Page 12 of Daughter of No Worlds

Esmaris’s arm was above his head, the whip slicing the air behind him, a cruel, stone wrinkle of disdain over his nose. My blood flecked his shirt, melting into the burgundy brocade. Something barely visible wavered in his face. His eyes lowered from mine.

“Lookat me!”

I didn’t make it this far just to flicker out in the night like a stifled candle. I’dhaunthim.

Look at me, you coward. Look at my eyes, look at the eyes of the little girl that you met eight years ago. The little girl you saved and then destroyed.

Esmaris only sank further into his sneer, as if he could silence me by wiping me from existence.

Crack.

Twenty-six. I brought my arms up to cover my face, but didn’t blink, not even as that barb nearly tore the tip of my nose.

“Look. At. Me.”

You will see my eyes in the darkness every night, every time you blink, every time you look at the girl who will replace me…

Twenty-seven. My forearms were on fire. Darkness blurred the edges of my vision.

LOOK AT ME.

And then, everything stopped.

Esmaris’s chin snapped towards me. His arm froze. That dark gaze met mine in one jerking movement, as if pulled by a string that I held twisted around my finger, as if I had reached out with a pair of invisible hands andforcedhim to see me.

I realized, with surreal amazement, that I could feel his mind perched within my grasp. And for a single fractured second, I saw something raw,feltsomething raw, in his gaze.

There were a million moments that I might have seen in in his eyes, then. Moments that I shared with a captor, or a lover, or a father, or some warped combination of the three.

Maybe I might have felt something.

But instead, I just thought about how fragile he felt beneath my invisible grasp. How sweet his fear tasted on my tongue as he realized — as webothrealized — that I was capable of more than little butterflies.

His fear transformed into rage. His arm broke free from me, the whip lifting, the barb slicing —

And before I realized what I was doing, I yanked on that thread between us as hard as I could.

A deafening crack split the air. I cringed, thinking that it was the whip, but the pain never came.

A crash. I opened my eyes to see Esmaris stumble over a chair, toppling to his knees in front of me.

I pushed myself upright as he fell, nearly colliding with him. His extended hand almost swiped my cheek, but instead grabbed a fistful of long, silver hair, clutching it with a strength that eluded the rest of his body.

I was numb as he yanked me down to the ground with him, my palm instinctively bracing against his chest.

Look at me, my command echoed.

We both obeyed. I didn’t blink, didn’t look away, as I watched the fury drain from his face, leaving behind a raw sadness that stripped my flesh more viciously than those twenty-seven lashes.

“Tisaanah—”

I hardly heard Serel’s gasp. When I raised my head, my friend was standing in the doorway, hand on the hilt of his sword, gaping at me in horror.

I must have been quite a sight: soaked in blood, my back shredded, holding the dead body of the most powerful man in Threll.

Chapter Four

“Banished Gods, what did he do to you?”

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