Page 161 of Children of Fallen Gods

And I didn’t let go.

Not even as I doubled over in pain. Not even as the room went blindingly hot and bright as my flames flared in a wild burst. Not even as my blood itself seemed to rebel against me, like some noxious poison was invading me and draining me all at once.

I didn’t let go.

Because through all of that, through the pain and the black that I could now see crawling up my skin, I felt it. Distant, and fading farther still, but unmistakable.

Her.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Tisaanah

Living as I did, one had to become comfortable with the possibility of death. I was so young when we fled Nyzerene.Don’t look, Tisaanah, my mother had told me as we ran, my face buried in her shoulder.Don’t look.And I didn’t.

If I had, what would I have seen? My home destroyed? Steel buried in flesh? Would I have seen my father’s body, or the dying that we left behind? Would I have understood death, then?

But my mother told me not to look, and I didn’t, and so it remained intangible for a little while longer. I was seven years old when that illusion of safety shattered. My mother told me, as she always did, not to wander too far from our village. But this time, I did not listen. So my friend and I crept away to explore. We came across an encampment of Threllian soldiers. It was dinnertime, so they were gathered around a fire. Their food was left lazily unguarded by their tents — there was fruit and meat, even blueberries, which I loved and had not had in nearly a year. We’d take it, we decided, utterly certain in our quickness and cleverness. How many times, after all, had we played this game of theft with each other? That’s all it was to us. A game.

We crept from beyond the rock and stole one piece of meat, then two. I was the one that got greedy — I was the one who wanted the blueberries. So we lingered, just a little longer than we should have. The soldiers saw us, and weran, the game suddenly real. I ran so fast that by the time I got to the encampment, my legs could barely carry me. I made it all the way to my own mother’s embrace before I realized that my friend’s mother stood alone, her arms outstretched for a child that would not come back.

Her scream was cut short by her own hand clamped over her mouth — even in such grief, she understood that we couldn’t be heard. We needed to move the encampment that night, swiftly. I was tucked safely into bed the next night when some of the men went back to see if there were remains or if the child had been taken. My friend, apparently, had not been worth the trouble. I remember the shape of his shadow-wrapped little body as I peered from the slit in the tent, and a cold truth settled over me.

A shadow stood beside me, and for the first time, I saw its face. All along, it had been matching my steps. I just hadn’t been looking.

Never again. From then on, I stared death in the eye.

So I thought that when this moment came, I would not be afraid.

Foolish of me. Iwasafraid. I was terrified.

My last thought, before the noose of Zeryth’s curse tightened around my throat, was a wild frustration. There was stillso much— so much that I needed to do. I saw that little girl in the back of a cart, and all the other little girls just like her, chained, gagged. I saw Serel’s smile, and all the smiles just like it that would be snuffed out forever. I saw a thousand mothers with empty, outstretched arms.

There was so much I needed to do.

And there was so much I wanted. Gods, how Iwanted. Max’s embrace, his sarcastic laugh, that sidelong glance that I always knew was meant only for me. The sun on my face, the taste of raspberries on my lips, a silly joke that was barely funny. And my life would end like this, right in the middle of a sentence, right in the middle of a word, a half-stroked letter.

I saw my hands in the golden grass of the Nyzrenese plains.

Backwards. Again.

I heard Reshaye’s whisper:

{You do not wish to go.}

“I don’t,” I whispered.

{Why? The world has been nothing but cruel to you.}

Yes. But now, in my final seconds, I didn’t think of Esmaris. I didn’t think of the slavers who had taken my mother away, or the soldiers who had killed my friend all those years ago, or Zeryth. I thought only of all the love I had for everything I was leaving behind, spilling out like nectar wine running over the edge of a cup, with nowhere left to go.

I thought of what Sammerin had told me, sitting in that cafe weeks ago, smoke rolling from his lips.

“Because my love is stronger than the pain,” I murmured. “Because it’s worth it. Always worth it. And I didn’t have enough time.”

Maybe there would have never been enough.

The thread finished unraveling. The pain lit me up like flames. Within them, I saw Max’s face. Gods, I hoped this wouldn’t kill him. He had so much left to do.

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