Page 141 of Children of Fallen Gods

The battle was well over, Nura told me. The clean-up effort was underway. The first thing I did upon regaining consciousness was stumble to the windows, watching the activity in the streets below, and the hazy plume of smoke that still trailed up into the sky.

A knot had formed in my stomach.

“I told you not to bring the army.”

My voice was raspy, raw. Nura’s was smooth as ice in comparison as she replied, “We won the war because of what you two did.”

“I told younot to bring them.”

I looked over my shoulder, jaw clenched. Nura stood there with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Hypocritical for you to lecture me about honesty, isn’t it? After what you hid from us.” She cocked her head. “But the two of you were remarkable.Youwere remarkable, Max. You must know that. Even after hearing the stories from Threll, I didn’t think you would be so…”

Her voice trailed off, eyes going far away. I looked to the Capital, to the smoke still rising above it.

The battle was a bloody, rage-induced haze. Hazy enough that my mind could fill in the gaps with the worst possible scenarios.

My fingers curled against the glass.

“Was there… were there…”

“Was it another Sarlazai?”

A part of me hated that she knew what I was going to ask. She gave me a pitying look.

“No. It was nothing like it. All things considered, the death toll was low. The destruction minimal. And we lost few of your soldiers, comparatively.” Then she said, more softly, “It was nothing, compared to what it could have been without you.”

“All things considered.” “Comparatively.” “Wasn’t that bad.”

All phrases that did little to quell the guilt that sat in my stomach.

I turned away and started to push past her, but Nura’s fingers caught my arm. Her eyes fell to my wrist, and her brow furrowed.

“What are you—”

She pushed my sleeve up, and my voice trailed off. We stood in silence, looking down at my arm and the dark veins that now trailed up it.

I yanked away from her grasp, pushing my sleeve back down. “I have more important things to worry about.”

I was halfway to the door when she called after me. “I meant it,” she said. “Do you ever think about what you could do with power like that? If you let yourself dream a little bigger?”

I didn’t dignify that with an answer. Perhaps Nura dreamed of what she could do with the power that I had, that Tisaanah had. But I dreamed of a world in which power like that never existed at all.

But no matter what I dreamed, the whole world knew what I was, now. And Nura wasn’t the only one who looked at me differently for it. Everywhere I went, stares followed. Even the healers gave me long looks—part fear, part awe—when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. As soon as I could walk, I managed to visit Essanie and Arith’s drills, albeit only briefly, and practically derailed the whole exercise because everyone decided to stop and gawp at me at the same time.

Eventually, the shock faded, but I understood that something had permanently changed in what remained beneath it. They had respected me before. But now, they looked at me with starry-eyed admiration.

I didn’t like that one bit. I wanted to shake them and say,No one deserves to be put on a pedestal. They won’t climb down to save you, and if you’re looking up at them, you’re not looking ahead at what’s coming for you.

Every time I saw those looks, a weight settled over my chest. For the first time, I truly understood how Tisaanah must feel when she stood in front of the refugees.

And that was the other reason why I didn’t spend much time with the army. Tisaanah.

Days passed, and she didn’t wake. She lay in a white bed in her apartment in the Tower of Midnight, looking small and fragile and so unlike the untouchable goddess who had commanded the attention of the refugees. Sammerin healed the wounds on her arms, but they were still covered with scar tissue, crawling over the dark veins visible beneath the translucent pale of her skin.

“She was injured badly,” Sammerin told me. “And she used an extraordinary amount of magic. She just needs to rest.”

He was right. I knew better than most exactly how high of a toll Reshaye’s magic demanded on the body, especially after using so much of it. But I still hovered anxiously at her bedside. Through her window, I watched the sky change, from dusky overcast to bloody sunset, to night and then sunrise and then all over again, and still she did not wake.

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