“Ishqa.” I heard the word come from my lips. One of my hands still pressed Tisaanah to the wall, where she slackened, half-conscious. “Why are you here?”
He wasn’t speaking Aran. Still, I felt the words’ meaning in the magic that we shared.
“This is not the way,” Ishqa said. “You are making a mistake. You will only discard more lives if you do this.”
Hatred spiked through me.
“How many lives have already been sacrificed because of the choices you made?”
“Too many, Caduan. Do you think I do not know that?” Ishqa stepped forward, cautiously. “It is not too late to turn around.”
I felt an expression twitch in the muscles of my face — a sneer at my lip. “I am not like you. I will not leave behind the people of mine that the humans have stolen. And I will not leave her.”
“Aefe is gone, Caduan. She has been gone for centuries. This thing is not her.”
“It’s more convenient to believe that,” my voice said. “But I have had enough of leaving my blood behind. The humans have proven who they are. They have proven that they will never stop.”
“You are trying to cure your loneliness.”
“I am trying to right the wrongs that you have brought upon our people.” Anger flooded me, and I could feel the king’s grip on me weakening, as if knocked off-kilter by the sheer force of his own rage. He whirled to Ishqa, my feet pacing forward. “Perhaps to you it was always worth sacrificing some meaningless lives in the name of your petty political games. But that is not the world I have built. Our people deserve to know that any one of their lives are worth burning down humanity.”
“You want her because of what she is. Because of the power she offers.”
“I am not you,” I spat.
And there was no time to think, no time to move, as I whirled around, pressed my hand to Tisaanah’s temple, and, in one violent burst, ripped Reshaye out of her mind.
Tisaanah screamed. Her knees buckled. The pain overtook me, too — overtook even the presence within my mind. The power it had taken to do that exhausted all of us.
There it was. An opening. Seconds. Not even.
I had no time to think. I dove for it.
My magic roared past his. Every flame in the Scar suddenly brightened, like the sun had emerged from behind a cloud.
I slid my hand over the blade still clutched in Tisaanah’s shaking hand, then pried it from her grasp and did the same to hers. Her head lolled, then weakly lifted to look at me. She was bleeding magic, bleeding life. But her eyes told me she knew what I was asking her to do.
Her eyes widened. “No.”
“Cut it out,” I choked out.
She shook her head. “No.”
I felt the presence within me collect itself. Start to rise, start to reach for power again.
We had no time to argue. I pressed my palm to hers, our blood smearing together.
“Do it, Tisaanah. Take my magic and do it.”
Her eyes glistened with tears, reflecting flecks of fire. My fingers closed around her hand, knuckles whitened.
“Now,” I choked out.
Just as I felt the fey king diving for the connection between us again.
Just as Tisaanah pressed her other hand to my cheek and whispered, “He got the parrot to match the coat.”
If I had control over my own body, I would have thrown back my head and laughed. Who the fuck even does that?
Tisaanah’s mouth formed, “I love you.”
The passageway opened between us.
And I gave her all of it. All of my magic.
Chapter Eighty-Five
Tisaanah
It happened so quickly.
I reached deeper into Max. Deep enough to see all of the connections between us, between him and the Fey, all of the threads of corrupted magic that were flooding up from the deeper levels beneath. It was there, far inside of him, like an open wound gushing infection.
This was it. This was how the Fey king was reaching him — how he was reaching Ara. I was still bleeding, too, where Reshaye had been carved out of the deepest recesses of my mind. A crippling wound. Maybe a deadly one.
But Max’s magic surged through me, strong enough to power me. Even though I could feel myself consuming it, consuming him, drawing upon the soul-deep connection between us.
I Wielded all of that power.
The presence, the one that lingered between all of us, lunged for me. Too slow — only barely. I yanked the passage closed just in time, even though I felt it grab me the same way I had once felt Esmaris’s dying grip on my hair.
And in the last seconds, I could have sworn I saw a face. A woman’s face, with pointed ears and tan skin, and deep violet eyes. She reached out only for a moment, before she, too, was gone.
Distantly, I felt Max’s agony. And yet, also, I felt his determination, a wordless encouragement.
Gods, live, Max. Live, live, live.
I begged it of him. Begged it, as I buried deeper into his mind, tangled up in his memories, in his emotions, in all of the infected threads where the Fey king had tied himself to him.
Please, live.
I drew up the last of my, his, our power.
And I severed all of those infected threads.
Max’s memories rained down over me like shattered glass.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Max
Pain.
The scent of blood. The thickness of magic in the air. The floor was shaking. I was in Sarlazai. I was in my family home. I was here, in the Scar.
Tisaanah.
I forced my eyes open, and my second eyelids closed. The world was numb and blurry. My mind was broken.
Tisaanah.
There was a shard. I had to force the pieces together. Even then there was so much missing.
I turned my head, and saw her face pressed against the ground, unfurling mist between us. A beautiful girl, with patches of colorless and tan skin, one silver eye and one green, staring right through me. One tear falling to the ground.
Panic.
