Page 111 of Children of Fallen Gods

“Vardir,” Max said, and he jolted, as if jerking awake. He grinned slowly.

“An old friend!” he exclaimed. “Three, in so short a time! How lucky am I, how very lucky.”

My heart sank. This man was insane.

“You were telling me about Reshaye,” I said.

“Ah. Of course. I could not have done it without Maxantarius. Such a willing host. Reshaye wanted no one but him.” Vardir looked to Max, and his face went serious, a wrinkle forming at his brow. “It gave you a gift,” he said, quietly. “I can feel its magic still, in you. They took so much, but I can still feel—”

“A life binding spell, Vardir,” Max pressed. “Is it possible? Could it be broken?”

“I thought you were smarter than that, Captain. Anything is possible, and nothing is ever truly broken.”

Max let out a hiss of frustration. But I pulled my sleeve back, exposing my forearm and the dark veins visible beneath the albino white patches of my skin.

“Do you know what this is?”

Vardir’s face went serious. Then horrified. Then delighted.

“You— youdidit.”

He lunged forward, grabbing my arm and wrenching it forward, pulling it so close that his nose nearly brushed my skin. Max was halfway to him when I raised my other hand, giving him a silent assurance:Wait. I’m fine.

“Did what, Vardir?”

“You Wielded Reshaye’s magicdirectly. You alone.” He shook his head. “If I had my tools— if I had my study—”

“What does that mean?” I asked, and Vardir arched his eyebrows at me.

“You don’t even know? It means a channel has opened. A channel connecting you to the deepest levels of magic, deeper than Valtain or Solarie magic or even Fey magic.” He snapped his gaze to Max and grinned. “Sothisis why you ask about such blood magic. You have it too — yes, I see that now. I don’t know how I missed it, don’t know how, my mind has been so— so fuzzy lately—”

I could feel his emotions rippling through his touch, and they were unlike any I had ever felt before — a million disjointed fragments warring with each other, as if he was constantly experiencing all emotions at once, and never knowing which one was real.

Slowly, I pieced together what Vardir was implying.

“You are saying,” I said, quietly, “that our magicisblood magic.”

“Human bodies aren’t built to withstand such power. This magic feeds on life. It will take and consume whatever life you can give it, and more. The more life you give it, the more powerful it will be.”

“And the higher the cost,” I murmured. Reshaye curled through my thoughts, landing on a memory — the memory of my fingers on skin, my magic reducing living flesh to black rot.

Consuming life.

Nausea roiled in my stomach. All those people I had killed, in Threll. Slavers, yes. I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry for their deaths. But there was something sickening, in that — in the fact that my magic consumed life itself, and thrived on death.

Max looked as if he did, too. One look at his face, and I could imagine what he was thinking. All those lives in Sarlazai. All that death. Just making him stronger. Destruction begetting more destruction.

Vardir’s gaze flicked from me, to Max. “Now tell me, have you tried combining your magics? Theoretically, if you both draw from the same level, you could—”

Then he stopped short. His face went suddenly slack, then slid slowly into horror. Wordlessly, he lifted his hands and began drawing his fingers down his face. It was then that I realized: the cuts were claw marks, hundreds of them, from his own fingernails.

I lurched forward to stop him, on instinct. One second, and I was yanking away Vardir’s hands—

Another, and he lunged for me.

I was pinned on the floor, Vardir leaning over me.

“How did I miss it?” he breathed. “Until now, I didn’t see—”

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