Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Carissa Broadbent (best book recommendations txt) 📖

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