Page 161 of Daughter of No Worlds

Still, maintaining that control grew more and more difficult as I drowned in the agonizing, bloodthirsty euphoria that was solely mine, and the confused terror that wasn’t. Max was beside me, filling my nostrils with the scent of burning flesh, and he sank into this brutality with a precise grace that was darkly beautiful.

There was nothing graceful about what I was doing. If he was a dancer, driven by years of training and lethal precision, I was an animal drunk on hunger and instinct. But he protected me, covering up the sloppy mistakes of my rage, responding to every silent request of my movements.

I looked at no one but that one tall, thin slaver. He grabbed for his scimitar, but scampered along the walls of the building, ducking through the door like a terrified rabbit seeking its den.

I fought my way to him. I hardly felt the blood spatter across my face as I struck down the guard in the doorway, or the wound that he slashed across my arm when I failed to hit my target. For one split second, the slaver’s fat fingers curled at my arms. I ceded more control to Reshaye and let it wither his hands until he screamed — until Max tore him off of me and threw him against the wall, opening him from his navel to his throat in one slash and letting his mushy, smoldering gore spill over the floor.

My body shivered with Reshaye’s laughter, with its pleasure, with its unsatiated desire.

{More, more, more,}with every beat of my rapid heart and every inhale of rage, hands yanking at my mind with increasing desperation.

I hardly paused at the dead guard, flying into the house with a lurch only to stop short. It was so dark inside that my eyes struggled to adjust. And thefearhit me all at once, as thick in the air as the sweaty scent of bodies and urine. Through every open door, I saw the glimmering whites of eyes and fingers that trembled around ropes and rusty shackles.

A ragged breath tore through me. Gods, it was just — it was too much. My memories of my time in places just like this burned my throat like acidic bile. I stumbled. Nura and Zeryth flew past, sealing those rooms, clearing the hall. They killed so easily.

Max’s hand brushed the small of my back. A wordless note of concern when he couldn’t stop moving or fighting long enough to speak.

{Do not stop!}

I wasn’t.

Couldn’t, even if I wanted to.

I stood in a large lobby, a sweeping staircase opening before me. The steps were already filling with the frantic bodies of the remaining slavers pouring downstairs, blades drawn. One lunged for me. One touch — one brush of my sword — and his flesh turned to ribbons of pus and rot.

His body had not hit the ground when my eyes once again found who I was looking for. The tall, thin man had retreated to a corner beneath the stairs, his black hat discarded to reveal pitifully thin hair on the head that he bowed, as if keeping his eyes to the floor would keep him from being seen.

Him.Him.

All of my exhaustion faded away into the background of a single memory: that night, again and again.

Too young to whore. By some standards.

One surge through the mass of bodies, and I was upon him. I grabbed him. Threw him to the stone ground. Felt my throat release a wordless, groaning cry.

I wanted to watch him suffer the way I had suffered.

{More, more!}

Reshaye gulped my anger, still begging for more control. Holding it off grew further and further from my thoughts.

The slaver’s arms shielded his face — already marred with rotted handprint wounds from my touch — mouth flapping in gummy pleas. “Please, please, don’t—Please—“

My people had begged too.

I stood over him, feet on either side of his hips, Il’Sahaj in my hands. “Do you remember me?”

“Please, please…” His face lolled, pressing against the floor, eyes squeezing shut.

“Look at me!”I thrust Il’Sahaj’s blade in his face and used it to turn his cheek. The flesh of his face withered into decay where the metal touched it. I relished his squeal of pain. His fear pulsed through me like a hideous, intoxicating drug.

“Don’t kill me,” he wept.

Bastard.Bastard.There was no recognition in his eyes — nothing but that cowardly panic.

He took everything from me. Killed my family members in their beds. Sold a child to a terrible fate. Me, and so many others.

And he didn’t remember.

---