Page 166 of Daughter of No Worlds

“Yes. Every last one of the bastards.”

I thought I might feel more. “And the slaves?”

“We have more than one hundred and fifty people in that camp.” He pointed back towards the encampment — tents and campfires dotting the hillside.

“Was that all of them?”

I hated his ensuing silence. A lump rose in my throat.

“Allof them?” I pressed.

“One was hit by falling stone when the building came down. Sammerin did his best, but he died.”

He died.I appreciated the straightforwardness of that statement. No “he didn’t make it.” No “we couldn’t save him.”

He died. He died because of my lack of control. And the only reason why more didn’t was because Max had stopped me, and Sammerin had forced me down.

My numbness cracked, but didn’t shatter.

“I want to see them,” I said, gesturing to the camps, and Max nodded.

He took me down to walk through the clusters of people. There weren’t enough tents for every person, but the night was clear and temperate, so many people set up around little fires. They weren’t all Nyzrenese. The Threllians, after all, had conquered and enslaved nearly half a dozen countries, and I could tell from the various accents dotting the air that nearly all of them were represented here. But though they may have been born into different nations, they might as well share blood now. They all gathered together in exhausted peace. Comfortable, at least. They had managed to save a good number of supplies from the slaver hub, Max told me as we walked, which explained the tents, food, and sleeping arrangements.

I heard wails punctuate the quiet conversation and stopped. My head turned to figures gathered near the edge of the camp.

A warm hand pressed my shoulder. “That won’t help anything,” Max murmured. “Trust me, I know.” But I pulled away anyway, and he didn’t try to stop me.

The body was bound in tatters of white fabric in a makeshift Nyzrenese shroud. It was small and slim — perhaps a teenager. A selfish part of me was grateful that I couldn’t see his face.

A middle-aged woman wept over his body, flinging herself over him, frizzy brown hair shaking around her face in time with her sobs.

My numbness broke, and her grief assaulted me in a wave so strong that it drowned me.

I opened my mouth, but said nothing. What would I say? That I was sorry? That I offered my condolences, my prayers, my respect? What value would that be to her — prayers from the woman who had killed her son, blessings from the gods that had allowed him to die?

My throat shuttered. I turned away before their eyes could find me, but I was a little too slow. I heard the whispers start as I took my first steps away from the fire. And I felt their recognition rise from the camp like steam as eyes, one by one, flicked towards me.

I kept my gaze straight ahead as Max and I walked back to my own tent. But I didn’t have to look at them to feel it, and I didn’t have to listen to them to hear their whispers. They were afraid of me.Witch,their shuddering thoughts said.Monster.

* * *

The rippling grasslandswere just as beautiful beneath the moonlight as they were under the amber glow of the sun. I let my back sag against smooth tree-trunk bark and watched it flow.

I had stared at the roof of my tent until the hum of activity outside lapsed to silence. Then I rose and tread with bare feet through the camp, all the way out into the plains. There, I settled by a tree and several wildflower bushes to look out over the rolling lands andthink.

I was not surprised when, not long after, I heard quiet footsteps approach. I didn’t have to look to see who it was. There was, after all, only one person who ever joined me for my midnight thoughts.

“You too?” I asked, and Max let out a scuff of a laugh.

“Me too.”

He settled beside me. I heard rustling and glanced at him to see him pinching dead blossoms from the wildflowers, then crumbling them to ash in little bursts of fire within his palms. Just as he had in his garden — just as he had the first time we sat together at night in the aftermath of a too-close brush with death.

“Sorry.” He folded his hands in his lap when he noticed my gaze. “Habit.”

“No, I—”I love it.“It is probably good for them.”

He squinted down at the flowers, cerulean blue with white-tipped petals. “I wonder if I could get these to grow at home.”

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