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

by Carissa Broadbent

  A low laugh ripples her thoughts. {You can not lie to me. I know the truth of why you are here, and what you seek to gain.}

  I seek to gain the power to stop another war.

  {You seek power, yes. But I do not wish to give it to you.}

  It begins to pull away. But Nura’s magic grabs onto it, refusing to let it leave.

  She will Wield it. She will dominate it.

  You took everything from me, she snarled. You don’t get to win this, too.

  And so quickly, it turns. Reshaye rails against her control.

  {I have fought stronger magics than yours,} it hisses. {I have broken stronger minds.}

  The fight is worse than any battle Nura has been in. It is savage, asking for everything she has and more, reaching for all the tender parts left in her mind. They clash, and she is tangled up in a web of the thing she hates more than she has ever hated anything, the thing that destroyed the best person she knew and murdered the innocent children that were practically her siblings.

  In a battle of wills, her hatred alone will make her stronger. She is sure of it.

  Later, she will only remember bits and pieces of this time. Their battle could have lasted hours or days or weeks. Time, after all, belongs to the world above. They are somewhere deeper than that now, and falling further still.

  Reshaye rips her apart.

  {You are all always the same. You bind me and break me and use me. Do not think I do not remember what you have done.}

  But Nura is not ready to concede.

  With all of her strength, they clash one final time, and she Wields all of Reshaye’s magic until it burns her veins, until she thinks that it might kill her, until—

  Suddenly, it all goes silent.

  Nura opens her eyes.

  Rolling plains surround her, extending in every direction. The sky is black and bright all at once, blue light shuddering in the darkness and floating like wisps of smoke. It is lifeless and airless here. Everything about it reeks of magic, so powerful it could peel the skin from her flesh.

  For a moment, everything is still.

  And then a sudden burst of light rolls from the horizon, and she doesn’t even have time to brace before it consumes her.

  What Nura sees, there in the depths of that light, makes the horrors that she had lived in the Ryvenai War look like mere inconveniences.

  She sees death and torture and indiscriminate destruction.

  She sees the Towers shattering, glass twinkling overhead like razored rain.

  She sees creatures made out of shadow and twisted flesh crawling across the countryside, many-jointed fingers tearing apart screaming people.

  She sees an armada of ships on the horizon line, stretching out as far as she can see, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and—

  She sees the beaches of Ara so leaden with rotting bodies that not one stretch of sand is visible.

  She sees a man with golden hair and a raised sword, wings spread out behind him, face hard and merciless with rage.

  She sees many of them, these people — these creatures — with strange, unfamiliar magic, their ears pointed, spitting violet blood.

  And at last, she sees him:

  One of them, shrouded in shadow, leaning over her. Upon his head are the peaks of a crown, echoing the points of his ears. He is so close that she can feel his breath on her face and yet cannot bring his features into focus.

  Did you think I would not come for you? he whispers, as gentle as a lover.

  And then she feels steel through her gut, and the world crashes down.

  Nura wakes up gasping. She empties her stomach, then collapses onto the floor, reeling from what she had seen. She is covered in sweat and blood.

  It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, except for what she had seen.

  It is real.

  Of this, she is certain. She had been trained extensively in the art of deploying and unraveling illusions, and she knows the difference between falsehoods and the truth. Seering is rare, but not unheard of. And she felt the truth in it. The certainty of what she had seen — that it was a horror still to come — burrows deep into her bones.

  She is so terrified that she can barely breathe.

  But then, she forces her mind to work. This is what she does. She thinks her way out of the impossible.

  Fey. They are Fey. She saw those pointed ears. They could be nothing else. Everyone thought they were extinct, but everyone had been wrong.

  And they are coming. Here.

  When? She can’t be sure. The Ara she saw was the Ara she knows, not one of some distant future, but could it be tomorrow? Next month? Next year?

  Maybe there is time. Time to stop it from happening.

  Who will believe her? Who can she trust?

  No one.

  She had dragged herself to the top, but in the wake of the war, the Orders are fractured and weakened. And, worse, she is alone. She is not loved or trusted. She is not respected, at least not more than her title demands.

  So who would she bring this to? A thirteen-year-old queen? Zeryth Aldris, that self-obsessed idiot? They will either laugh her out of the room or use this as evidence of her slipping sanity.

  No.

  Her fear settles into resolve.

  She had ended the Ryvenai War by doing what no one else would. One day she would suffer in the afterlife for it. But now, she has nothing left to lose.

  There is nothing — nothing — that she will not sacrifice to protect her people.

  Nura staggers to her feet, casting one more glance at the listless body on the table. And she begins to make a plan

  The next morning, she goes to the Arch Commandant’s office. He is sitting there with his feet up on his desk, being disgustingly smug.

  She slides into a chair across from him “I think we have a problem.”

  “Do we?” He doesn’t look up.

  “There was another rebellion this morning. How long are we going to pretend that Sesri is capable of ruling this country?”

  Now she has his attention. Zeryth’s eyebrows arch. “How uncharacteristically blunt of you, Nura.”

