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

by Carissa Broadbent

“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.”

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

I felt his back shudder with a broken inhale. “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.”

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.

She didn’t move, didn’t speak. But a fiery glitter seeped into her eyes, and I let their flames strip me, burn me, consume me, until there was nothing left but ash.

Sometimes I wondered if I should be insulted that I never got any of that saccharine charm that she produced for everyone else, but I’d come to realize that this was really the greater compliment. No counting her dancing steps with me.

a waste that would be.” 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.

The sight of those grass-covered hills, golden with brushes of autumn’s mortality, dusted with distant hints of wildflower color, stole the words from my head and the breath from my lungs.

My blade was out, the edge as sharp as the terror of the girl I was and the rage of the woman I became.

Because I had forgotten.” “Forgotten?” I whispered. “I had forgotten that people could be that way. I had forgotten that someone, somewhere, was painting terrible pictures of their wife in a garden. I was so far gone that I didn’t even remember that that kind of mundane contentment actually existed, least of all in the same moments as such terrible things.”

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.

My body had always been one of my most valuable commodities, and I used it as such. It had never bothered me to be looked at. But then again, Max wasn’t just looking at me. He never had. This was being seen, barer than I ever had been before. No counted dancing steps. No costumes. No false confidence.

My last thought, as sleep took me, was that I wouldn’t mind at all if I was tethered to his harbor forever.