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

me. Our clashes were vicious and messy. Normally, I fought with deliberate precision. But here, in this unfamiliar body, with the world smearing around me and chaotic magic burning in me, I fought in deadly thrashes, relying not on grace but on sheer power. I didn’t have the precision I needed to pull off my usual, careful approach.

This? This was bloody.

Soon, the halls were filled with the scent of burning flesh. I had been struck multiple times, deep gouges running down my sides. To compensate, I fed more and more of my magic, flames burning brighter, hotter, less controlled.

A numb buzz began to ache behind my eyes, a strange resistance building in my magic. I had never occupied this form for so long before. I didn’t know my limits, not yet.

But limits, right now, were irrelevant. I had no time to waste. Tisaanah had no time to waste.

I surged through another wave of soldiers. In the beginning, I had avoided dealing killing blows. But as my magic grew tired and my movements slower, the transitions between man and magic rougher, I no longer had such luxuries. I couldn’t control my own strengths. I left a trail of bodies in my wake. The kind of sight that I’d never wanted to see again.

At the end of a particularly grisly fight, my muscles aching and magic roaring out of control, turned to see another soldier rushing towards me even as his companions ran. I braced myself for another fight, only for him to freeze.

And then, he fell — his flesh dissolving into familiar decay. And behind him stood Tisaanah, clutching a sword.

I let out a ragged breath. I let my second eyelids slide closed, throwing me back into a numb world that seemed so much duller and quieter than the one I’d occupied seconds ago. Tisaanah rushed forward and pulled me into a crushing embrace, one that I too willingly returned. It was only when I felt her body stiffen in my arms that I realized she was letting out a wordless gasp of pain.

I pulled back, examining her.

“We have to go—” she was already starting to say.

Too late. I saw the bruises that covered the left side of her face, that circled her throat. And when my gaze fell to her arms — Ascended fucking above, her arms were— were—

“Who did that?”

Tisaanah shook her head “We don’t have time—"

“I can make time to—"

“I did it,” she said, hurriedly, looking over her shoulder. “Now let’s go.”

“You?”

But before the question left my lips, a deafening crash rang out.

The floor shook beneath us. Tisaanah stumbled, clutching the doorframe, another hint that perhaps she was weaker than she wanted me to think.

I spat a curse beneath my breath.

“Wielders,” Tisaanah muttered. “I feel it.”

“And Lightning Dust.” I’d know the sound of it anywhere. And a lot of it — even from in here, I could’ve sworn I could smell it, sweet and acrid at once.

Shit. Shit.

“They sent the army. I told them not to.”

They would be wildly outnumbered. I had trained a damned good army, but it didn’t matter how good they were if they were facing three-to-one numbers.

“We need to see,” Tisaanah said, and started to move away towards the window, but I caught her shoulder.

“This way. There’s a balcony that overlooks the west.”

We rushed down the hall. I could hear shouts, footsteps, and steel, both inside of the castle and outside. We reached a glass door, which I threw open to blinding sunshine and the nauseating scent of Lightning Dust.

The scene was ripped from my worst nightmares.

Zeryth’s army — my army — had used Stratagrams to land directly from the west, just beyond the edges of the wards that surrounded the Palace grounds. And though it looked like they had gained some ground simply due to the element of surprise, Aviness’s forces and those of his allies were all concentrated around the Palace, ready to leap to defense as soon as they were needed.

Below us was a sea of people, tangled in a chaotic, violent morass. Zeryth’s forces were pushing forward, and from up here I could see all their different magics sparking and mingling like different pieces of a patchwork quilt.

Aviness’s forces were returning the offense with equal strength, raining down upon their invaders with steel and arrows and their own magics. I looked over my shoulder, and I could see more riders rushing down from the military base not far from the Palace.

Tisaanah breathed a Thereni curse.

This was everything I had worked so hard to avoid. A brutal, messy, bloody battle.

“They can’t win,” I muttered. “Not like this. Not that outnumbered.”

A pit was growing in my stomach — a certainty that I was not ready to face.

Tisaanah’s eyes flicked to me, and in them, I saw the same certainty reflected back at me.

She didn’t have to say anything. We wouldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t let it happen. I had trained these people. They were under my care. And I wouldn’t, couldn’t, stand by and watch them get slaughtered.

Nura had known that, and that was exactly why she had sent them.

“We can help,” Tisaanah murmured.

I glanced her up and down. I could barely pull my eyes away from the horrific wounds on her arms. “You aren’t in any condition to do this.”

The corner of Tisaanah’s mouth twitched. “I can do it if you can do it.”

And then her hand slid into mine. “You did not let me fight my war alone,” she said. “And I won’t let you fight yours alone, either.”

Of their own accord, my fingers tightened around her hand. It felt small and delicate and so very human.

I relished that, for a moment. The way our skin felt pressed together. Ordinary. After this, I would not be ordinary again.

Tisaanah and I would do what she had mastered. We would craft a performance, rooted in truth. We would show the world what we were capable of.

I would show all of them, for the first time, exactly what I was.

And then we would