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

by Carissa Broadbent

As much as I wanted to deny it, I was sure that in some ways, he was right. Perhaps the Orders were not the benevolent organizations that they once were. But I needed them.

And then I noticed: I was floating all on my own. The water pushed up beneath my feet, catching me and supporting my weight. I curled my toes, squirming as the current caressed them. My head whipped to Max. “You can do this?” “No.” Ripples circled his shoulders as he treaded, looking pleased. “You can.” Me?

Are they.......walking on water?

“We all have sad stories,” I murmured, and Max simply nodded.

“I hope that whoever did that to you died a terrible, painful death,” he said at last, words hissing like steam. “And I hope that if there is an underworld, they suffer there forever.”

This is for decency. You already denied thousands of people help. You said it was too much. Now I ask for one person. Is that still too much? Or are the Orders less powerful than they say to be?”

Tissannnah getting brave

But if you’re going, then I’m going.”

It was amazing, the mental somersaults minds and hearts could do to justify their actions in the name of love.

“She drowns people in the worst of their fears. Or usually, worse — the worst of their memories. Like a living nightmare, but more real. It’s… bad.”

Maybe don't get on Nura's bad side

“No. But I didn’t have a teacher as good as me.”

“I receive no complaints,” he replied smoothly.

Oooh Max you naughty naughty man

Inside the box was a golden necklace in a bed of black silk. The back of it was an elegant thread of gold, which then widened into a beautiful, tangled mass of glimmering butterflies. Their wings were so perfectly crafted I could have sworn they quivered— the metal so delicate that it seemed like light refracted through it. Glinting vines and thorns and familiar blossoms twined between them, weaving them into a wild landscape. On closer inspection, I saw that there was one snake nestled in between it all, small and unassuming, curling off to one side.

No, Max — Max, the man who had taken such great care to carve out his own solitary corner of the world — was giving me what I’d never had. The real gift was not the necklace. The gift was a home to come back to.

I've never hada book boyfriend before Now i officially do and its Max

“I figured you should have something both beautiful and functional, like you.”

“No. No, they do have a responsibility to you. They have a responsibility to be decent human beings.”

“And I got these scars when I tried to buy my freedom.” His mouth closed, puckered slightly in something between thought and realization — as if he had never considered the possibility of such things existing in the world. I wondered what that was like. To live a life so untouched by such ugliness that the very concept of it was startling.

Look. Look at everything you failed to destroy. Look at what your cruelty created.

Words abandoned me. I didn’t deserve her. No one deserved her.

A flawlessly aligned, cosmic event of cascading shit.

Control. Control. Control. What wasn’t about control?

Possess or destroy. It was always the same.

She gave me a quick, knowing glance. “Men want power because it makes them feel good. Women want power because it lets us do things.

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.

Maybe freedom was always a little bit terrifying.

{Our story is not complete, Daughter of All Worlds.}

The home that had broken me and built me, and that I had broken in return, disappeared into nothing but smoke before my eyes.

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.