Page 174 of Daughter of No Worlds

I’d heard about it, of course — all that sex could be. But sex didn’t even feel like the right word for what this had been. Sex was the tool I had wielded for survival, practiced and impersonal. This was… more. It wasn’t just about the bodies, or even the physical pleasure of it. It was vulnerable. It was trusting. And I never thought that it could feel so good to open myself up that way.

But gods, it had. So good it was terrifying.

I was still laying there like that, my hand pressed to those sheets as I begged them not to cool, when I felt it.

A voice.Thevoice.

{You got what you wanted.}

Reshaye was weak and tired, its words gritty with exhaustion that echoed in my own bones.

That brought me back to reality, fast. It hit me so suddenly that I didn’t have time to steel myself before my body stiffened, the memories of yesterday and the nightmares I had endured careening into me like a physical force.

My stomach turned and I prayed that it wasn’t talking about Max.

{Revenge,}it whispered.{I gave you what you wanted.}

My relief was only momentary. The image of those nightmares, of my hand on the door, of Max’s face, of the mother’s wails—

{Yet, you are angry with me.}

My heart stopped.

No.

{You are. I smell it. I taste it.}

It turned colder and colder, coiling around my thoughts like a snake.

I am not angry with you.

{You cannot lie to me.}

Its confused hurt seeped into my blood, tainting it in unfurling tendrils. I hated the way that it turned over all of my thoughts, encroaching dangerously close on the ones that I wanted only for myself.

Please—I began,

But then, everything stopped.

And I felt a sudden jolt of sharp, furious betrayal.

It brushed a memory of last night — the faint image of Max’s hand running over my stomach. I yanked the memories away from it before it could see more, stuffing them into the back of my mind.

But it clung to the image. That one little fragment. Max’s fingers on my skin again. Backwards. Again. Backwards. Again.

{What is this.}

A daydream.

{Show me what this is.}

It embarrasses me for you to see my fantasies—

{You cannot lie to me! You cannot!}

The words shook me, a roar that tore from inside my body.

{Now I understand. You are abandoning me just as he did. The two of you, together—}

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