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

Could I argue with any of those definitions? That was what I was. A creature that stole magic from others, like a carrion bird. Scriptures told of people like me. Essneras were incarnations of corruption. Mathira, the mother of all souls, sheltered the bodiless spirits of all Sidnee away from the corrupted forces beyond her reach. But before birth, my soul must have slipped from her grasp, wandering out into the poison beyond her safety. It was very rare, and it was terrible.

“She saved your general’s life,” Siobhan said, sharply.

“By stealing our magic. That’s why the Sidnee sent her — to steal.” Ashraia stalked back and forth before the fire. Ishqa was still and silent as glass.

“That is not true,” I said. Even though I didn’t fully understand why my father had sent me. “I am here because we have a bigger threat to worry about than you.”

“It is dangerous for her to be here,” Ashraia sneered. “The gods cursed her.”

Siobhan let out a hiss through her teeth. “That is a silly superstition.”

“Not so silly that your own Teirna doesn’t believe it,” he shot back. “I had been wondering. But now I understand why her title was stripped—”

“She is still a loyal Sidnee,” Siobhan snapped. “And a good soldier.”

I flinched. The truth of it was a stabbing pain, striking deep before anger overwhelmed the hurt. The anger was for Ashraia, because I’d be damned if I was going to let a Wyshraj brute speak to me that way. But the hurt — the hurt ran deeper. I did not miss Siobhan’s choice of words. “Still.”

Siobhan respected me, and I treasured that respect more than any precious gemstone. But that one word reminded me that she respected me in spite of what I was. She still saw the corruption in me, still judged it, even if she thought my character was stronger.

Caduan’s voice came from behind me.

“Perhaps it’s easier for you to hate what you know than to hate what we just saw. But we don’t have time for you to make yourself feel better by tearing apart a false enemy. Aefe’s magic is the only reason she and Ishqa made it out of there alive. And who would have saved them if she didn’t have it? The gods?”

He drawled the word, the sarcasm as sharp as a blade drawn across skin. I could not look at him, but I could imagine the intensity of his stare as it dismantled Ashraia, piece by piece, the same way it did me.

“What we saw,” he said, deadly quiet, “is what could become of us. And we do not even understand what it is.”

There was a long silence.

And then Ishqa’s stare fell to me.

“Thank you,” he said. “You saved both our lives.”

Ashraia started to protest, but Ishqa shot him a harsh look.

“We have bigger dangers looming over us than this,” he said. His gaze slipped far away, and I knew he was thinking of what we had seen. Those people. Those monsters.

“No one found any survivors?” I whispered.

“Nothing but those… things,” Ashraia said, voice gruff. “Entire population of the House of Reeds, surely.”

I muttered a curse beneath my breath and cast Caduan a sidelong glance.

“Was that anything at all like—”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, that wasn’t what they did to us.”

“They,” Ishqa repeated. “Then we believe this to be the work of the humans?”

I scoffed. “Of course we do. Who else would it be?”

A long silence. Here sat some of the most powerful warriors of the most powerful houses in the Fey world, and yet we were all too frightened for words. It was one thing for humans to attack a small House with the power of their numbers alone. But this?

“We should go back and burn it,” Ishqa said, at last. “It would be the most respectful thing to do.”

My head whipped towards him. “Burn it?”

“That is a mistake,” Caduan said. “We need to investigate further.”

“The things we saw,” Ishqa said, “were hardly alive. And whatever is left of them has been debased beyond all recognition.”

My chest ached at the thought of it. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. He was right, of course. The House of Reeds were a proud people. It would be a great dishonor to them to allow them to live this way.

Caduan spoke, his voice low. “I thought there would be nothing worse than for them to kill us all. But now here they are, making us do it for them.”

“It is the only mercy we can give them,” Ishqa said.

Caduan gave Ishqa a cold stare, then got up and left without another word.

The House of Reeds was difficult to burn. The air was damp and the ground wet, and we needed to start fires all around the perimeter of the walls, then accelerate them with Ishqa and Caduan’s whispered spells. It was dusk by the time we succeeded, the orange flames bleeding into the mist. The sky was bright red when the screams began, sickening shrieks that raked down my spine.

The fire moved slowly. They wailed long into the night, and we just lay there and listened.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Max

The excitement around our trip to Meriata was palpable. Everyone was hungry for rest and fun, more than ready for all the delicious trouble the city had to offer. This, after all, wasn’t just any stop. It was Meriata — the city famously willing to cater to any vice.

“Meriata?” I heard one of the soldiers mutter to his friend once the news of our stop began to spread. “Was that Farlione’s idea?”

I tried very hard not to smirk as his companion let out a snort and replied, “I doubt he’d even know what to do in a place like that. After what, a decade off in the mountains?”

Oh, if only they knew. I’d spent plenty of time there, years ago, though the city probably remembered me more than I remembered it. In the years following the war, when I’d wandered