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

by Carissa Broadbent

“That bleeding heart will get you killed one day, you know.” Maybe, the young man thought.

He merely narrowed his eyes and said, “Sometimes you’re unintentionally poetic.” “Nothing unintentional,” I replied, coolly.

“You were only six years old then, my Queen. I thought it would likely be past your bedtime.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

And to hear a familiar voice shouting from the balcony: “What. The FUCK. Was that.”

I opened my eyes and looked into Max’s, cloudy and blue, a reflection of my own. “Because if I allow myself to be angry, I will never stop.” He leaned closer. So close his nose brushed mine, so close I could count his eyelashes. And so close that I felt his warm breath across my face as he smiled and said, with the viciousness of smoke and steel, “Good.”

But there was another part of me that felt an odd, primal sense of relief in the weight of her against me. Like some missing puzzle piece had been restored.

To be reminded of everything I had already lost while looking into the eyes of everything I had left to lose.

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

“You smell like debauchery.”

“Tell Esmaris I sent you,”

I loved her for her strength, for her beautiful brute force, for seeing what no one else did. I loved her for everything the world constantly used against her. I loved her for continuing anyway.