Page 93 of Daughter of No Worlds

“You did it, didn't you?” he hissed. “You or him. I know you did.” His head dropped back against the pillow, as if all his energy left him at once, leaving behind only a residue of his fury. “I told them everything,” he whispered. “Not that it made them stop. They didn’t want the truth. Didn’t want a useless enemy like some poor slave boy. They were looking for bigger game. But I named him anyway. And I hope that wherever Serel is now, his nose is rotting right next to mine.”

I looked down at my hands. When I looked back at Vos, for a split second, it was Serel’s disfigured face that glared back at me.

“Get out.” Vos rolled, turning away from me so I was left staring at the back of a head of copper hair. “I don’t want to look at you.”

* * *

“Can you fix him?”

The moment Zeryth closed the door behind us, I threw myself into a solution. It was all I could do to keep myself from melting into a puddle of grief and terror. But I was still numb, my hands trembling as I twined them together.

“Willa has been working on it. But it’s not an easy case. The scars, maybe. But the nose will be difficult. And the fingers are gone.”

“I have Solarie friend. Healer. He maybe will help.” Aran words felt awkward and clumsy on my tongue. That brief conversation in Thereni felt like it had knocked my Aran vocabulary back to where it was months ago. Or maybe that was just that fact that I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t think at all.

“Maybe that would help,” Zeryth said.

“Something must help. I will not let him stay in that way.”

“Of course we’ll do everything we can.”

Everything they can.How many times had they said that to me? Did they mean it? Did those words meananything?

I stopped short, turned to Zeryth. “When will we go to Threll?”

Zeryth’s white eyebrows arched.

“This is not only about Vos,” I said. “So many slaves have been hurt like him. You saw this. Yes?”

“Sadly.”

I shook my head, one brisk movement. “I will not allow it.”

“I can send out word through our networks to watch for your friend. Get him out as soon as—”

“This is notjust him,” I shot back, more sharply than I had intended. But names and faces welled up inside of me, honing the edge of my words. This was so much bigger than Serel. Than Vos. Than me. For each of us, there were so many equally broken souls — thousands who hurt and loved and grieved just as hard as we did. And for every Esmaris, for every Ahzeen, there were hundreds of other Threllian Lords who threw bodies into wars and beds and beneath whips like they were nothing but sacks of flesh.

It hit me all at once. A wave that threatened to knock me off my feet.

“There are so many more. We cannot allow it. They have no power.” I looked up at Zeryth, softened my voice. “But we do.”

Zeryth’s brow twitched. “We?”

“You are strong enough to do it.”

The things men will do in pursuit of their egos. If they’ll tear down countries for it, maybe they could do something good with it, too.

But Zeryth shook his head. “It isn’t that simple, I’m afraid.” He said this dismissively, as if he were turning down an invitation to dinner instead of justifying the deaths of thousands.

“So what will we do?”

“Tisaanah—”

“We will do nothing? You will donothing?”

Nothing, a voice whispered,like you did when you met a pretty little teenager collared by a vicious man four times her age, andlefther there?

Zeryth’s face hardened. “You’re standing here in the Tower of Midnight right now,” he said, sharply. “That’s not nothing.”

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