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

Ascended, Moth.

I let out a breath through my teeth and ran my hand through my hair, buying myself a few seconds to untangle what I couldn’t figure out how to put into words.

I blinked, and saw my own brother’s face from years ago — the way he had looked at me, when he realized that I couldn’t look down at my own hands without seeing them covered in blood. “This will poison you, Max, if you let it,” he had told me, simply. “Find a place to put it away. We’re not going to talk about this again.”

That’s how it always was. A thing that festered, unspoken. A thing that lived behind closed doors and closed doors alone. It had been easy for Brayan, for Nura, for my father. I’d been so envious of that, because I wasn’t made for it. All of my emotions had always been so close to the surface.

“There’s nothing wrong with this, Moth,” I said, quietly. “With what you’re feeling right now. Do you understand? You did what you had to do today, and we’re both alive because of it. But you never want to get used to what it feels like to kill.”

Moth slowly lowered to the ground, as if he was so exhausted that his legs were simply giving up, and I crouched beside him.

“I do,” he choked out, carefully looking away.

“No. You don’t,” I said. “My father and my brother were military heroes. And so was my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, and on and on. I was taught to be one, too. And my family, they truly believed in it — in the honor of what we had always been. But sometimes, as you get older, you realize… there are things they were wrong about. No matter how good their intentions were. And what I’ve realized is that it doesn’t matter how many titles or medals or wreaths of honor you lay upon it. There’s an ugly truth to what we were, and what we did, that no one ever wanted to look in the face.”

I glanced at Moth. The light had waned. He did not look at me, but the fading sun caught two streaks of silver on his cheeks.

“I was a prick to you, when you enlisted. I still owe you an apology for that.”

He shook his head and started to protest, but I held up a hand.

“I do. But it’s because I was—” I let out a breath through my teeth. “It’s because I was scared for you, Moth. Because it’s just not worth it. It’s never been worth it. Hold onto this, onto what you’re feeling right now, for as long as you can. Hold onto your humanity. And if anyone tells you to be ashamed of it, if anyone tells you that it’s weakness that you know the value of a human life, then they’re fucking lost, Moth. They are lost. And so many are.”

I thought of my father, and the way he had spoken to me when I was not much older than Moth — how he had taught me that there was an honor in a life of killing, and strength in learning how to do it without feeling.

For so long I had avoided thinking about it, avoided reconciling those two warring halves. He had been a good man, a good father. But he had been his own kind of lost in so many other ways. I just hadn’t seen it then. Even now, I didn’t want to see it. I wanted my family’s memories to be untouchable, defined only by their good intentions.

But no one ever got that gift. No matter how much I missed them. No matter how much I loved them.

“I was,” I muttered. “Ten years later and I’m still trying to find my way back,”

There was a long silence. Moth blinked and more tears slithered down his cheeks.

“I’m glad we’re going home,” he said, quietly.

Home. The word caught and settled, deep in my chest. But home wasn’t Korvius, or the Towers, or even a cottage in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by flowers. Home was a pair of mismatched eyes, an accented voice, and a heartbeat that followed the same cadence as mine. And I was so, so homesick.

“Me too,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Tisaanah

Eslyn lived for three more agonizing days.

Sammerin helped treat her. Dire injuries often required both a Valtain and a Solarie healer, to treat the full breadth of the damage. But for Sammerin, it was obvious right away that something in this went deeper than his occupational duties. The first time he saw Eslyn lying there like a shriveled up corpse, clutching her eyeless face, he winced, stood there for a long moment, then sat down at her bedside and simply didn’t get up again.

Ariadnea was often there, too, clearly upset even if she never voiced it. Every time she was forced to leave on Syrizen business, she’d give Sammerin a tight, “Take care of her, Sam,” and Sammerin would nod seriously.

For days, he barely moved, barely spoke. Late on the first night, I went to Eslyn’s room and laid a plate of food and glass of water on the bedside table.

Sammerin gave me a confused look. “She can’t eat.”

“It’s for you, Sammerin.”

“Oh.” He blinked blearily at the food, as if the thought of eating hadn’t crossed his mind. “Thank you.”

He didn’t reach for it, though. Instead his eyes slipped back to Eslyn, writhing on the bed. The screams — if one could call them that — had faded to a low, constant moan in the back of my mind. That, somehow, managed to be even more unsettling.

“Willa says she could still survive,” I said.

“She won’t survive. And if she does at this point, she’ll wish she hadn’t.” A muscle feathered in his jaw as he watched her — since he came into this room, he had barely looked away. “It’s an awful disease. I hoped that when I left the