Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2)

by Carissa Broadbent

  “The…Zorokovs?”

  “The Zorokov family. The Threllians. The ones responsible for those— those things. The message they brought us came from them.”

  Ishqa stared blankly at me. And then, realization flooded his face. “The king would be willing to craft temporary alliances. I have… left his inner circle. But the last I knew, there was talk of such a thing. Alliance with some humans, to get the numbers he needed to do what he wished. For all his faults… he is not willing to jeopardize Fey lives.” A wrinkle deepened between Ishqa’s brows. “If he has done that, then perhaps things are moving even faster than I feared. And it is greater proof than ever that we must act quickly.”

  “I told you it’s gone,” I choked out.

  Even if I wanted to help, I couldn’t. I was useless.

  “I do not believe it is truly gone. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to truly destroy. If you let me try, I could—”

  “You could what?” Max said. “Bring that thing back into the world? Everything that you’ve just told us is just another reason to leave it buried.”

  Ishqa gave Max a look that veered on pity. “It will not remain buried. It is just a matter of whether we are the ones to use it, or he is.”

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  “We?” Max said. “And what would this ‘we’ do, exactly? Let’s say we agree. Let’s say we let you… let you use your mystical Fey magics to drag Reshaye back to life. Then what?” His gaze slid to me. “Does she become your weapon, in this plan of yours?”

  Ishqa was silent, just long enough to give the answer he didn’t voice.

  “I take no pleasure in asking you for this,” he said.

  Max let out a puff of air through his teeth and shook his head, his body language declaring his rejection before his words did: No. Absolutely fucking not.

  And yet, a small part of me that felt the terrible silence in my magic where there had once been such power… and would be willing to do anything to bring that back.

  But then, the memory flooded over me. The sensation of that pallid flesh against my fingers. That box of horrific, meaningless death. Those agonized screams.

  I felt sick.

  I couldn’t do this — couldn’t become a savior for another people when I still could not save my own.

  “No. I have done this already. I have already traded myself away for someone else’s war. But where does that leave the people who need me? Do you expect me to abandon them so I can become your weapon, instead?”

  Ishqa gave me a sympathetic stare. “This is not someone else’s war. This will be your war, whether you like it or not.”

  “Then why are you the one here?” Max demanded. “You’re here to save human civilization out of… what, benevolence?”

  Ishqa’s mouth thinned. “Do I need a reason?”

  Max looked at him as if that was an insultingly stupid response. And it was. All it told us was that Ishqa didn’t want to give us the real answer, which didn’t do much to inspire trust.

  Frustration simmered beneath Ishqa’s pristine features. “I am telling you the truth. This is coming, even if you choose to ignore it. So what will you do, then? Nothing?”

  Max’s mouth opened, then closed. He glanced at me, a silent conversation playing out between us.

  “We cannot do anything here, right now,” I said. “We need…”

  A minute. A minute to think. A minute to consider. Because right now, all of this feels like a twisted dream.

  And that was answer enough for Max. He turned to Ishqa, jaw set.

  “Send us back. I don’t know where the hell we are, so I can’t.”

  Ishqa did not move for a long moment, then approached us, a folded piece of parchment between his fingers. His eyes searched our faces.

  “If you want to leave, I will not stop you. But…take this, too.”

  There, with the paper, he placed a silver-gold feather.

  “Burn that when you have made a decision,” he said, “and I will come to you.”

  Max unfolded the parchment, revealing a delicate Stratagram. And Ishqa stood there, still until the very last second, when he lurched forward.

  “My son,” he said, his voice rough. “My son is among the Fey that are missing. I feel the same anger my king does, the same desire to burn down this world that has taken him from me. To see your people destroyed for their part in it. But I have seen where that hatred leads. I’m coming to you as an ally and not an avenger.”

  He stepped back, and the world was already starting to dissolve as he said, “Think about what I have said. Please.”

  Chapter Seventy

  Max

  Nura threw open the door and just stood there, eyes wide, as if she was looking at a pair of ghosts.

  Her jacket wasn’t white anymore. Half of it was soaked through with spatters of crimson, and the rest was covered in strange stains that bloomed the color of withering flowers.

  We all looked at each other in bewildered silence.

  Tisaanah and I had barely made it to the Towers. And I wasn’t even completely sure why we came here, of all places — perhaps it was only because now, we literally had nowhere else to go. Ishqa’s Stratagram got us to Ara, and I managed to get us to the Towers after that, though my magic was so weak it was a struggle. We made quite a stir when we landed. Of course. We were half dressed, covered in blood, and generally looked insane.

  Well, I was willing to embrace that image. I felt insane. I had grabbed the nearest person wearing an Orders sigil and demanded to see Nura.

  I wasn’t expecting her to look like this.

  I had fought alongside Nura for years, but I had never seen her this way. Yes, there was the blood and the dirt. But her disheveled appearance wasn’t nearly as disconcerting as the half-panicked look on her face.

  She closed the door and sagged against it.

  “Ascended fucking above,” she muttered, pressing her palm to her eye. “I thought that you two were… Do you know how long I searched?”

