Page 64 of Daughter of No Worlds

Miraselle took one, two, three steps backward.

“Would would you say I should do?” I asked.

“Say no. That’s what I’d say you should do.”

“I cannot do that.”

“You don’t make deals with the Orders.Never. And it’s not even as if it’s a Blood Pact or anything that would stop Nura from going back on her word. Not that she evengaveyou her word.She’ll try.” He scoffed. “Please.”

I regarded Max quietly. I would be lying if I said that his reaction didn’t make me nervous. But nothing he was saying to me now was news. I knew that I had no guarantees. I had noticed Nura’s distinct lack of promise. And I knew that I had bought myself — bought Serel — only a sliver of a chance, and nothing more.

Still, it was something. It was all I had.

“My friend needs even a chance,” I said. “I have no other option. And even if Nura said no, still, I would have agreed.”

I couldn’t quite decipher the look Max gave me at that. “You shouldn’t.”

“I need to impress them. You know this.” I jumped as Miraselle’s hands began combing through my hair, and I had to stop myself from slapping her fingers away.

“Miraselle—” Max sounded as if it were taking every effort he had not to snap at her. “Give us a minute.”

Miraselle looked momentarily hurt before wandering back into the rose bushes.

“What’s a blood pact?” I asked, once she was gone.

“A deal sealed in magic, so neither party can break the terms.”

“What happens if they do?’

“They can’t.”

“But what if—”

“Tisaanah, this is beside the point. You cannot trust them. They will use you.”

I was using them, too. And besides, what possible use could I be to the Orders, organizations populated with the most powerful wielders in the world? “For what?”

“I don’t know yet.” Max looked at me with his strange eyes bright beneath the shadow of a furrowed brow, mouth twisted in thought, shoulders tensed. His concern settled at the bottom of my stomach and lay there, heavy.

“I can do this,” I said, quietly.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He drew in a long breath, nostrils flaring as he let it out. “I hoped I’d never find myself on a battlefield again.”

I blinked at him, surprised. “She said you must go too?”

Max snorted. “Nura? She could try and see how far that gets her. But if you’re going, then I’m going.”

“You—”

“I’m not letting you go out there alone, Tisaanah.”

This realization — the realization that my goal, and the things I chose to sacrifice in my pursuit of it, no longer belonged to me alone — crushed me so suddenly that I could feel myself swaying beneath this new responsibility. I looked at Max in silence for a moment, lips parted, groping for words and finding none.

I had been nervous about marching on Tairn, but only in a resigned, distant way. Now something sharper lurched into my heart as I realized that, intentionally or not, I was dragging Max back into everything he fought so hard to escape.

“You do not have to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I did not graduate from the Zeryth Adris school of shitty friendship.”

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