Page 204 of Children of Fallen Gods

A knot forms in Nura’s stomach. She has spent years studying war, learning the most effective strategies in death and victory. But nothing she could read in books or play out in sparring would be the same as the real thing.

“If it does,” she says, quietly, “we can prove ourselves.”

Max’s emotions flicker across his face — they always do, he never hides them. Uncertainty, fear. Temptation by all it promises.

“Maybe,” he says, at last. “We shall see.”

“We shall see.”

But it is only days later that Nura is on a patrol that quickly turns violent. The Ryvenai crowd is angry, the kind of angry that moves people to pick up steel and magic rather than shouts. A Wielder woman lunges at her, lightning at her hands, and Nura reacts before she can think. One strike, and her knife is buried in the woman’s flesh.

The blood is everywhere at once. The woman falls. The crowd goes silent. Nura drops to her knees, barking commands, trying to stop the bleeding.

It is no use. Nura holds the woman as she dies, watching the light leave her eyes. That night, she hides in the washroom and empties her guts all night long.

It is the first life she has taken. Not the last, of course.

* * *

Nura is twenty years old.

She has learned to wield death the way she wields magic and fear. Tension is spreading across Ara like crimson wildflowers. But she and Max traverse the conflicts easily. The two of them are powerful individually — together, they are an unstoppable force.

Now, they are both riding the euphoria of victory when they return to their barracks after a long day, their muscles sore but their hearts soaring. Max is an attractive man, but perhaps he has never been more handsome than he was today, focused and confident and just the right amount of vicious. He turns to her now, here in this dimly-lit hallway, and there is something in his dark-eyed gaze that makes her skin shiver.

She is still ravenous.

Their mouths are on each other before she can think. They fuck like they fight, with mindless pursuit of victory, and just as they do after a battle, they collapse in exhaustion afterwards.

At last, her soul is at peace.

It is only once he is asleep that she opens one eye and peers at the profile of her sleeping friend. Something that is both warm and cold settles deep in her core. She knows him better than she knows anyone else. No one has seen so much of her.

She imagines the way the others would whisper:She’s only here because she’s fucking a Farlione.

No one can know, she tells herself. And she pushes her heart away.

* * *

Nura is twenty-one years old,and she is a candidate for Arch Commandant.

The tension has erupted into all-out war. She had dreamed of war as opportunity to earn respect. But no one talks about how relentlessly bleak it is. Soon she begins to see human beings as machines of flesh to be dismantled.

Good. It is better to be this cold. The Arch Commandant cannot be soft — especially not her, because she has neither the strength of a family name nor the respect of masculinity to shield her from criticism.

Not like Max. Max, who is also a candidate, and arguably the best one out of the four of them — something that Nura hates to admit, even to herself. Of course, he does not know it. He never knows it.

His mind, instead, is so often preoccupied with the war. He struggles. It is easy to see it in the tense lines of his face, in the way he wakes up in the middle of the night. It scares her to see him so vulnerable. She has learned that the world has no room for such softness. And he is capable of so much when he is strong — he could move souls and spears and ships, if only he could shutter that piece of himself away.

So, when they are together, they do not talk of such things, even when she knows he wants to. To acknowledge his weakness would be to acknowledge her own, and as the days pass and the blood runs heavier and the stakes grow higher, nothing terrifies her more than letting something out of a box that she has worked so hard to lock away.

* * *

Max is so sick.He can’t keep anything down, not even water. Nura remains calm on the outside, but inside, a knot of concern grows. She stays by his bedside and does not leave.

He had been called away on some special favor to the Arch Commandant, and came back like this. She does not know what they did to him. But even if they had told her, she wouldn’t have understood. Reshaye is the sort of thing that needs to be witnessed to be believed.

It is days later when Max’s eyes open and someone who is not him stares through them. She knows right away — she knows Max well enough to recognize the difference, even before he opens his mouth. The first time, it’s just a few confused words that barely make sense, and his fingers on her face, like he had forgotten what a human looks like.

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