protect the slaves, praying that it didn’t get lost in the snap of chaos. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eslyn grab Sammerin and disappear with him, reappearing fractions of a moment later near the glut of terrified slaves. Good. Because I couldn’t think about them.

There was only one place I wanted to go.

I relinquished just a few threads of my mind to Reshaye. Just enough that I felt its power cackle through me, rising the hairs of my arms, twining with the intoxicating, overwhelming emotion that I sucked through every breath.

I grabbed minds like handfuls of skinned grapes. And I relished the way that the slavers’ terror ran down my arms just like their blood did when I rammed Il’Sahaj through their chests. Every strike of the blade left rotten smears of decay, even shallow near-misses blooming with putrid black flesh. Reshaye threw itself into every shred of control I gave it — first with glee, then with impatience.

{More,} it demanded.

Not yet.

This was mine. Mine alone. And I needed the power over my muscles that I maintained with such desperate mental energy — with so many innocents here, I could not risk that.

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