Page 136 of Children of Fallen Gods

{We are not done. We cannot be done.}

I looked to the battlefield. To the bodies across the ground. To the buildings damaged and the injured soldiers around us. A numb sadness settled over me. I swayed on my feet.

Distantly, I heard Max’s voice murmur, “It’s over,” as if to himself.

How does a war end?

One might think it would end with some valiant triumph, a great tableau of noble victory.

Instead, it ended with a dull thump, a pile of bloody limbs on the ground, and the overwhelming smell of ash.

The world went quiet.

But I could still feel it burning, burning, burning inside of me — my magic, my rage, and Reshaye’s fury. One war had ended. But there was still something I needed to do. I started to move, but Max caught my arm.

“Where are you going?”

“I am not done.”

My voice barely sounded like my own. And though I could see the raw exhaustion written over Max’s face, when he turned to me, his gaze shifted — whatever he saw in me was enough to make him listen.

I had already half-drawn my Stratagram on my palm, but Max said, without hesitation, “I’m coming with you.”

And without hesitation, I let him.

I barely remembered completing my Stratagram. A split second, and I was looking not out at the remnants of a battlefield but at a series of brick, run-down buildings.

The refugees’ attention rolled over me like a wave. They stopped mid-movement, their eyes wide. I must have looked horrific, covered in blood, magic flaring around me like fire.

My gaze fell to the very same door I had entered just the day before, where a familiar old woman and her granddaughter lingered, eyes wide in terror.

I drank that terror down, reveling in it.

When I looked at them, anger flooded me.Hurtflooded me. So intense that it made Reshaye shiver, and I felt its every minute movement. I’d needed to give it so much, to keep myself going — now it sat just beneath the surface of my skin.

{They betrayed you, even after you tore out your heart to lay it at their feet.}

They had.

I had given them everything. I would have died for them.

I still would.

“I understand what it is like,” I said. My voice tore from my throat, thorny and raw. “I understand what it is to wish for the impossible. For so long, we have needed only to survive. It was hopeless to wish for anything more.”

More and more refugees were coming out of their apartment buildings, collecting along the sidewalks. Everyone was utterly silent. I stepped forward. My blood dripped onto the cobblestones. Blue fire clung to the blade of my sword, to my fingertips, to the tips of my hair.

“I made a promise to you,” I said. “I promised you that I would strike down the Threllian Lords. I promised you that I would stop at nothing.Nothing.”

{And you traded so much away to fulfill that promise,}Reshaye whispered.

Reshaye wanted revenge.Cravedit. Hurt, after all, was made of glass, fragile and vulnerable. There was a certain satisfaction in smashing it upon the rocks and turning it into knives.

But with all my remaining strength, I held Reshaye back.

These people are not our enemy.

No. Our enemies were the ones who made us this way, who ripped us apart. Who still, from a thousand miles away, angled their blades at our throats.

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