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

“I destroyed one of the most powerful houses in Threll,” I called after her. “Ahzeen Mikov thought he could control me, too. That was a mistake. I’m a much more valuable friend than enemy.”

She paused and looked over her shoulder. “Like I said, it’s not you that we need.”

She stepped through the door, but Aviness remained, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

“My niece was fourteen years old,” he said. “You’re serving a man who murdered a child.”

I said nothing.

He was right, of course — he was right and I knew it. But I had also spent these last months covered in the blood spilled by his soldiers, protecting cities from his armies, cradling corpses left by his weapons.

“I’m glad it will be over soon,” he muttered, as if to himself, and turned away. The door slammed, and I was left there alone.

Chapter Forty-One

Max

The man was already bleeding. The guards that had dragged him back had been rough doing it, so his gangly arms were torn and his shirt wet with blood. He did not wear a uniform, but there was not a doubt in my mind that he was affiliated with one of our enemy houses. It was just a matter of which one.

He sat there, face to the ground, at the center of the small, dimly-lit room. It was the middle of the day, but you’d never know it, down here. These were the dungeons below Korvius, crafted of windowless grey stone. I paced along the outskirts of the room, so angry that magic was already sparking at my fingertips. Still, my steps were long and slow. Tare was here, too, sitting silently across the table from our prisoner, and Sammerin. And in the corner, lingering in the shadows, Nura watched in silence.

“He asked you a question,” I said.

“I wasn’t doing anything. I told Aldris’s soldiers already.”

I glanced at Tare, who silently shook his head, and my knuckles went white.

“You were running away from the refugee dwellings,” Nura said. “You tried to kill one of our soldiers.”

I pressed the necklace to the table. The man’s gaze flicked down to it.

“How did you get this?”

“I found it.”

I looked to Tare. He shook his head.

My anger surged. The flames in the lanterns burned brighter, all at once, casting garish shadows across the prisoner’s face.

We didn’t have time for this.

“Bullshit,” Nura muttered. She crossed the room in three graceful strides, and suddenly, her knife was buried in the man’s hand, pinning it to the wooden table.

He let out a strangled shriek.

“We have warned you,” she hissed, “not to lie to us.”

The room began to darken. Nura’s magic was always insidious, so slow you didn’t realize it was tightening around you until you were halfway gone. But I could feel the fear pumping into the room like smoke, my already accelerated heartbeat running faster, my magic running hotter, my rage and fear growing more and more intense.

I blinked, and I could see Tisaanah’s throat opened, her face bloody and lifeless.

That was the thing. Tisaanah had made herself into a legend. But her throat was still just as tender, her skull as delicate, her skin as fragile. She was still so easy to kill.

“Enough with the games,” I snarled. “Tell me where Tisaanah Vytezic is.”

The prisoner didn’t speak. He looked only at Nura, at his hand, his breaths coming in ragged gasps. Nura’s magic was heavy in the air now, the room so dark that it was hard to see, fear thick like honey.

“Tell me what you did with her,” I demanded.

Sammerin lifted a finger, and the prisoner’s whole body lurched, his other palm jerking up and pressing flat on the table, held there. Another flick of Sammerin’s hand, and the man’s face was forced towards me.

“Give me an answer.” I didn’t have to think. Fire was at my fingertips, cutting red across Nura’s unnatural shadows.

“I just handed her off,” he said. “I didn’t— I didn’t hurt her. I just passed her along, I didn’t—”

Tare looked to us and nodded.

Finally. A fucking truth.

“Handed her off to who?” Sammerin said.

“I can’t— I can’t—” the man wept. His eyes were round, and wet with tears, and kept darting around the room. Nura didn’t let up. Ascended knew what he was seeing in her shadows.

“You can,” I spat. “Tell me where they took her.”

“I can’t—”

I didn’t think. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t think about anything but all the time Tisaanah didn’t have.

My second eyelids opened.

All at once, the room was blindingly bright. Magic roared through me, my body unraveling into flames, heat searing the air.

Sammerin dropped his hold as his hand went up to shield his face from the light or the heat or both. Nura staggered back, her eyes wide, so shocked she lost her grip on her magic. Not that it mattered. The prisoner no longer needed manufactured fear.

“Ascended, Max,” she gasped. It was the first time she had seen me this way.

“Tell me where she is,” I demanded, and I could barely hear my own voice over the rush in my ears.

And I must have looked terrifying, because words now fell from the prisoner’s lips like loosened bowels.

“The Palace. The Palace. The Palace. Aviness took her, he wanted her in the Palace. She’s there. She’s there. But she’s already dead. He’s going to kill her, she’s already—”

My eyelids snapped closed, thrusting me back into a body of flesh and blood.

“She’s already dead,” the prisoner was weeping. “She’s already gone. She’s already—”

And I was already out the door.

I was halfway down the hallway, reaching into my pockets for Stratagram ink. Distantly, I heard the dungeon door slam shut, and footsteps behind me.

“Max— what did you just—”

Nura’s voice was fractured, and then she let out a breath through her teeth and composed herself. Maybe in another scenario it might have been satisfying to see Nura shaken.

Not now. Not when I had far more urgent things to worry about.

I withdrew a crumpled piece of