Page 44 of Daughter of No Worlds

I blinked blankly at him. He picked one of the many gold figurines off the mantel and tossed it to me. “Like this.”

I looked down at the image of the bird in my palm — the pointed wings and long beaks. We had them in Threll, too, though of course the Thereni word was different. My nose scrunched up. “Ahuhm-ing-berd,” I repeated, practicing the word.

I got the distinct feeling he was teasing me.

“Yes,” Max replied, a little too casually. “She wanted to be a person, so I made her into one.”

“Youmadeher—”

“Yes.”

“You can—”

“Yes.”

I glanced at the figurine, then at Max, who looked far too pleased with himself. “You are lying,” I said. “Making joke.”

“Me? Never. I’m thoroughly humorless.” He yawned. “Anyway, I’m sure we’ll see her here more often. She likes the flowers. Understandable, I suppose.”

Roughly three-fourths of me was sure that he was messing with me. The other quarter thought that he was, at the very least, heavily exaggerating.

“It’s too early. I’m not made for this.” Max began slinking back towards his bedroom. “Hopefully I can get a few more hours of sleep without anyone else wandering into my house, since that is, apparently, the fashionable thing to do these days.”

I stood in the living room for a few minutes longer, the bird figurine still in my hand, thinking about the emptiness behind Miraselle’s features. Then I rose my gaze to follow Max’s bare back sauntering down the hall. A long, angry scar slashed across it, starting at his right shoulder and falling all the way to his left hip, slipping beneath the waistband of his pants.

Interesting. Interesting, indeed.

Chapter Fourteen

Sammerin was right about one thing: when Max did something, hedidit.

We launched into training with a zeal that could only be described as ferocity, and every second of it delighted me. I found a certain euphoria in the exhaustion that came with relentless pursuit of my goal. And I knew that Max enjoyed it, too. He didn’t show it — at least not as openly as I did — but a life in servitude had taught me how to see between the cracks. Max’s were few and far between. But the energy that seeped from them fed my own.

We rose every morning at dawn to begin work. Max insisted that I relearn everything that I already knew, despite my protests. “You can’t give those bastards any opportunity,” he pointed out, constantly, “so your basics need to be flawless.”

And though I had been skeptical at first, I soon had to begrudgingly admit that he was right. After a lifetime of self-teaching, I had learned to cut corners that I didn’t know existed.

So, I sculpted flower after flower, shaving minutes off at a time. I ended every day with a throbbing head, trembling fingers, and usually, some clipped, sparse words of praise from Max.

But, though I relished the fact that he approached our training sessions with enthusiasm that matched mine, our partnership was still far from perfect. Outside of our lessons, we did not talk much — mostly because Ineverwanted to be outside of our lessons. I pushed him constantly — another hour, and another, and another. One more set of lessons. One more round of practice.

Sometimes, he indulged me. Other days, he would roll his eyes, loosen some vaguely insulting quip, pour a glass of wine, and disappear into his room. No matter. I would practice on my own until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

When they finally shuttered, I would be greeted with the same images, every night. Esmaris’s face. Serel’s eyes. The crack of the whip. The smear of blood on my fingers. I always knew, somehow, that it didn’t all belong to me.

I tried to avoid sleeping whenever possible. It was, I told myself, a waste of time anyway. And for all Max scolded me about the necessity of rest, I knew he hardly slept, either. Too often, when I crept from my bed in the middle of the night, I saw the soft glow of flickering light beneath his bedroom door. Sometimes I would see his silhouette out in the garden, pruning dead blossoms in the middle of the night.

Surely, he must have seen me, too. But I was relieved that he never approached me. There were certain things I was not ready to let him see. And he seemed equally uninterested in indulging my curiosities.

Only one time, in those weeks, did he acknowledge me. It was a particularly brutal night for me, and I was plagued with nightmares so vivid that they curdled the blood in my veins. I couldn’t practice, I couldn’t study. Instead, I escaped out into the garden, pacing wide circles around the cottage, desperate to slow my racing heart.

Eventually, I grew so agonized and frustrated that I let me knees buckle beneath me, near tears.

You forgot what you are.

The words looped, over and over again. And all I wanted was for my mind to be quiet, for just one minute, one second.

I sat there, kneeling in the damp soil, head bowed, for what felt like hours. And when I finally, finally lifted my head, I caught a glimpse of a pair of blue eyes peering at me through the curtain.

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