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

by Carissa Broadbent

His kiss burned on my cheek, joining the one my mother had left on my forehead all those years ago — twin scars branding me as someone who left behind the people most important to her.

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

I had seen such terrible things, lived such terrible things, that I mistook Esmaris’s meticulous care for love. Even though he cared for me the way one cared for a prize horse: pampered it, groomed it, broke it and rode it, and discarded it when it began to kick.

“The way I look at it,” he said, very solemnly, so quietly that his words slipped into the air like steam, “you didn’t forget what you were. I think you remembered. And I hope no one ever again has the fucking audacity to tell you otherwise.”