Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts, #2)

by Carissa Broadbent

It began with a whisper and it will end with a scream. What comes between is a dance of fate’s tangled threads.

“He looks at you like he wants to eat you. Slowly. With his tongue.”

It made everything else feel as if it had been worth it. Because anything would have been worth it, to see her like this — to see her happy.

Between his fingers, I could see black rot. And as he staggered back, Tisaanah was behind him, Il'Sahaj bloodied. “Do not touch him,” she ground out,

I fought my way to Max and pressed my back to his, guarding his weak spots while he guarded mine.

Like I was a cat laying dead rats at my father’s feet: Look at what I brought you. Do you love me yet?

“I will fight your war. I have no choice in this. But know that I’ve defeated more powerful men than you, Zeryth, and in the end their desire for power only made that easier.”

His hand found mine and held tight, as if he was afraid I would be pried away.

What words were there? He had left me in slavery once, and now he dragged me back into it. He took my desperate desire to save the helpless and used it to make me a weapon of death. Now he tried to control my very life, and use it to control others. It made me so angry that I couldn’t breathe.

It is a privilege to do nothing, Max. So many people do not have that gift.”

“No war can be fought with clean hands,” he said. “Not even the ones waged for the right reasons. Not even the ones you win.”

The way she said it made my jaw clench. He had incredible potential, she said, as if there was something this boy had that the man did not. Willing to do whatever it took, she said, as if that was something to be admired. Max had seen the cost of war, and decided it was unacceptable. That wasn’t fear. That was compassion. And this arrogant child that stared down at me from the wall? He wasn’t brave. He was foolish. I had seen many young Threllian soldiers with that look in their eye — the kind that told me they had already granted themselves absolution, and whatever they were about to do to me was merely a step in “whatever it took.” He hadn’t lost something. He had gained something.

“The truth, Tisaanah, is that healing is a fight.” And only now did his eyes flick up to meet mine, something a little sharper, a little harsher, beneath their deep calm. “Sometimes, you need to act on nothing but gut feeling. And sometimes, no matter what you do, you lose the battle. Healing is more difficult than killing in every way. But that’s how it always is. I’ve walked both roads. Destroying is easy. Creating is hard.”

“Aefe Ei’Allaugh.”

No, that isn’t what I said. He was a good man, not a good soldier, and one is worth a thousand times the other.

And that had left Zeryth, and so he became Arch Commandant. Not because anyone chose him. But because he was the only one left standing.

Tisaanah Vytezic collapsed the cliffs and shielded the city with an illusion of wings. The display of power was enough to spur the Kazarans to retreat. Oh, I didn’t doubt it.

Captain Farlione - For all our sakes, I certainly hope you know what you’re doing. -Z. I wrote back: My Illustrious King - I do. - General Farlione

“The temples were beautiful,” Caduan said, quietly. And he paused, as if remembering, a mournful smile at his lips. Then he looked back at the fire, and it was gone. “But when the humans came, they crumbled just as easily as the brothels. And the scholars and the whores ended up in the same graves.”

The stillness in Caduan was not calm. It was paralyzing rage. “I am not calm, Aefe.” He stepped closer, eyes burning, jaw tight. “I am on fire.”

It was always so easy, after all, to feel Max’s love. It radiated from him like the warmth of his skin. He didn’t need to say it. A brush of my hand. I love you. A conspiratorial half smile. I love you. A wrinkle of concern between his brows. I love you.

“Ishqa,” I whispered. “They’re in the—” And that was when all of the eyes beneath the surface of the water — hundreds and hundreds of lifeless, disfigured fey faces — opened at once.

um that is terrifying

My greatest shame. My curse. This was my horrible gift — my ability to steal the magic of others.

My spectacles embodied the shattering of their greatest strengths. I collapsed the stone around the most fortified district, as if to whisper to them, I can tear your walls like paper. In the one sheltered by the sea, I roiled the waves until they were ten, twenty, fifty feet high, to show them, I could swallow you whole. I made mountains shudder and fields wither; I filled the sky with smoke and snarling eyes.

