Page 72 of Daughter of No Worlds

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ibarely even tried to sleep that night. The echoes of what I had seen in Nura’s shadows were burned into me, so visceral that remnants of that panic sat beneath every breath. But even worse were the images that I saw when I closed my eyes, bloody scars from the battle and the aftermath.

I was so exhausted that my mind and body hurt. But I couldn’t just lie there any longer. Eventually, I slipped from my bed and retreated outside into the garden, the cool dampness of the bare earth beneath my feet a relief. The flowers had exploded since the spring, thriving in the moist heat that had descended upon us in these last weeks. Vines and leaves tickled my ankles as I traced my steps through the paths.

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Clip.

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I turned my head to see a figure crouched in the garden. A gentle orange warmth illuminated Max’s face, intently focused on the rose bush that he tended.

I crossed the path and settled next to him. My limbs screamed with every movement, and I knew Max still felt the impacts, too. I glanced at his shoulder. In the moonlight, I could see the darkness of old blood still seeping through his shirt. He’d refused to let Sammerin heal it, insisting he needed to save his energy for more dire patients.

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“You too, huh?” He plucked another dead blossom, then collected the wilting petals in his palm and consumed them with a gentle burst of fire, dumping the ashes into the dirt.

“Yes.”

I watched Max’s profile — moonlight and his intermittent fire illuminating the line of his straight nose and still, serious mouth. Max’s mouth, I had noticed, was rarely still. It was always thinned in concentration or twisted in a sneer or curled in a sarcastic smirk. Not now, though. Now, he just looked tired, empty, as if the events of the last few days had peeled the muscles from beneath his skin.

And he went out there for me.

I drew my knees up to my chest, rested my cheek on my kneecaps.

“I know it was difficult for you,” I whispered. I didn’t need to say what I was referring to.

“It’s difficult for everyone. That’s just how it is.” His eyes flicked to me, eerily bright even in the darkness. “And how are you?”

“Fine,” I lied.

He looked as if he didn’t believe me for a second. “Nura really hit you.”

At the mention of her name, I could feel that razor blade terror shoot through my veins — see Esmaris, Serel, Vos. Despite myself, I shuddered.

“And that was just overflow, what you and I got. That wasn’t even close to full force.” Max shook his head, letting out a breath of a humorless laugh. “Pathyr Savoi is lucky that they killed him. I’ve seen her lock people up like that indefinitely.”

The thought made the hairs on my arms stand upright. “Whatwasthat?”

“She drowns people in the worst of their fears. Or usually, worse — the worst of their memories. Like a living nightmare, but more real. It’s… bad.”

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I thought of what I had seen when Max touched my hand — the snake, the girl with the long black hair. And the sheer, crippling force of his terror.

As if he knew what I was thinking, he said, “It was a two-way passage, you know.” He paused. “I saw your master. With the whip.”

Crack.

Twenty seven.

I flinched, just as a wrinkle of a sneer sliced over the bridge of Max’s nose. “Please tell me that man is dead.”

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His fingers curled around the dead petals, and the ensuing flames felt slightly brighter, slightly more vicious, this time.

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