  “Nura, what happened?” I asked, and Nura snorted.

  “What happened? I just came from your house. Or whatever’s left of it.”

  Whatever’s left of it. That statement kicked me in the gut.

  “So you saw them,” Tisaanah said, quietly. “The…creatures.”

  “They killed eight Syrizen.”

  I cursed beneath my breath. I’d been in battles of thousands that hadn’t managed to take out that many Syrizen in one swoop.

  Nura didn’t meet my gaze. Instead, her eyes kept going far away, as if shuffling through scenarios only she could see. She looked terrified. Hell, she was trembling.

  A realization fell into place. This wasn’t shock. This was worse than shock. This was abject horror, the horror of someone who knew exactly what they were facing, and how bad it was.

  “You know something,” I murmured. “What is it, Nura?”

  Her gaze flicked to me. For just a moment, I saw something there that I hadn’t seen in Nura’s eyes for nearly ten years — raw fear, the kind of vulnerability that she had spent so long trying to shield carefully from the world.

  She swallowed.

  “I need to show you something,” she said.

  I didn’t even know the Towers went this deep below ground. Nura brought us down past the entry floor, down even beneath the lowest levels used for storage. Yet when the platform finally came to a stop, the hallway before us didn’t look like an underground basement. It was white and clean and silver-adorned, just like the other hallways in the Tower of Midnight, brightly lit even though there were no windows.

  Nura did not speak as we walked. She led us down the hall, past a number of closed heavy doors, until we reached the very end. She opened the final door, and ushered us into what appeared to be a study. The shelves were crowded, lined with books that at a glance appeared to be even older than the tomes in the Towers’ libraries. There were tables strewn about the room, one covered in books, one covered in
scribbled notes, another holding many glass jars and vials of various substances.

  “Old friends!” a rough voice wheezed behind us.

  I tensed. Ascended fucking above. It couldn’t be.

  I turned, and immediately cursed.

  “What is he doing here?”

  Vardir, who sat at one of the messy tables — here, in the Towers, and very much not rotting his life away in Ilyzath — grinned at me.

  “How fate would see it! For us to meet again so soon.” His wild eyes fell to Tisaanah, and the grin widened, veins popping up beneath the paper-thin skin of his neck. “And with such interesting company. I haven’t been so invigorated in—”

  “Vardir,” Nura said, curtly, “leave us.”

  “Leave? So soon? But we have so much to—”

  “I can send you to your room or I can send you back to Ilyzath. Your choice. Go.”

  Vardir scowled, but begrudgingly rose. I glared at Nura, who went to one of the other desks on the opposite side of the room, her back to us.

  “What is he doing here?” I said again.

  “I needed him.”

  I did not like that answer. Vardir had nothing good to contribute to this world.

  “Needed him for what?” Tisaanah asked.

  Vardir slammed the door behind him as he left, leaving us in heavy silence. Nura did not turn.

  “There is a lot I need to explain to you,” she said. “And it is going to be difficult for me.”

  She turned around. In her hands rested a long, shallow bowl of hammered gold. Thin, silver liquid filled it to the brim, and on the still-as-glass surface was a crimson Stratagram, maintaining its shape with unnatural stillness even as Nura walked closer to us.

  My brow furrowed.

  “Is that—”

  “Yes.” She looked down at the contents of the bowl, frowning. The expression on her face made the skin prickle at the back of my neck. So unlike the version of her that I had known for so long.

  “You know, everyone thinks I’m so unfeeling. So cold.” Her lip twitched. “All because I don’t run around spilling my soul. All because words just aren’t enough to…”

  She trailed off.

  “What is that?” Tisaanah asked.

  “This,” Nura said, “is a spell. Rare, and difficult to cast. It can only be created by Valtain, and used only once. It will show you… me. My memories.”

  I was struck speechless.

  I couldn’t believe it. Out of all of the ridiculous things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, this nearly topped them all. To give someone access to your memories was a deeply vulnerable act, especially since such a spell couldn’t even fully define what the receiver saw. The idea of Nura doing it — Nura, who had guarded her thoughts and her heart with barbed wire even when we were the most important people in each other’s lives — seemed downright ludicrous.

  “Why?” I blurted out.

  Her eyes found mine, a silent plea in them. “Because there is so much I need to make you understand.”

  Seeing Nura like this made the hair prickle on the back of my neck. There was a cruel humor to it. A decade ago, I would have treasured such intimacy. Now it was being offered to me years later, not out of any semblance of love but out of… what? Fear?

  She cleared her throat. “Well? Do you want to stand around asking more questions, or do you want answers?”

  I wasn’t sure if I did want these answers.

  But I slipped my fingers into the cold liquid anyway. Tisaanah did the same. And finally, Nura did too, pressing her palms to the bottom of the bowl.

  She closed her eyes, and her magic rolled over us like a crashing wave.

  And with it came the past.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Nura

  Nura is ten years old. She is at a party thrown by one of her grandmother’s business partners. She has never seen a home like this before. It feels more like a city than a house. There are so many people here, and yet it all manages to be so horrifically dull. Nura is very, very bored.

