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

Antedale, you will stay at the camp and mind all of the very important logistics to be minded, miles away from the fighting. Do you understand?”

A wrinkle deepened between Moth’s eyebrows. “But—”

“Do you understand, Moth?”

A long silence. He looked deep in thought. “So I won’t be helping,” he said, at last.

“Sometimes the best possible thing you can be is useless,” I said. And that was the end of that.

Chapter Twelve

Tisaanah

I dreamed of a memory. I dreamed of Esmaris.

I was fifteen years old, lounging in one of Esmaris’s many velvet-adorned salon rooms. Two other women were there, too, more of his slaves — by the end, I was his favorite, but that was not true just yet. They were older than me, and two of the most stunningly beautiful women I’d ever seen. They draped themselves over Esmaris and his general, both of whom treated them as mildly irritating scenery. Still, they knew their roles, and I knew mine. They were the open arms, and I was still the curiosity — the Fragmented girl with strange skin and strange eyes, who could make such beautiful butterflies.

Esmaris and the general were talking business. I floated about the room with my little performances, but kept one ear turned to their conversation. I was young, but I already understood the value in collecting scraps from conversations no one knew I heard.

Today, Esmaris was displeased.

He had been fighting with another powerful Threllian family for valuable land to the east. Through the sheer might of his military force, he’d claimed one small section with intention to tighten his fist around the rest. But his rivals had been so incensed by his victory that they’d sent in their men to burn the fields. It was a suicide mission. The men who’d lit the fires — slaves — had died doing it. The family would not reclaim their land. It was a move made out of spite, and nothing else.

But of course, that was how the Threllian Lords played their games. They were not hungry, so a few thousand pounds of destroyed food meant nothing to them. Their slaves were possessions, not people, and so a few discarded lives in the name of revenge was considered to be an appropriate cost.

Esmaris’s general was deeply displeased, his face growing mottled and purple the longer he talked, flecks of spittle landing on the slim arms of the woman draped beside him. It was an admirable feat of self control, I thought, that she didn’t wipe it away.

“We will destroy them,” the general spat, bringing his fist down on the table. “Our forces are nearly double theirs in size, and none in Threll are more skilled. We could rid Threll of their house forever.”

But Esmaris’s rage was cold and calculated. “We could,” he said, calmly. “But we will not.”

Even I had been surprised by that. The general’s face contorted in confusion. “We can’t let their disrespect stand.”

“Of course not. But they chose meaningless destruction because they’re too small-minded to think of anything bigger.”

“They disrespected the Mikov name,” the general growled. “They don’t deserve mercy.”

Esmaris’s anger struck like a viper. That’s always how it was — nothing but cool serenity, and then suddenly, his hand was at his general’s throat, wrenching him down across the table.

“Mercy?” he breathed, slowly. “This isn’t about mercy.”

The general was twitching, struggling to breathe. I couldn’t move. The two other women in the room avoided looking at Esmaris, making a careful show of not acknowledging what was happening right in front of them.

“What will I do with a thousand dead men?” And then Esmaris leaned forward, and said, “Dead men are useless. Dead men don’t remember your name.”

He caught me staring. His eyes flicked to me, and I was so afraid of the hatred that I saw in them that I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I was not supposed to look this cruelty in the face. I was not supposed to acknowledge what I was seeing.

But perhaps Esmaris thought so little of me that he saw no more judgement in my stare than he did in the faces of his decorative statues. He released the general, letting him fall over the table in a heap.

Esmaris Mikov did not attack that rival house. He could have destroyed their cities and burned their crops. He did not.

Instead he had their children taken, mutilated, sterilized. I heard only stories of what was done to them, and prayed that most of it was exaggeration even though I suspected it was not. In one swoop, with merely a handful of lives, Esmaris killed the family legacy. He sent them back the corpses. And he kept just one child from each branch of the family alive — tongue intact — to make sure they knew exactly who was responsible, and just how merciful he was.

And they did not attack Esmaris Mikov ever again.

“Tisaanah.”

My eyes snapped open. I knew right away that something was wrong. My hand was halfway to Il’Sahaj’s hilt by the time the darkness came into focus.

A silhouette carved from the shadow as my sight adjusted. White skin, white hair, white eyes, white clothes.

“Get up,” Nura said, and I was already obeying.

“What happened?”

I knew, somehow, before the words left her lips. There was a certain buzz in the air, like the kind that lingered before a crack of lightning, one that nagged at Reshaye’s hunger.

“Kazara struck first,” Nura said. “They’re at our doorstep. Time to turn them away.”

She said it as if it were a grim chore to be done, the way one might speak of rats that had gotten into the grain shed or a long-overdue need to trim the hedges. I rose and threw on the military jacket that she presented me, shoved my feet in boots, dressed quickly in the dark.

When I rejoined Nura, she gave me a quick glance that held just a shred of uncertainty. No time to acknowledge it before she Stratagrammed us away, and a wall