“I’ll try,” I always told them, and meant it. But my hands were tied. As long as Zeryth’s war raged on, I could not go fight mine. I kept each name carefully preserved in a wooden box beside my bed.

Still, Maxantarius Farlione, acclaimed general, was nothing to me compared to Max, my friend. I didn’t receive letters from General Farlione — I received letters from Max, riddled not with battle strategies but inside jokes that only I would understand and quiet insecurities that I read in the spaces between his handwriting.

Tisaanah, after all, had taught me that there was so much one could do with the right kind of performance and a little creativity.

But this was also the same thing that kept me awake at night, feeling the weight of all those lives pressing down on my chest. With every new name I learned, my resentment of everything that had led them to this moment festered.

I composed every one of the letters to the families of those we did lose, and whether those letters took an hour or six or ten, they all weighed equally on me. I couldn’t look at the body of a twenty-two year old boy and pat myself on the back because there weren’t more in his grave.

“You are an Essnera,” Ishqa said, at last. “You are cursed,” Ashraia spat. I flinched.

Maybe one day you’ll stand where I do. You’ll cut away every weakness. You’ll make every sacrifice. And then the world will look at you and sneer at your inhumanity, as if you didn’t just become everything they told you to be.”

But you never want to get used to what it feels like to kill.”

Hold onto this, onto what you’re feeling right now, for as long as you can. Hold onto your humanity. And if anyone tells you to be ashamed of it, if anyone tells you that it’s weakness that you know the value of a human life, then they’re fucking lost, Moth. They are lost. And so many are.”

Home was a pair of mismatched eyes, an accented voice, and a heartbeat that followed the same cadence as mine. And I was so, so homesick.

They called another name, a name I did not recognize but knew belonged to me.

👀

“Tisaanah, make that sound again.” His voice was low and raspy, practically begging.

“Good girl,” he chuckled, against my skin,

With Max, words came easily — and even the ones that didn’t, he heard anyway.

Or had the world just moved on without them, and no one thought to look back?

“Their lives were worth so much more than the way they ended, Max,” she murmured, softly. “Don’t let their deaths take that away from you. It is the most precious thing you have.”

Your family is a part of you. Of course you will love them. Of course you will miss them. And… of course you will want to make a better world than they did. You will build upon what they gave you. You will draw from their strengths and confront their mistakes. You will make something better, because that is what you do. You dream, Max. And I love that in you.”

I had always lived my life with one foot in the past, while Tisaanah relentlessly charged to the future. It was only here, when we were together, that we collided. It was only here that we stood still. Beautifully, mercifully still.

To miss is to mourn. And I know that I mourn. But the greatest tragedy of it is that I cannot remember why. I just know that once I was whole, and now I am a collection of missing pieces.}

Individually, Max and I were both powerful. Alone, I had learned how to craft performances to inspire awe and fear. But together? Together, we were spectacular.

No one deserves to be put on a pedestal. They won’t climb down to save you, and if you’re looking up at them, you’re not looking ahead at what’s coming for you.

“You told me once that I did not know what love is.” The wrinkle deepened between her brows. Her hand pressed to her chest. “Does love feel like an open wound? Like skin peeled back from flesh. Like a ribcage exposed. Is that what it is? To be… opened?”

“It is a painful thing. To be seen. To be given something to mourn. To be reminded of what has already been lost.”

“Listen, Tisaanah. No matter how… godlike… you looked out there, no matter how many feats of magic you pull off, no matter how much you wish you were more, you’re just a person. And I wouldn’t trade the person for the figurehead. Not for anything. I’d rather have a friend than a savior.”

“But isn’t having built something worth more than the fear of it being destroyed?”

{The curse demands a life. I do not know if this thing that I have is a life at all. But if it is, I give it. I give it for yours.}