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

half the world was shoved into your slimy little hands. Ara was made for people like you. But while your mother was giving birth in a bed of velvet surrounded by midwives, mine was heaving away in an alleyway behind a brothel, alone. And Ara might have looked beautiful from above, but from beneath, the underside was fucking filthy. So of course you, Max, would look at this all and think, ‘Why bother?’”

His eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you ask Tisaanah that question? I think she might understand. What’s the point of going this far? What’s the point of doing it unless I go this far?” Then he looked to the map and went silent. He was so tense that I could see the line of his shoulders trembling.

“Sometimes I wonder if it matters,” he muttered. “Sometimes I wonder if it all just runs too fucking deep.”

I opened my mouth, but he said, abruptly, “You’re dismissed. Go.”

I hesitated, then rose and went to the door.

Frankly, I didn’t have it in me to argue. Not when there was someone I so desperately needed to see.

Chapter Thirty

Aefe

Waiting for my father’s reply was agonizing.

I would not be able to receive his response until we arrived at our next scheduled stop, Yithara. It was a trading post independent of the Houses that was nestled deep in the forest. There, we could receive letters back from home — impossible, otherwise, while we were on the road and untraceable.

I eagerly looked forward to our arrival. The silence of our rides, combined with my growing anxiety, was beginning to eat me up. I craved the sight and sound of other people, the familiar comfort of being surrounded by other, more lighthearted lives. It wouldn’t be the soul-deep connection of the Pales, but it would be something.

And yes, when we arrived at Yithara, it was everything I’d been told it was. Fey wearing the clothing of every House, or no House at all, mingled with each other, bartering at stalls that packed the roads. The streets wound between massive trees with trunks that were bigger than some of the buildings, which were all designed to fit so perfectly that they seemed to be an extension of the forest itself. Structures straddled the space between smooth-barked trees, rising up and up until they disappeared into the canopy of leaves. Above our heads, a series of bridges connected the upper levels. Yithara was not a large city in surface area, but its overall size was four or five times larger than the space it occupied on the woodland floor. It built up.

Beautiful. Yet another monument of all that the Fey could create and become.

I had so hoped that seeing all of this activity, all of this living, would ease my fears. But when we actually arrived, I looked around and all I could think about was the House of Stone and the House of Reeds. Their cities had been majestic too. And how easily, still, they fell.

“I need a drink,” I muttered to Siobhan, as we dismounted our horses at a stable on the lower levels — horses, after all, would be of little use to us in most of Yithara, seeing as they often weren’t particularly fond of climbing trees.

Siobhan shot me a wordless look that made me roll my eyes.

“I will behave,” I said. “No need.”

“I didn’t say anything. You’re my commander here. You can do whatever you please.”

I scoffed, and she gave me a barely suppressed smirk.

Commander. It didn’t matter who my father technically chose to lead this expedition. I would never be Siobhan’s commander, and she didn’t even have to speak to scold me.

Accommodations for us had already been arranged. The inn was on the seventh level of Yithara, far enough up to be buried in the green tapestry of the leaves. The walkways that connected the city up here were beautiful creations of polished wood and lightweight bronze, the handrails decorated with swirling designs covered with vines.

As we climbed up, level by level, through wide staircases that spiraled up the length of the trees, I noticed Caduan peering uneasily over the edge.

“Dislike heights?” I asked.

He let out a low laugh, embarrassed. “It does seem unnatural to be so far above the ground.”

I recalled the time I had visited the House of Stone, when I was a child. While many Fey houses built towering structures, the House of Stone’s architecture was flat and sprawling, the tallest of their buildings no more than three stories high — and safely encased in stone shale, besides.

I shrugged and gestured to the upper levels of the city. “Unnatural, perhaps. But isn’t this that innovation you keep talking about?”

Caduan gave me a stare so flat and unamused that I couldn’t help but laugh.

The inn was clean and spacious but nothing particularly fancy — it was chosen merely out of convenience, certainly not out of desire for luxury. That was perfectly fine with me. All I wanted was a drink and a proper bath.

But, that would have to wait. The first order of business was for Ishqa and I to get any correspondence from home. And I wondered if it was obvious, as Ishqa and I wound down the hallways to the lobby, that I was so nervous about what those letters would contain.

Two letters were waiting for me. One was from my father — or rather, my father in the official capacity as the Teirna of the Sidnee, the outside marked with his seal and title rather than his name. The other, to my delight, was from Orscheid.

Ishqa and I sat around a wooden table beneath a shadowy set of timber rafters. Ishqa had three letters. One bore the seal of Queen Shadya. Another had flawless inked script on the envelope, perhaps from his sister. I thought back to the pristine woman that had presented to us at the Pales. She seemed like the type to have that sort of handwriting. The third, though — the ink