  “I’m tired of waiting.” She leans forward. “I’m ready for action.”

  Every night, she tries to Wield Reshaye. Every night, she fails. The exhaustion is beginning to take a toll on her, but she hides it carefully, just as she buttons up her scars beneath her jacket each morning. As much as she resents it, she has started to give Reshaye the blood of others. It does not hate anyone as much as it hates her, but still, it will not accept anyone.

  “What about Maxantarius?” Zeryth says one day, after yet another failed attempt. “We know it likes him.”

  “No,” she says, too-quickly. Then, slower, “No. He won’t do it, anyway.”

  The truth is that she cannot bring herself to pull him into this, not after he has already lost so much, not after what she had done to him. But the weeks wear on, and she grows more desperate. Finally, when Zeryth proposes it again, she is silent for a long moment and says, “Maybe. When you get back, maybe.”

  Zeryth leaves for Threll that afternoon. He will be traveling for many months. She does not like the idea of letting him out of her sight for so long, but he has connections in Threll, and if one of them is to be across the ocean, she would rather it be him. Zeryth has his useless political ambitions in Threll, but more importantly, the Threllian continent holds many magical artifacts — Reshaye itself had been brought to Ara from across the sea. Maybe, the two of them theorized, he would be able to find an alternative there.

  Zeryth is less urgent about this than she would like. But he, after all, believes this merely to be a game about a crown. She knows it is so much bigger.

  And so, Zeryth travels, and she waits.

  Until a Fragmented girl, bleeding and feverish, collapses at their door.

  It is nothing more than a hunch at first. But Nura confirms it, again and again, feeding the Threllian girl’s blood to the creature drop by drop unti
l the entire vial is depleted. Every time, Reshaye’s silver magic rises up to meet it, accepting the blood willfully instead of leaving it to roll off of the vessel’s pallid skin. The answer is clear.

  Later, she goes to the Fragmented girl’s room. She is gravely ill, and her back is a patchwork of tattered flesh. The work of a monster. It was a miracle that the girl had managed to make it across the ocean alive. Nura supposes that proves some sort of grit, even though the person lying in the bed before her looks weak and delicate.

  This foreigner, by some ridiculous twist of fate, is their only chance.

  Their one chance.

  Every time Nura closes her eyes, she sees the destruction she had witnessed in her vision. There is not a single second that she isn’t aware of exactly what’s on the line.

  They had tested thousands. Reshaye likes this one, and this one alone. They can not mess this up. They need every possible chance at success.

  And that is when Nura decides that her old friend needs to be involved, after all.

  It is easy to control someone who wants something so much.

  From the moment Nura meets Tisaanah, she sees it in her: obsessive, single-minded determination.

  Nura vows not to make the same mistake twice. The Threllian girl’s mind needs to be strong enough to handle the power she will be Wielding. And so, they test her, train her, measure her.

  And meanwhile, there are still pieces to be moved on the board.

  It is easy to make Ara hate Queen Sesri. The girl is so young, so easily led, with fears so easily manipulated into violence. It is almost laughably simple, to turn her against the Lords who were not Order supporters and replace them with ones that are. To make her a terrible option, with any acceptable replacement.

  Zeryth revels in it, but Nura takes no joy in any of this. Sesri is just a frightened child. They are doing a horrible thing. Still, it is better than the alternative.

  The gears turn, and the plan progresses.

  Tisaanah proves herself. She is a talented enough Wielder, yes, but more importantly, she has a strong mind. And Max has proven himself, too, to be a good teacher — as good as Nura knew he would be. Every time she sees them together, she watches it grow. First, respect. Then, admiration. Finally, friendship.

  For a long time, she tells herself that it would be enough. To have Tisaanah know him. To give Reshaye that thread of familiarity to cling to. Nura won’t take more from him.

  But every night, she still goes to Reshaye. Every night, she tries to Wield it. And every night, she digs deeper, catching fragments of those nightmarish visions, each one more bloodstained than the last, and her desperation grows.

  He would never help them, anyway, she tells herself.

  But then, there are Tisaanah’s trials. Then, there is the Orders’ ball. And then, there is Max, looking at Tisaanah the way one looks at a second chance.

  Nura does not want to see it. But she knows, in that moment, that she could make him do anything.

  Nura will never forget the way he looks at her when he finds out the truth. The betrayal in his eyes still hurts as much as it did eight years ago. And she knows he wants to believe himself, when he says he wants nothing to do with it, when he says that he will leave and never come back. Even she wants to believe him.

  But days later, when Max is back at the Towers — back at Tisaanah’s side — she is not surprised.

  After all, it is easy to control someone who wants something so much.

  A sea, a sky, a ship. Plains stretching out for miles and miles. Fire and magic in a white marble building. Threll.

  It gets a little closer to disaster than Nura would have liked. But in the end, it turns out perfectly. The Mikovs removed, Tisaanah’s friends rescued, and, most importantly, the magnitude of Reshaye’s power confirmed.

