Page 190 of Daughter of No Worlds

Monster. Like I was a monster.

For a moment, I stood there, staring at them.

We need to find the others.I chanced a whisper.They need—

Then pain lit up my back, searing through still-seeping wounds, and my throat released a ragged screech. Cold embers erupted around me.

I spun around to see one of Ahzeen’s generals upon me, bloodied sword clutched in his hands. My hands grabbed his face and watched it rot before he even had the chance to move.

But then there was another one, and another. A Lord eager to boast of his combat skills; a hired mercenary looking to do the same. Their strikes landed across my back and my shoulder.

Reshaye wailed, in a cry that rattled both my thoughts and my throat. I swung around and clawed at them. They died beneath my hands.

One of Ahzeen’s generals let out a shout across the room, mobilizing the hesitant waves of slave warriors.

My lips curled into a snarl as my hand shot into the air, calling for Il’Sahaj. My fingers soon wrapped around its hilt.

Gods, no. No. I would not fight these people. I couldn’t.

I grabbed for control. Grabbed for it and failed to find hold. Reshaye yanked my own muscles from my grasp, shoving me further into darkness. My vision blurred.

I tried again, and again, and again, to no avail.

And I screamed a wordless, voiceless plea as those soldiers rushed towards me, as Reshaye raised Il’Sahaj in a lethal battle cry.

No!

But then, before I could bring the sword down, I was blinded. Blinded byfire —real fire, the kind that seared the hairs from the tips of my nose, the kind that embraced me with such vivid heat that it sent my body staggering back against the wall.

At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and to realize that the fire was moving, and fast. Not moving like flames, but like a creature.

Reshaye’s delighted smile spread slowly across my lips.

And my heart stopped.

It was a serpent. A massive serpent that wove through the air and the crowd, its body made of flames that ran together like water, sparks glinting as scales on its skin. It had no wings and no legs, but it moved uninhibited all the same. It lurched through the air in movements that were at once exquisitely graceful and wildly untamed, as if it, too, struggled to fully control its body.

And yet, it was still sobeautiful. Warmth and light and power surrounded by cold magic and deepening shadow.

Its head turned towards me, and the realization hit me so hard that it took my breath away.

Those eyes. I would recognize them anywhere. The shape of them was seared into my soul. Even though now they were dark, veering on black, instead of their usual cloudy blue.

Reshaye’s smile spread into a grin. “Oh, Maxantarius,” I breathed. “You are even more beautiful than I thought you would be.”

The serpent paused for a moment. Then, in one wild surge, charged towards me.

If I had control of my body, I would have cringed for an inevitable impact.

But before it reached me, the snake compressed, flames reforming into the ghostlike shape of a man. Claws of heat prickled my skin as I stared into a face that was so familiar, even as it was so terrifyingly strange — Max’s face rendered in flame and rippling heat, dark eyes cutting through light so bright that it hurt to look at him.

Then, membranes slid from the corners of each of his eyes, transforming them back into the peculiar cool gaze that I knew so well. The flames withered, leaving behind sweat-slicked skin.

And it was this image, of Max in his normal, unremarkable human body, that nearly pushed me over the edge.

“It’s time to stop,” he said.

“Look at what we made together. You finally—”

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