Was she dead? She looked as if she could be. And that would be— that would be—
No. No, she was not dead. Her fingers were reaching for me, weakly. And mine, of their own accord, reached back.
But before they could touch, she was lifted off the ground. I managed to look up. There was a man there — or… not a man, not human. He had wings and pointed ears.
I struggled to find the piece of my mind that knew him.
“Can you move?” he was saying. “We need to leave. Now.”
Leave? To go where? I didn’t even know where we were. Behind the winged man, shadows poured from fissures in the wall. They took the shape of humans, though their forms were broken and unraveling.
“I cannot carry you both,” the winged man said, more urgently. “Get up.”
My eyes fell back to him. To Tisaanah in his arms.
“Go.”
Forming the word took all of my energy.
The man hesitated. Then looked over his shoulder, at the approaching shadows.
“Go,” I said again.
“I will come back,” he said. “Try to get to the surface.”
I wasn’t even entirely sure which surface he was talking about. Not that it mattered. I nodded all the same.
The man’s wings spread wide, and then he was launching into the darkness above. The shadows scattered, as if afraid of him, before righting themselves and turning faceless heads towards me.
I tried and failed, twice, to push myself to my hands and knees. The floor seemed to be tilting. The walls quaked and trembled. Stones tumbled down.
I succeeded in rising to my knees, then my feet, staggering forward.
I only made it three paces.
Something yanked me back. I fell in a heap.
And then a grey-eyed woman with silver braided hair leaned over me. There was blood on her face and hatred in her eyes.
Nura.
; That name came to me fast.
My hand closed around the dagger on the ground. My body knew the movements, but my muscles wouldn’t cooperate. She disarmed me in seconds. The blade went sliding across the floor.
More and more stones fell. The ravine was collapsing.
And Nura’s eyes never left mine.
Figures, that this is how it would end.
The thought floated through my broken mind. And maybe it was because all of those individual pieces were lost that the culmination seemed suddenly so inevitable. A thousand moments leading here, to this place, this act. A million twisted pathways that all arrive at this destination.
Is this what they call fate? Me and her, destroying each other?
“You don’t get to run away, Max,” she said. “Not this time.”
The rumbles of shifting stone swallowed her words. Her face was close to mine.
“You should have killed me,” she whispered. “I warned you about that bleeding heart.”
The walls collapsed.
And then, darkness.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Aefe
Reshaye
Aefe
Sound came first. The sound of birds. Then, the rustle of a breeze through leaves. The distant click of footsteps on a polished floor. All things that perhaps I knew once.
Then, touch. The soft sensation of cushions beneath me, of smooth fabric on aching skin. Smell. The clean scent of damp earth, of distant flowers. Of strong tea. Of lilies. How did I know it was lilies?
I opened my eyes.
I stared at a ceiling formed of intricate patterns crafted in copper, vines and moss twining around them. Those patterns framed glass, which revealed a churning grey sky.
I twitched my fingers.
My fingers.
I expected to feel someone else, here — someone else in this body who would fight me for control or linger just out of reach.
But I was met with nothing but silence. My mind was cavernous, empty, lonely. There was no one here but me.
“Aefe.”
Warm fingertips brushed my hand, and on instinct, I yanked it away. I sat up, too fast, making my head spin and stomach churn.
“You are safe,” the voice murmured.
You are safe. I heard it in Tisaanah’s voice, in her thoughts, within the mind we had once shared. My mind was empty, now.
I turned, a snarl at my lips, already lunging out of the bed. I collided with a figure and the two of us were on the ground, me crawling over him, his hands gripping my shoulders, before I even had a moment to look at him.
“It’s me, Aefe.”
“Do not call me that,” I snarled.
And then I looked at him, and stopped.
I did know him. Even though I didn’t understand how. He was a ghost from a life I no longer remembered. Someone else’s life, not my own. It was always someone else’s life. He had a sharp, angular face, a smattering of freckles across his cheeks, auburn hair that waved over his forehead. A copper crown, formed in the shape of a stag’s horns, sat upon his head. But it was his eyes that froze me. A familiar mossy green, and now, they were looking at me as if they saw me. As if they knew me.
I did not like it. I did not want to be seen.
I hissed and leapt away, staggering backwards until I fell against a wall. I was in a bedchamber — a fine one, from what I understood of such things. The tile was cold beneath my feet.
“Where am I?” I blurted out. “Who— what is this—”
I did not know how to word my question. I looked down at my splayed hands. They were not Tisaanah’s. They were not Maxantarius’s. They were not the withered hands of the man in the room of white and white.
The copper-haired man approached me slowly, carefully. I did not like the way he looked at me, as if I was something to be examined, something to be understood. It was easier not to be understood.
“The body is yours,” he said, quietly. “Come. Look at it.”
“I have no body.”
“Look.”
He held out a hand, gesturing to a mirror on the other side of the room. I regarded it warily before stepping towards it.
What I saw within it made my heart clench, though I did not understand why.
