Daughter of No Worlds (The War of Lost Hearts, #1)

by Carissa Broadbent

“I’m inviting you inside, but only because if I let you freeze out here, I’d have to relinquish my moral superiority.”

I hammered every Aran word home, slowly. “Why do you hate the Orders? Why do you hate me so many? What is wrong with you?”

“I did many things to come here. I killed for coming here. My friend—” I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what Serel had done for me, given for me. “I left my most important people. They need me. I cannot fail them. To help them, I need this.” I thrust my open palm down to the piles of drawings. “I have nothing without the Orders. No power. I need this. They need this.”

He believed me because he wanted to believe me — wanted to believe in the possibility of something better, however unlikely it was. And that? That was something that sank into my soul like water after miles and miles of parched, desperate desert.

“You are lying,” I said. “Making joke.” “Me? Never. I’m thoroughly humorless.”

“What?” I smiled at him. “If I become lost, I will never be found again.”

“I must ask,” I said, “did you get the coat to match bird, or the bird to match coat?”

“What’d he say?” Max asked. But I just placed a finger over my lips. “Is only for me to know.”

MY CURIOSITY

“What is it that you want? In life.” Only a very brief pause, and then he muttered, “Mostly, I just want everyone to leave me alone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I did not graduate from the Zeryth Aldris school of shitty friendship.”

I hate their deaths. But what I hate more is that there is no one left who remembers their lives.”

“And who the hell are we,” he finally said, voice low and thick, “to carry something so precious?”

“After a while, you become fluent in Tisaanah-speak.”

“Max,” I breathed, touching my heart with exaggerated awe, “you think I’m functional?” A dancing smile glinted in his eyes. “I think,” he said, “that you are breathtakingly functional.”

JUST KISS ALREADY

Honestly? I thought he was breathtakingly functional too. He was the most breathtakingly functional thing I had ever seen.

“Well,” he replied. “You would have to get in line behind all of the other women who want me to undress them.” I rolled my eyes, turning around and lifting my hair. “Have I not earned first place?”

{I understand what it is to want.} Not to want. To love. {To love is to want.} The whisper dipped me into darkness. {I loved Maxantarius very much.}

“They have nothing holding you anymore,” I said, between sobs. “There is nothing— nothing to make you stay.” “Don’t.” His whisper was raw and throaty. And I felt his tears mix with mine, hot against my cheek as our bodies folded around each other. “Don’t be stupid.”

HE HAS YOU, AWWWWW

To call it strange would be an understatement. To hear fragments of the worst day of my life whispered back to me from the lips of someone who had become so precious to me. To be reminded of everything I had already lost while looking into the eyes of everything I had left to lose.

My fingers wrapped around Tisaanah’s. Squeezed. If this wasn’t the end, then I was ready to write a better fucking conclusion this time. Whatever it took.

“I named it,” Via said. “Il’Sahaj.” “Il’Sahaj?” “It’s Besrithian. It means, ‘blade of no worlds’ or ‘blade of all worlds.’” At my confused glance, she clarified, “In old-tongue Besrithian, ‘aj’ means both ‘none’ and ‘all.’”

Reshaye — if you kill him, if you hurt him, you will never have me, either. {And why would I want you?} Because you wish to be loved, and I have loved many monsters.

What were you? Before? {I do not remember. Now I am only pieces of many things. Incomplete.}

Fragments. Fragments of a Valtain, born of a country that no longer exists, bound to an Order that only partially accepts me. {I know. Perhaps we will make each other whole, Tisaanah, Daughter of No Worlds.} Perhaps. The lie took everything I had. {What a beautiful broken butterfly you are.}

“It turned out that we were a decent team,” I whispered. A little smile warmed his voice as he replied, “Yes. We were.”

I would pretend that wasn’t the case as long as I possibly could. I was, after all, a well-practiced, world-renowned expert in denial. I was good at magic, good at fighting, good at gardening. But I was excellent at avoiding inconvenient truths.

I was no longer looking at a woman. I was looking at a fucking goddess. A goddess of death and vengeance and utter, indiscriminate destruction.

“I wonder if I could get these to grow at home.” “The weather is very different.” “Nothing the right spell couldn’t fix.”

I feel like this means something deeper

“But you are so much more than that, too, Tisaanah,” he said, softly. “I think you forget that. You pushed as hard as I did and saw everything worth seeing and regaled me with your, frankly, terrible jokes, and… you became my friend. Your goals made me respect you, yes. But it was everything else that made me—”

THAT MADE ME LOVE YOU---- PLEAASEE

“It’s easy to die for someone,” I said, “but it is so much more valuable to live. I do not give you permission to fail if I fail. Do you understand me?” When he didn’t answer, I pressed, “Do you understand?” “Yes,” he whispered. “I don’t believe you.”

I wanted him in so many ways. As a friend, as a kindred soul, as a fierce teammate. As skin and lips and teeth. As a hitched breathless moan in the darkness or a lazy embrace in the sunrise. I wanted that. I wanted it all.

Shuddered and jerked away from me, just far enough so that his eerie, bright eyes bore into my own— As he blurted out, “This isn’t what I want.”

*blink blink blink*

Her gaze was tired, her hair tangled and messy, her clothing oversized and simple. And yet, I suddenly found myself unable to breathe, because to call her beautiful would be such an understatement that it was downright insulting.

“Tent,” she whispered, though she could barely get the word out because we didn’t stop kissing long enough. “Now.” Hell. Who was I to question?

“I can’t remain appropriately seductive if you’re going to tickle me. It’s going to ruin my image.”

I was in love with him. The thought floated through my mind, simple and unshakeable. Undeniably true, even though I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Even if maybe, in the end, I wouldn’t be able to keep him.

“Firstly, I am a gentleman and therefore, again, I have no idea what you’re talking about. But secondly, if I did — theoretically — I’d find it highly, highly suspect that you listened to that.”

“I know you want to have a moment, you romantic bastard, but no time for that now. When this is all over. Sunset and all.”

“So?” she said, expectantly. “So what?” “So, mysterious snake man–” “Ascended above, give me a minute, demanding rot goddess.”

“We’re not done,” I whispered. I didn’t even realize that I’d said it aloud until I felt Max’s fingers squeeze mine. “Barely gotten started,” he said, and a smile tugged at my mouth.

My name is Tisaanah. I am a free woman and yet still a slave. I am fragments of many things but a whole of only myself. I am a daughter of no worlds, and all worlds. And I am not done yet.

Nura had returned to the tower and calmly stated that they had their precaution: Tisaanah. “If you have her,” she had said, “then you have him. It’s just how he works. And we’ll have a grip on her that’s ironclad.”