Page 201 of Daughter of No Worlds

Ascended fucking above, I wasalive.

* * *

I would have beencontent to go on for at least a few more hours like that, but Tisaanah was, unfortunately, not as easily distracted.

I had no choice but to give her the whole story. The one final thing that I had not told her — toldanyone. I knew I would have to eventually. But this was a secret that I had buried even deeper within myself than the truth of Sarlazai or the deaths of my family — perhaps because it was one that still stared back at me every time I looked in the mirror.

Now, though, I had opened a door that I couldn’t close again.

“It happened when Reshaye was removed,” I began.

“After my family, I needed to get it out of me. That was just non-negotiable. And the Orders were in serious disarray at that point, so there was no one left to give me too much of a hard time about it. Zeryth was all too eager, since the war was over anyway and frankly, I think the bastard was mostly scared that I had all of that power.”

“He thought you would use it against him?” Tisaanah asked.

“I couldn’t, since I was blood bound to the Orders. As long as Zeryth acted on behalf of the Orders, I couldn’t harm him, at least not intentionally. But the title of Arch Commandant is fought and bled for, and he didn’t like how my having Reshaye affected him in that fight.” So fucking trivial. Zeryth Aldris, forever concerned with his own position even when real people were dying. “And Nura— she wasn’t about to argue.”

That, I would never fully understand. I’d known Nura since we were both children, but even then, I never saw her cry. Not until my family’s funeral, where I watched their pyres burn from a distance. She was the only one that saw me, the only other one hiding back in the shadows, her cheeks slick with tears.

I had pretended I didn’t see her and walked away before she could approach me. But the next day, when I had again showed up at the Towers borderline hysterical, demanding to have Reshaye ripped out of me, she didn’t so much as say a word.

“But, like everything, it wasn’t that easy,” I went on. “They had pulled Reshaye from many bodies before, but bodies that it rejected. It had wanted to leave just as much as they wanted it gone. In my case, Reshaye definitelydid notwant to leave. I spent hours bleeding on that slab while they worked on prying us apart, all while Reshaye and I were fighting these ridiculous battles within my head. It didn’t want to let me go. But I wasn’t about to let it keep me.”

I still shuddered when I thought about it, the way Reshaye had clung to me like a desperate lover.

Tisaanah had edged closer, her body pressed against mine and her hands wrapped around my arm. And for a moment, I was struck by how much I deeply appreciated this alternative.

“Eventually, it got so bad that they told me that if they went any further, they would probably kill me. I told them that was just fine with me.”

I let out a breath, took a moment to ground myself in Tisaanah’s attentive eyes.

“And I did die. Just for a few minutes. Short enough that it wasn’t a done deal. And as Reshaye was being pried away from me, it’s like it dug all of its claws into me to pull me back.”

{You wish to be rid of me so badly?}it had hissed.{You’d rather die than stay here with me?}

“Reshayesavedyou?” Tisaanah whispered.

Well, “saved” made it sound so damned righteous. “It cursed me with a life I didn’t want out of spite. It dragged me back just as it was ripped from my veins. But it kept me alive by giving me a…gift.”

{Our stories are bound together forever, Maxantarius. Yours is not over yet, and you cannot discard the pages already written. It is burned into your soul, and now it will be burned into your body as well.}

The last thing I remembered, in those murky memories, was the agonizing pain of Reshaye being finally cleaved from me. And its final, fading whisper:{Enjoy the gift I have given you. You will always be followed by what you fear.}

“I was unconscious for days. Sammerin was the only one there when I opened my eyes for the first time. I almost burned the house down and I didn’t even have my wits about me enough to realize that I wasn’t dreaming until he was screaming at me to snap out of it.”

A wrinkle had formed between Tisaanah’s brows. One of her fingers brushed the corner of my eye, tracing the outline. “You have another eyelid.”

“Right.” I blinked, suddenly conscious of the thin membrane that covered my eyeballs. Closed. Always closed. “It took me way too long that day to realize that it was there, and that by closing it, I could close the well of magic that transformed me.” I let out a small scoff. “Did you know that snakes have eyelids like this? For a creature that fails to understand the nuance of human emotion, Reshaye does have a penchant for dramatic justice, doesn’t it?”

“So when it is open— “

“You saw.”

A hint of shame seeped into those two words.

I had spent nearly a decade aggressively ignoring that part of myself. It was a reminder that Reshaye had won — that it had changed me forever and turned me something that was no longer even fully human. When it lived in my mind, I could tell myself that it was the monster, not me. But it had made me one, too, in its final slight.

And there was a part of me that hated for her to see that.

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