  Eventually, she stomps off to go pout in the corner, only to find that someone else is already pouting there. The boy is about her age, with dark hair and dark eyes and a general aura of displeasure at having to suffer through this event. He snaps his fingers, and weak puffs of flame burst between them.

  That gets her attention.

  A Wielder. Like her.

  She sits beside him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Maxantarius,” the boy says.

  Nura makes a face. Where she came from, people are named things like “Jon” or “Erik.”

  The boy looks away. “I know it’s a stupid name.”

  “It is,” she says.

  His only response is to snap his fingers and release another little spark of flame. When he does, she sends her own magic to meet it, a puff of air to blow it out like lips to a candle. For the first time, she earns his attention — a look that is part startled, part insulted, part intrigued.

  She likes that look, she decides.

  “I’m Nura,” she says. And then adds, after a moment of thought, “I’ll just call you Max.”

  Nura is twelve years old. The years have passed fast. She and Max have done nothing but train, driven to endless pursuit of perfection by Brayan. She has never been so exhausted. And yet, it is easy to commit herself so completely when it means she can be with the Farliones — Max’s gentle mother, his friendly father, his siblings who welcome her into their affectionate squabbling, Brayan who treats her as if she actually has potential. And of course, Max, the best friend she has ever had.

  Now, the two of them stand at the doorstep of the Towers. Max is stubborn-jawed and wary-eyed, masking secret uncertainty. She is uncertain, too, even if she will not admit it.

  “The military is going to be better than getting stuck by ourselves in some countryside apprenticeship,” he says.

  The key words are, “By ourselves.”

  She is a Valtain, and he is a Solarie. In apprenticeships, they will be alone. At least here, they will be together.

  Besides, what other choice is there? For Max, there is none. He will join the military, as his brother and his father and his grandfather have before him, and he will excel, because that is what Farlione men do.

  Nura will be excellent, too, she decides. Just as good.

  Better, even.

  Her name is the first one on the enlistment papers.

  Nura is fifteen years old. She has learned how to master her magic, Wielding light and water and air and the thoughts of others, but above all she has a gift for Wielding fear. This, she thinks, makes sense — she has spent her life controlling her own fear. Small wonder she would be so adept at controlling it in others.

  Max has gotten good, too. He speaks to flames as if they are another part of him, and his combat skills earn impressed whispers among the instructors. This makes Nura’s skin prickle with jealousy. She wonders what it would be like to be the subject of such tittering.

  But then they say, Well, of course. He is a Farlione.

  Of course. He is a Farlione, a member of a military dynasty, and she is an orphaned girl who has spent her life clinging to their coattails.

  But Max does not seem to hear the pleased murmurs. Always, they are drowned out by his brother’s dissatisfaction. He still throws himself into training like someone who has everything to prove.

  Secretly, Nura is grateful for it, because she is certain that once he believes everything that everyone says about him, he will leave her behind. And when they fall to the ground after their fifth or tenth or seventeenth round of sparring, and he cracks some joke or gives her the right kind of sidelong glance, something she can not identify flutters in her stomach.

  And in that moment, the idea of being left behind by him is the most terrible thing she can imagine.

  Nura is eighteen years old. There are whispers of war rising in the north, among the Ryvenai territories.

&
nbsp; “Do you think it will happen?” she asks Max.

  “I doubt it.” He does not look up from his book.

  A knot forms in Nura’s stomach. She has spent years studying war, learning the most effective strategies in death and victory. But nothing she could read in books or play out in sparring would be the same as the real thing.

  “If it does,” she says, quietly, “we can prove ourselves.”

  Max’s emotions flicker across his face — they always do, he never hides them. Uncertainty, fear. Temptation by all it promises.

  “Maybe,” he says, at last. “We shall see.”

  “We shall see.”

  But it is only days later that Nura is on a patrol that quickly turns violent. The Ryvenai crowd is angry, the kind of angry that moves people to pick up steel and magic rather than shouts. A Wielder woman lunges at her, lightning at her hands, and Nura reacts before she can think. One strike, and her knife is buried in the woman’s flesh.

  The blood is everywhere at once. The woman falls. The crowd goes silent. Nura drops to her knees, barking commands, trying to stop the bleeding.

  It is no use. Nura holds the woman as she dies, watching the light leave her eyes. That night, she hides in the washroom and empties her guts all night long.

  It is the first life she has taken. Not the last, of course.

  Nura is twenty years old.

  She has learned to wield death the way she wields magic and fear. Tension is spreading across Ara like crimson wildflowers. But she and Max traverse the conflicts easily. The two of them are powerful individually — together, they are an unstoppable force.

  Now, they are both riding the euphoria of victory when they return to their barracks after a long day, their muscles sore but their hearts soaring. Max is an attractive man, but perhaps he has never been more handsome than he was today, focused and confident and just the right amount of vicious. He turns to her now, here in this dimly-lit hallway, and there is something in his dark-eyed gaze that makes her skin shiver.