Page 216 of Children of Fallen Gods

Max’s home —ourhome — had been reduced to nothing but a blackened skeleton. The stone still stood, though it was crumbled and charred. The roof had caved in, only a few broken rafters still remaining. Shattered glass glittered among the wreckage.

And the garden… that beautiful garden was now shriveled ash.

I tore my eyes away from the scene to look at Max, and he was staring at it with a tight jaw, mouth thinned, face betraying everything that he wasn’t expressing aloud.

“We’ll rebuild it,” I said, even though we both knew that we would never be able to recapture what made this place so precious.

His throat bobbed. He walked among the charred foliage, nudging the dirt with his boot.

“There have been people here,” he said. “Look at the footprints.”

“Nura’s people.”

“Had to be. Those things are gone.”

Gods. So much had happened that the attack felt like it had been years ago. Max stopped at what had once been the door. At an open crate, scorched but still standing.

I joined him and looked down. The slave hands within were still there, some burnt so badly that bright white bone cut through blackened skin.

And there, the weight of it all broke me.

I sank to my knees. I bowed over that crate, the smell of burned skin hanging in the air like incense. Tears left little wet spots on their flesh. One, then two, then more, until silent sobs wracked my body.

“How?” I choked out. “How can anything we do make this better?”

“It can’t. Not this part.”

These people were gone forever, and nothing anyone could do — me, or him, or the world — would mean anything to those who had lost their loved ones.

“I should have listened to you,” I said. “You tried to tell me so many times that no matter what I did, it would end up this way.”

“No, Tisaanah,” Max murmured, but the words poured out of me.

“It doesn’t matter how good our intentions are, or how hard we try. It would become something— something twisted. That is what we were fighting for? Just another slaveowner? I brought them here and I asked them to trust me. Now their families are dead and they’re just gears in a different machine. And I have given themnothing.”

Nothing. I had traded away every bargaining chip, and now I was left with no magic and corrupted influence wrenched from a corrupted system. All while an even darker shadow loomed over us, rendering it all useless.

“Is that what they’re going to become?” I murmured. “Again, they’ll become sacrifices for the greater good?”

That’s how it always had been, for us. We were expendable. And everything I did had just perpetuated it.

“We won’t let that happen.” His eyes went far away. “What she showed us was…”

Horrifying.

“Do you believe her?” I asked.

“She wasn’t lying. She couldn’t fake what she showed us. You would have been able to tell. And I….know her well enough to know, if it wasn’t real.”

Gods, the things we had seen. Ihatedher. It made it even worse, somehow, to see and feel all of her thoughts firsthand, and watch how they came to such horrible conclusions. I had no doubt that Nura had truly loved Max. And she had decided that her love gave her absolution for all the bloody sacrifices she would make on the altar of her good intentions.

“And if what she showed us was true… if whatIshqatold us was true…” My words faltered, and I closed my eyes, a headache buzzing beneath my temples. Ishqa.Fey. An invitation to go be a weapon in yet another war.

Max let out a breath between his teeth. “As if our petty mortal problems weren’t enough.” Then his gaze flicked to me, and something shifted in it. “I don’t know what we do with this.”

He said it like a shameful confession. The expression on his face twisted a dagger between my ribs. He’d gotten out of all of this. And I’d dragged him back in, only for him to end up fighting for terrible leaders and terrible causes, with bigger sacrifices still on the horizon.

He deserved so much better.

---