Page 37 of Daughter of No Worlds

He just stood there. Staring at me.

“You were a slave,” he repeated.

I paused, taken aback by the look on his face, still exhaling the remnants of my fury. “Yes,” I answered, at last.

“And your plan is to join the Orders and then use their influence to help the other slaves in Threll.”

“Yes.”

He tucked his thumbs into his pockets, letting out a breath that was too long and slow to be a sigh. The unforgiving hardness of his features cracked, shifted. Just slightly. “It won’t work.”

“I will make it work.”

“That’s not how it goes. It’s not that simple.”

“I do not care.”

“They aren’t going to make this easy for you.”

I scoffed. That was certainly already clear. “I know.”

“The Orders are…” He paused, shaking his head. “They aren’tgood. Maybe once they were used to accomplish great things. But now, they’re a tool used and run by very flawed people.”

Those bright eyes went far away, as if lost in the past.

As much as I wanted to deny it, I was sure that in some ways, he was right. Perhaps the Orders were not the benevolent organizations that they once were. But Ineededthem.

And maybe, in a way, they could need me, too. Maybe I could make myself into something valuable.

“Perhaps they could do great things again,” I said.

A bitter laugh slipped between Max’s teeth. “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“I have no other choices.”

He looked down at his feet, hands in his pockets, and there was a long, long silence.

When he lifted his head again, his gaze met mine with a stronger determination, fragile but fierce, like a sheet of cracked glass. “You’re really going to do this? Force the Orders to do something worth doing?”

“Yes,” I replied, without hesitation.

“I don’t know why I believe you.”

But I could see in his face, in that eggshell hope, in the near-invisible bob of his throat, that he did.

“Well.” He shook his head, then turned to the stacks of papers. “These are Stratagrams. They’re used to direct magic for more complex spells. Kind of like instructions.”

I looked down at them, rustling in the breeze around my feet. “I’ve seen them only one time. On Valtain slave. Complete Valtain, not like me. On her arms.” I extended my forearm, demonstrating where I had seen the marks tattooed up and down the woman’s albino skin. I had tried to talk to her, then, excited to meet someone else like me. But she had only looked at me with dead eyes.

A muscle twitched at the bridge of Max’s nose. “If she was a slave, it was probably meant to cripple her power, direct her magic away from being anything useful. Imagine tying a cow’s head to its tail. But as a tool, they’re more commonly used by Solarie, since our magic is so much more external than yours.” When we looked at each other again, the corners of his lips were curled in a confident smirk. As if that brief of flicker of vulnerability had never existed. “But, these are very advanced. We won’t start here.”

We won’t start here.

My heart leapt. I nodded eagerly, so grateful to have an ally —anyally — that I didn’t even care that he was overwriting my plans.

“Come inside. Get some rest. If you’re done littering up my garden, anyway.” He opened the door, stepping aside for me. “We’ll have a long day tomorrow.”

I went to the doorway, then stopped before I entered, turning to Max and regarding him in silence. Shadow doused the hard panes of his face, but his features were so sharp that they sliced through the dusk, meeting mine with equal determination and wary curiosity. We stood only inches apart, each allowing the other to peer into a rare, guarded honesty.

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