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

“Keep an eye on her,” she had murmured. “She needs us, that one.”

At the time, I had attributed that to my mother’s kind affection for a lonely, orphaned girl. But now I looked back and wondered if perhaps there was something else my mother saw in Nura. If she saw what she might become, if left alone to bloom in the darkness.

Now I looked down at the necklace and heard my mother’s words.

Despite it all, it didn’t seem right to take it from her. In all the ways that counted, she lost her family that day too. Perhaps this was the only thing left tethering her to them. Hell, maybe she wanted to get rid of it because it so reminded her of them. I understood that, in a twisted sort of way.

I put it back in the pouch and handed it to her.

“It’s yours. I don’t want it anyway.”

Nura hesitated.

“Really,” I said. “I don’t.”

She reluctantly slid it back into her pocket, her gaze still searching my face.

“I heard that you and Tisaanah took a trip to Ilyzath,” she said, quietly.

I scoffed. “Keeping track of me?”

“It just seemed out of character for you to step foot in that place.”

“We had some questions that needed answering. That’s all.”

“Vardir is insane. Too insane to answer many questions.”

A breath through my teeth. “That he is,” I muttered. The frustration of it still hadn’t eased. If he didn’t have answers, I wasn’t sure who would.

“Be patient, Max,” Nura murmured. “She’ll make it out of this. It just takes time.”

Be patient. What was that supposed to mean? We didn’t have time for that. We didn’t have time for any of this.

But before the words could leave my mouth, a voice cut through the air.

“General Farlione!”

I turned to see Zeryth striding towards us. He looked even worse than he did when I saw him a few days ago, but more terrifying than that was the sheer rage on his face. Something metal glinted in his hand.

When he drew close enough for me to see what it was, my heart stopped.

It was a necklace. A necklace of butterflies.

“We have a very big problem,” Zeryth said.

Chapter Forty

Tisaanah

I dreamt of a wall of black. It was slick, like glass or wet stone, and stretched across my entire vision. There was a silhouette reflected there, one that never quite came into focus, not even when I came close enough to press my palm to its surface.

Someone was calling to me, using a name I did not remember, speaking in a language I did not understand. A ghost that remained forever out of reach.

Like the tall grass against my hands. Forward. Backward. Again.

{You asked me once what I missed. Then, I did not understand what you meant. I did not understand what it was to miss.}

The swaying of the grass began to lurch more sporadically, like the fragment of memory was degrading. The tips against my palm. Back. Again. Back. Again.

{But now I see. To miss is to mourn. And I know that I mourn. But the greatest tragedy of it is that I cannot remember why. I just know that once I was whole, and now I am a collection of missing pieces.}

The plains dissolved. I felt Reshaye’s pain, dull and aching, spread through my bones.

{Sometimes, though, I catch the edge of it, like a snag at the end of a fraying thread. I think that I remember the sun.}

The comforting heat of the sun fell over my face, sweat dotting my cheeks.

{Perhaps I once knew the smell of rain.}

As quickly as it had come, the sun was replaced by a steamy rush of rain, the damp scent of earth rising.

{Once, I may have even known the touch of another soul.}

The rain was gone. The sensation was replaced by only one other, the feeling of a hand in mine, the warmth of skin, the throb of a pulse.

{But even these things are a shadow of a shadow. Perhaps they are not my memories. Perhaps they belong to another.}

The warm touch was gone. Suddenly there was pain. A flash of white, white, white. A fragment of golden hair. A glance of mossy green.

And someone watching. Someone calling. Someone searching. And I had felt Reshaye recoil from terrible memories, but above all, this — this tenderness — is the thing that scared it most.

Why? I asked. I didn’t understand. Why do you fear the thing you want most?

{My fear is not the fear of danger.}

Then what?

{Perhaps I am too far from what I once was.} Its voice was quiet. Childlike. {Perhaps I do not wish to be found.}

I felt a breath, a name I could not understand, a hand reaching. I felt it closer than ever, so close it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

I turned, and—

—And then I woke.

Something warm and wet was dripping down the side of my face. Blood? Everything hurt. I could see nothing. I heard voices, but the words ran together. It took concentrated effort to orient myself. My thoughts were sludge.

I tried to touch my wound, only to find that my shoulders ached because my arms were wrenched out to either side, my wrists bound. Blindfolded. I was blindfolded. I felt Reshaye lingering, half-dazed, in the back of my mind.

My memories came back to me in pieces. The old woman and her granddaughter. My visit. The soup. The hands on my throat. And—

I would do anything for them. Anything.

They had poisoned me. They had given me up.

The realization slid into me like a knife, and betrayal spilled through me. Reshaye clung to it.

{After everything that you have done for them? After everything that you have given for them? They betrayed us.}

No. I had to choke back my own hurt, my own anger. No, that isn’t what’s important now.

But Reshaye unraveled everything I tried so hard to conceal.

{You can not lie to me,} it whispered.

There were people here. How many? I reached out a tendril of my