A female Fey stood there, wearing a simple white shift. She had tan skin, and long deep-red hair, and a smattering of pearlescent purple across her cheeks. Her eyes were a dark violet. They were deep-set, and tired, and very afraid.
I stepped backwards.
“You recognize yourself,” the man said.
“I—”
I did not know how to answer the question. My head hurt. An image burst through my mind, an image of three beautiful people in a room of polished black stone. An image of a face in a mirror, a face that looked like this one.
“It’s alright,” the man said, gently. “You have time.”
I looked down at my hands again. My gaze trailed up, to my arms, and the expanse of smooth tan skin there. Unmarked skin. I did not understand why something about that seemed… wrong.
Then I turned my hand, and saw black ink tattooed on my inner wrist. Three symbols, swirls with varying contents. I knew they were words, but I could not understand them. Yet the sight of them hurt. I blinked, and thought of a sheet of black stone reaching towards the sky, covered in symbols just like this.
“The body is a recreation of yours,” the man said, quietly. “But only a recreation. You had tattoos, once. Telling your story. You have already lived so many lives. It seemed wrong for you to start with none.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Then I dropped my hand and turned to him.
“Where is this place?” I said.
The corners of his mouth lifted. “Let me show you.”
He led me down beautiful hallways of more gold and copper and glass ceilings, plants spilling everywhere. Other Fey passed us in the hall, dressed in inordinately complicated clothing. They cast me strange looks, and stopped to bow to Caduan as we passed.
At last, we reached the end of a hallway and stepped through a set of open glass doors, onto a balcony. The sun was bright. I had to squint. My head hurt. A breeze sent goosebumps to the surface of my skin. I was not accustomed to being so in-tuned with a body’s sensitivities. Is this how humans always felt, when they had flesh to themselves?
“This,” Caduan said, “is Ela’Dar. The One House.”
His voice changed, somewhat, when he said it. I did hear that, even if I still did not understand the nuances of what the change meant. His gaze flicked to me, watching me closely as I stepped to the railing of the balcony and looked over. A city spread out before me. It sprawled far enough to fill my vision, beautiful copper buildings intertwining with greenery. All of this was built upon the side of a mountain, the bronze of the buildings and green of the forest and slate grey of stone all pieced together, each complementing each other. There were little houses in the distance, and towering, vine-wrapped structures, and crowded roads and bridges that connected them all. In the distance, beyond the sheer drop of the slate cliffs, the calm blue-grey of the sea reached towards the horizon.
“Our world was very different,” Caduan said, quietly. “All those years ago. All of the Houses constantly fighting with each other. When the House of Obsidian and the House of Wayward Winds went to war, it nearly destroyed the Fey race. Centuries of fragmented houses. Or no houses at all.” He was watching me. I could feel it, even though I would not look at him. “I united them. The only way we can thrive is if we do so together. And we have. All those broken pieces have been brought together for this. A unified Fey kingdom.”
My head hurt. My stomach churned.
“I do not understand why this matters to me.”
If Caduan was taken aback by this response, he did not show it. “I understand if it doesn’t, now. But I thought you might like to see your home.”
My gaze snapped to him.
Home. Home. Home.
How I had craved a home. Ho
w I had longed for one. Is this place what a home was? It did not seem like what I would imagine. It seemed cold and loud and crowded. An overwhelming place to live, with a mind so cold and empty.
I looked to the city. Without my permission, memories collided. Burning cities and war. Unbearable pain. A room of white and white and white. The heartbreak of betrayal.
And then, anger.
The sudden flood of it was a relief. At last, something familiar. At last, something that filled the emptiness.
“You would never understand,” I said, through gritted teeth, “the vile things that were done to me.”
A cold silence.
“Trust me when I say that I do,” he said.
“No one came for me. For so many days.” I whirled to him. “Why? If you knew what I was, then why would you leave me?”
Pain flickered across his face.
“I tried,” he said. “I didn’t know you were alive, Aefe. And I could not find you. Not until I felt the shifts in magic. I felt you first, to the south, in Threll. And then in Ara.”
Then that pain hardened. I knew the emotion I saw there, too. An anger that reflected my own.
“They began taking us,” he said. “Shortly after that. Six fey disappeared, all while I was learning what had been done to you. I reclaimed them, but only one has survived. And what they did to you… hundreds of years of it…”
His words grew clumsy. It seemed strange, for him to speak that way. He did not seem the type to lose his grip on words, but he stopped, looked away. Then turned back to me.
“The humans thrived for so long because we allowed them to. Once, lives were only worth as much as the power of their House. But now, we are one kingdom. Every Fey life is worth it. Humans had already slaughtered hundreds of our people, long ago. They do not get to take a single life more. Not one.” A sneer formed over his nose. “I will never fail to fight for my people ever again. The world will be better off when they are gone.”
Silence. The intensity of his words seemed at odds with the gentle breeze through the leaves. Caduan looked at me, and his gaze slipped through mine like intertwining hands. Something in it, this time, made me pause. There were memories in that look. Memories that he had and I did not.
Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 54