Mother of Death & Dawn (The War of Lost Hearts, #3)

by Carissa Broadbent

So she tries again, again, again. She collects another scar, another night of an aching heart, and a little more of her dies. She gets up and goes again.

It’s not all that hard to keep yourself sane, so long as you’re flexible with your definition of the term.

The drawing was the same every time. A cluster of three shapes, always in the same arrangement—one lopsided circle to the left, another slightly lower to its right, and a third, longer shape beneath the first, the three of them together forming a triangular formation of patches.

“You are going to die. But do not fear death. Death is a door, and though none of us can follow you through it today, you will cross its threshold knowing that the mark you have left behind will be a worthy one. This is not an end.”

Sour breath warmed my ear, my cheek. A Threllian soldier. “What?” he breathed. “Your magic tricks fail you, slave?” “Not all of them,” I replied. He screamed loud enough to drown out everything else as I pushed my blade from my sleeve, lodging it in his considerable gut.

Fuck you

I will not be your weapon. Not again. Never.”

“One hundred and eighty thousand days I have been at the mercy of human kings,” I snarled. “And if you think you are any better than any of them, you are a fool.”

“Why wouldn’t I be there?” he said. “I’ve been there every day.”

OMFG :(

Injustice. Is that what it was? Could a single word encapsulate everything that had been taken from me, inflicted upon me, beaten into me?

we let him go, we are giving him an actual future, Sammerin. He has a chance at”—I choked on my words—“at a clean slate. Isn’t that kinder than remembering all the things he spent decades trying to forget?” Tears stung my eyes. “Don’t accuse me of not loving him.”

“It was a gift, Max,” she murmured. “A gift to have known you. I hope that you have the most incredible, happy life. I hope you find a future worth forgetting your past. Make it worth it. Find joy. Do you understand?”

We Wielded the core of power like snatching a burning star from the sky.

Once I’d thought that love was the sum of its parts, the result of a collection of traits and experiences, like a structure steadily built from bricks layered over bricks. If you collect enough of them, there is love. But that had been a child’s view of the world. The bricks were important, but what they created was more than just a pile of stones. It was the difference between a house and a home. If the building burns down, something is still there that makes it home.

“You want the truth? The memories are hard, yes. But none of that scared me as much as the prospect of exactly how close I came to never seeing you again. That’s what fucking terrifies me.”

Don’t disrespect that by claiming that you know better for me than I do. I have made bad decisions before. But you are not, never have been, and never will be one of them. It is always you.”

We all feel the same things, and we will still die trying to kill each other for it.”

When I kill you, this country will fall. And I want that to be the last thing you see, Lady Zorokov. I want you to watch your empire die.”

It would be the third time I had made this journey. The first time as a refugee, a half-dead slave searching for someone to save her. The second time as a weapon, a slave to a new master ready to go fight someone else’s war. And now, at last, as a liberator.

“Do not fear death, my daughter. We all walk with one foot in each world. There is beauty in impermanence. And what sad lives we would live, if we never loved anything we would lose.”

As we walked to the gardens, I picked a few red blossoms from the bushes that lined the path and tucked them into Tisaanah’s hair. When she grinned at me in response, there were no gowns or makeup or magic in the world that would have made her more beautiful than she was in that moment.

My name is Tisaanah Vytezic. I am a leader of a broken country and lover of an imperfect soul. And I will not let him die here. Neither of us will die here.

This is either how the world ends, or how it begins.

And she gave me one final kiss—the sister to the one she gave me that night, right between my eyebrows. It burned long after she was gone.

Sometimes it’s nice to see good people live a good life.

I love you did not say enough. I love you did not say, thank you for being my home. I love you did not say, thank you for being my future.

It ends with two souls who create a future together.

And there, in this perfect moment, I have a grand realization: This is what it means to have something to lose. This is what it means to have something to love. And these days, I have so much to love.