  It is good to have the former estate of the Mikovs under Orders control. This was her idea, though Zeryth was more than happy to go along with it — Nura suspects he has his own little imperialist fantasies. But Nura wants a foothold in Threll for the more practical benefits. Ara gains an outpost across the sea, a prime vantage point far less isolated than Ara’s distant island. And Nura gains easier access to the magical secrets that Threll, and its bordering nations, could hold. Carefully, away from Zeryth’s distracted gaze, she instills the few subordinates she trusts more than anyone to lead here. She bribes the Threllians that plan to remain in the city, giving them more money and comfort than they know what to do with, and explicit instructions to report only to her. It is easy to buy their loyalty. It isn’t even the money that does it, but the kindness.

  Nura does not trust Zeryth, not even as her reluctant co-conspirator. So she is careful, in that brief time in Threll, to make sure that this place will truly be hers.

  It is the night before they leave when it happens.

  The most loyal of the servants comes and gets her, late in the night. His eyes are wide and his voice shaky. The language barrier has made conversation nearly impossible, but Nura doesn’t need words to know that something has deeply frightened him. He brings her to the edge of the city, out into a stable where two stablehands stand whispering and quaking in the corner. He brings her to the back room.

  And Nura suddenly cannot breathe.

  There is a body here, on the concrete ground.

  A body with wings.

  It is a crumpled pile of limbs. The man is clad in drapes of fabric. His wings are pale, silvery gold — one is crooked, clearly injured. His face is pressed against the floor, strands of gold hair falling across tan skin. He shifts, just slightly, and she realizes he is conscious if only in the barest sense of the word. She staggers back, fear spiking.

  She recognizes him immediately.

  She saw that face in her nightmares every night. And she had seen it in those horrific visions — the warrior, wings outstretched, sword bared. Always coming before death fell over Ara.

  She had long ago sawed away the pieces of herself that fell victim to panic, but this — this is a struggle. She had always been certain that her visions were real. Now she realizes that the threat is breathing down their throat.

  The inhuman man blinks, mumbling something slurred. Nura grabs a broomstick and strikes him over the head, hard enough to make him go still. The Threllian jumps away, startled. Nura is breathing hard.

  A decision falls over her.

  She has the opportunity now to prepare. To study her enemy. And more importantly, she may now have the opportunity to create something powerful enough to destroy them.

  She will take this threat, and make it a gift.

  She straightens. In a fractured mix of Aran and Thereni, she tells her Threllian man that this is to remain a secret, for her knowledge and hers alone.

  That night, she writes a letter to someone she never wanted to speak to again — Vardir Israin, imprisoned in Ilyzath.

  I never thought I would write these words, she wrote, but I will be needing your help.

  Even though Nura is expecting his betrayal, she is furious to come home and find Zeryth with a crown on his head and his own war already in progress. He betrayed her before she could turn on him — smart of him, perhaps, but for the stupidest, most selfish reasons.

  Nura’s loyalty pact means she cannot slit his throat in the night like she wants to. But at least his war is giving the Orders more power, albeit slowly. And she does not need to lift a finger against Zeryth in order to cull him. The thing he wants most and the thing that will destroy him are the same.

  He has already started experimenting with deep, dark magic in order to craft the curse that holds Tisaanah’s life — how he managed to do that all on his own, Nura will never know — and it is easy to coax him with more of it. He wants to win his war. He wants to win Ara’s crown. And most of all, he so, so desperately wants their respect.

  All Nura gives him is exactly what he wants. Magic. Powerful, inhuman magic, pulled from her experimentations with Vardir. Even she does not understand why Tisaana
h and Max, due to their exposure to Reshaye, are able to handle it so much better than most. But Zeryth is only human, not even modified as the Syrizen are to raise his tolerance. The more he tries to be something more powerful, the weaker he gets.

  Nura hands him the power he craves, and watches him use it to slowly destroy himself.

  The war goes on, and Zeryth withers, and Nura studies in the shadows, looking to the horizon, watching, waiting. Working.

  And still, the visions grow more vivid, every night.

  Until months pass, and the threat has arrived.

  Strange, the paths that life takes.

  Nura thinks this to herself as she stands in her office, a silver bowl in her hands, Max and Tisaanah staring at her expectantly.

  She is out of time. The things she saw destroying Max’s home, ripping Syrizen apart, cement that. Her nightmares have arrived.

  She is so, so afraid. She does not trust herself to weave words that convey all that she needs them to understand. They hate her. Of course they do. She has done unspeakable things. There are no sentences she can string together that would make any of that better.

  And so all she can do is open herself up for them like a dissected animal, her insides pulled apart. Everything within her rails against it. But she has spent her entire life learning how to sew closed every single gap inside of her. Words will not be enough to tear it open. And she needs them to understand — she needs them to understand what is coming, and how much she needs their help. She needs them to understand why.

  It is Max who approaches her first, looking at her with a wrinkle between his brows. She wonders if he knows he has worn that expression since he was a child.

  Perhaps here, in her memories, he will find a shard of something familiar in her, too.

  She offers them the spell, and with it, her thoughts, her dreams, her regrets. Her soul.

  And prays it will be enough.