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

things that were suddenly incomprehensible. The carvings on the walls seemed to be moving, though when my eyes landed in any one place, they were still. The room, a small box of that carved white stone, felt as if it both brightened and darkened all at once. There was no furniture in here, not even a bed or chamber pot. It reeked of human waste and decay, though I saw neither.

The figure was curled up on the floor, his knees to his chin. He wore stained, plain clothing — a shirt that had once been white and torn brown trousers. His back was to me, giving me a view of just bony shoulders and a head of thin, scraggly white hair.

“Vardir,” Max said, and when the man turned I had to stifle a gasp.

He was grinning — grinning like a madman. He had to have been mad, because his face — the pale albino face of a Valtain — was destroyed, covered in bleeding gouges.

At the same moment, Reshaye roared to life, its hatred overwhelming me.

Vardir scrambled around to face us. Up close, I realized he was actually quite young, perhaps only in his forties.

“Max,” he breathed. “Maxantarius Farlione. Two old friends, two in just so little time. What a treat, what a treat.”

He scrambled forward, fingers reaching out crooked like broken tree branches. Max yanked me back.

A flash of memory hit me. That same smile as he leaned over me, little knives in his hands, in a room of white.

I had to catch Reshaye as it lunged for control — lunged for Vardir’s throat. My body seized, but one little sliver of Reshaye slipped through, a ragged whisper, “I am not your friend.”

Not my voice. Not my accent.

Vardir looked delighted. “Ah, yes. There it is. No matter how different the carrier may be, I always know.”

Enough, I said to Reshaye, pushing it back. We need him.

{He should die for what he did to me.}

Being here is worse than death.

“We’re not here for a reunion,” Max said. “We have some questions for you.”

“Questions?” Vardir grinned wider, all those wounds over his face rippling. “I used to love questions.”

“I want you to tell me if it is possible for a curse to bind one life to another.”

Vardir paused, licked his lips. “Why? Did someone do that to you? Now that you mention it, I did feel something strange, something off-color—” He stopped abruptly, his gaze snapping to me. “Or is it you?”

“You answer our questions,” Max said. “We don’t have to answer yours.”

But the prisoner’s bloodshot eyes crinkled with delight, fixed on me. “It is you.”

I slowly knelt down to the ground, until I was on Vardir’s level.

“You are Reshaye’s creator?”

A snarl. {He is not.}

He laughed. “Creator! Not creator, no. I simply helped harness it here, in Ara. Who could have created such a thing? Perhaps the gods themselves made it to punish us. They do love to do that.” His eyes found the ceiling, and his face slowly devolved into terror, as if he was seeing something there that Max and I could not.

Max and I exchanged a look.

“Vardir,” Max said, and he jolted, as if jerking awake. He grinned slowly.

“An old friend!” he exclaimed. “Three, in so short a time! How lucky am I, how very lucky.”

My heart sank. This man was insane.

“You were telling me about Reshaye,” I said.

“Ah. Of course. I could not have done it without Maxantarius. Such a willing host. Reshaye wanted no one but him.” Vardir looked to Max, and his face went serious, a wrinkle forming at his brow. “It gave you a gift,” he said, quietly. “I can feel its magic still, in you. They took so much, but I can still feel—”

“A life binding spell, Vardir,” Max pressed. “Is it possible? Could it be broken?”

“I thought you were smarter than that, Captain. Anything is possible, and nothing is ever truly broken.”

Max let out a hiss of frustration. But I pulled my sleeve back, exposing my forearm and the dark veins visible beneath the albino white patches of my skin.

“Do you know what this is?”

Vardir’s face went serious. Then horrified. Then delighted.

“You— you did it.”

He lunged forward, grabbing my arm and wrenching it forward, pulling it so close that his nose nearly brushed my skin. Max was halfway to him when I raised my other hand, giving him a silent assurance: Wait. I’m fine.

“Did what, Vardir?”

“You Wielded Reshaye’s magic directly. You alone.” He shook his head. “If I had my tools— if I had my study—”

“What does that mean?” I asked, and Vardir arched his eyebrows at me.

“You don’t even know? It means a channel has opened. A channel connecting you to the deepest levels of magic, deeper than Valtain or Solarie magic or even Fey magic.” He snapped his gaze to Max and grinned. “So this is why you ask about such blood magic. You have it too — yes, I see that now. I don’t know how I missed it, don’t know how, my mind has been so— so fuzzy lately—”

I could feel his emotions rippling through his touch, and they were unlike any I had ever felt before — a million disjointed fragments warring with each other, as if he was constantly experiencing all emotions at once, and never knowing which one was real.

Slowly, I pieced together what Vardir was implying.

“You are saying,” I said, quietly, “that our magic is blood magic.”

“Human bodies aren’t built to withstand such power. This magic feeds on life. It will take and consume whatever life you can give it, and more. The more life you give it, the more powerful it will be.”

“And the higher the cost,” I murmured. Reshaye curled through my thoughts, landing on a memory — the memory of my fingers on skin, my magic reducing living flesh to black rot.

Consuming life.

Nausea roiled in my stomach. All those people I had killed, in Threll. Slavers, yes. I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry for their deaths. But there was something