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

by Carissa Broadbent

Max’s hand slipped into mine. At his touch, I caught a brief, powerful flash of snake eyes and sheets of long black hair, echoes of a familiar face peering between them. And grief so sharp it split me in two.

Rereading, so I understamd this now. :c

“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.”

The garden grew wild and overgrown, vines snaking over each other, blossoms curling over cobblestone pathways in beautiful, feral greed.

During my personal favorite of these interactions, one Valtain said to him, “I thought you didn’t do this anymore.” When Max flatly provided, “What, Order bullshit?”, the Valtain shook his head, flailed his hands weakly, and said, “I meant, well… the world.”

“I’m both disgusted and impressed by the delight with which you flaunt your superiority over a bunch of children,” Max said, when I rejoined him between stages. “At least try to look like you aren’t enjoying it quite so much.” “Why?” “Some might call it distasteful.” I gave him a sly smirk. “But not you.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “No,” he admitted. “Not me.”

“I am not looming,” Nura shot back, looming over Zeryth’s shoulder.

I watched Max as he slumped back down onto that crate, my teeth gritted. Stupid. So stupid, in that uniquely male way, to sink to getting into a dick-waving contest instead of stopping to think about what that would mean. Gods, what a privilege that must be.

“Men want power because it makes them feel good. Women want power because it lets us do things.

“One of the men who took me as a child is here.” When I met Max’s stare, fury rolled over his features like storm clouds, dark and cold and lethally still. He drew his staff from his back and readied it, warmth pulsing faintly where his fingers crossed its designs. Coiling. Waiting for my permission. “This belongs to you. I only move when you tell me to.”

“We can’t exactly walk into a party armed to the teeth,” Nura said, unstrapping the daggers from her hips. Easy for her to say. She probably had seven hidden blades shoved into her underwear alone.

I really was nothing to him. To any of these people. I had always known that slaves were given little thought or consideration in this world, but it was only now that I fully realized exactly how nothing we were. I had, after all, met Ahzeen, twice.

“You are not fucking done, Tisaanah, so get back here.”

Serel smiled at me, and something inside of me split open. I threw myself against him and buried my face into his tanned neck, into skin that smelled like my home, into an embrace that felt like dreams solidified. And with all my body and soul, I wept.

“Ascended above, give me a minute, demanding rot goddess.”

Once, many years ago, he had told me that his grandfather used to say that every moment in life was a coin with one dark side and one light. They fell on the ground with one side facing up, but the other always lay beneath it, there, but hidden. Serel always saw both sides of the coin, even when fate handed him nothing but darkness.