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

“They were all alone,” the woman said. “I could not leave them that way. They became my family, too. But some time later, we were sold. I got to keep Meo. Mikovs wanted him. But they had no need for a little girl, so Mara was sent away. All alone again.”

The world seemed to be falling away, except for her voice. The old woman leaned across the table, looking at me with an intensity disproportionate to her frailty.

“But I’ll never leave her that way, Tisaanah.”

I nodded. Of course. I had said the same thing about all of them — all those people who still remained there, trapped. I’ll never leave them that way.

Fijra was peering at me now from behind sheets of gold hair, and I felt something sully the air.

Regret. Shame.

Beneath my skull, Reshaye slithered.

“I tell you this,” the old woman said, closer still, “because I want you to know.”

A headache throbbed in my temples. The edges of my vision were growing gray.

Too late, I realized.

The world blurred around the old woman’s face.

“I want you to understand me. I would do anything for them, Tisaanah. Anything.”

{Go!} Reshaye roared.

I grabbed for the knife at the table only for Fijra to clumsily knock it away. My muscles barely obeyed me. Strong, male hands grabbed my throat.

My vision was darkening. Thoughts unraveling.

I thrashed out. Catching skin, irregular busts of magic popping at my fingertips, some faceless attacker screaming in pain and pulling away as I left him with rotted flesh.

I hit the floor. Everything went black.

Rope tightened around my neck.

And the last thing I remembered was Reshaye’s frantic, fading whisper:

{Kill them, kill them, kill them…!}

But even that was claimed by the darkness.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Aefe

My father’s hands were on my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I looked at nothing but his face. He was bigger than me — I was ten years old, and especially small for my age besides, so light that he could have picked me up with one hand. His breath smelled of wine and rage, both equally pungent.

My mouth was opening and closing, but no words would come. This struck me as such an injustice, because I didn’t even need a lot of them. I just needed one, just a single word:

Please.

Please, after all, was a magic word. It was a word that gave me comfort and gifts and safety, pretty trinkets and beautiful dresses, and above all, love.

But my vision was blurring, darkness encroaching over me.

And I was not granted any of those things. Not even that single word.

“Please… please…”

With great effort, my eyes opened to see a world on fire. The leaves were now far, far above me, a canopy of scorched green. Little flecks of flames floated down like shooting stars. It was beautiful, before I remembered enough to make it terrifying.

There was an overwhelming pressure on my chest, and something sharp jutting into my right side. Cries surrounded me, some legible, some not. Somewhere behind me, someone was begging. For what, I wasn’t sure.

A beam from the fallen pub pinned me down. I turned my head and saw Caduan beside me, half sprawled over my midsection. He was so lifeless that panic cleaved through me.

With all my strength, I pushed against the slab of wood. I felt as if my body was a million miles away, but by some miracle, I managed to lift it just enough to wiggle out from beneath it. When I sat up, I stifled a gasp.

It looked like the end of everything.

The world was burning. Flames, orange and blue — blue? — crawled over the trees, consuming the wooden footbridges that connected them all above us. Buildings and debris and bodies rained down, shattering on the ground as they fell from tens or hundreds of feet in the air. It was so smoky, so chaotic, that it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at above me — countless silhouettes surrounded by magic or wielding steel, locked in battle.

Humans.

I heard the word in my head in Caduan’s voice, just as he had said it before we fell.

Shit.

I went to Caduan, yanking the debris off of him. He was still, violet blood plastering the fabric of his shirt to his body. It ran down the side of his face, too, sticky in his copper hair.

“Caduan.” I felt for his heartbeat, breathing a sigh of relief at the weak, but steady, pulse. “Get up. We have to go.”

Cold fear settled over me.

He would wake up, I told myself. He would open his eyes. He had to. The last thing I said to him had been so, so cruel.

He would wake up.

But he didn’t move.

“Caduan. Please.”

Please. Gods, that word. How it had lost all of its magic.

The screams above us seemed to be getting louder, more desperate. Yithara was only a trading hub — there was no military here to resist the attack. We had no time.

I leaned over Caduan. One of his hands was free from the debris, dangling over a beam. I grasped it and pushed up his sleeve, pausing.

I knew Caduan was a skilled magic speaker, even though I didn’t know much about what exactly his gifts were. But I was desperate.

Mathira, this had better work, I thought to myself, and sunk my teeth into the inside of his wrist.

I was not expecting it to hit me so hard. One swallow, and I felt his magic swell in the pit of my stomach. Ishqa’s magic had felt powerful, but strange and unfamiliar, like trying to speak a new language with sounds that didn’t sit right on my tongue. This? This felt like a song I didn’t realize I remembered. Oddly familiar. Oddly right.

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again something was… different. It was like seeing color when I had once seen only black and white. Except, color was life. The pulsing beat of life in the soil, in the leaves above