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

“I have been thinking about it since,” he said, quietly. “I still don’t know what you did to me that night. My magic has never felt like that before.”

I swallowed, finding it difficult to speak. Everything here smelled like ash, except for him — his scent of rosewood, a scent I didn’t realize until this moment that I now knew, enveloped me. Even that was enough to set me off-balance and yet put me at ease.

What had happened that night had been that effect, compounded infinitely.

I didn’t understand it either. I had wondered, after, if Caduan had simply been that much more powerful than I knew. But…

I shook my head, barely a movement, not looking away from those eyes. A movement that gave him my answer: I don’t understand, either.

“You saved my life,” he murmured.

“I couldn’t…” I couldn’t let you die when the last thing I had said to you had been so awful. “I owe you an apology,” I rasped out, instead. “For what I said to you in the pub. None of it was… truly what I thought. It was just that the things you said were…”

Too close to the truth.

His gaze shifted in a way that said he understood. “I know how hard it is to break away from chains that have been forged for a century.”

It was such a simple, kind answer. He should have hated me for speaking to him that way. And yet…

It hit deeper than I had expected.

I thought of him, and how awkward he always was in the presence of nobility — how he always managed to say the wrong thing, at the wrong time. The way he so flatly disregarded the expectations of others. Before, these things had confused me. Now, all at once, I understood.

He was honest. He was genuine.

“I think you will be a great king,” I said, softly.

The corner of his mouth lifted in the hint of a smile. “I think you will be a great Teirness,” he murmured, and for the first time it occurred to me that just as I saw the beauty in what others would call flaws, perhaps he saw the same in me.

The thought was frightening. His eyes fell to my lips, and I wondered what it might be like to feel his against them — to watch those walls come tumbling down with every exposed expanse of skin, to know what he looked like when he truly unraveled. But then, he would see me, too. There would be too much I couldn’t hide.

I had never wanted something and recoiled from it in such equal, overwhelming measure.

And so I was disappointed and relieved when instead, he slipped his hand into mine, and our fingers intertwined instead of our limbs.

We did not speak. He leaned back against the rubble beside me, and the two of us remained, taking a strange solace in the warmth of each other’s skin.

Chapter Forty-Five

Tisaanah

The battle began in fire, and ended in ashes.

I, by now, had earned my infamy. But Max…Max was new, and the world was not prepared for him. Even the greatest of my illusions were nothing compared to the way Max looked at the height of his power. He was every bit as beautiful, as breathtaking, as I remembered him looking in the Mikov estate — a being that was constructed of light and fire itself.

The fighting paused, men stopping with half-raised weapons, to stare in wide-eyed terror at the creature before them. A strange, suspended numbness fell over the battlefield. Max took me with him and together we slipped through the air to Zeryth’s army — Max’s army. There, Max closed his second eyelids, slipping back into his human form to show his soldiers who he was.

They just stared at him. They did not say a word. And Max didn’t, either, surveying them with a tight jaw and sharp stare that I knew masked secret shame.

In that long, stunned silence, I understood that I was watching something change forever. These men already had respected Max deeply. And now, in a matter of a single moment, I watched that respect turn to reverence.

Not that we had time to revel in it. The battle was over the minute Max and I entered the fray. We knew it, our soldiers knew it, and so did Aviness’s — we could see it in their faces. But Aviness himself, holed up somewhere within his safehouse, was not ready to surrender. So they fought, and so did we.

Individually, Max and I were both powerful. Alone, I had learned how to craft performances to inspire awe and fear. But together? Together, we were spectacular.

We were dancing, each of our performances feeding that of the other, him Wielding light and fire and I surrounding myself with shadow and bleeding butterflies. I was using a sword I’d pulled off of one of the soldiers, and it was a poor substitute for Il’Sahaj, but my magic was roaring so close to the surface I barely needed to rely on a little piece of steel, anyway. Reshaye’s fingers wrapped tight around me, guiding my power — and I ceded to it, maintaining only the barest thread of control. I had no choice. Otherwise, I would topple. My body was injured, exhausted. I had to dig deeper, past my injuries, deeper than the dregs of my magic.

Time blurred.

I was not sure how long we had been fighting by the time the bells rang out. I had to yank on Reshaye to stop it from continuing on, forcing my consciousness back to myself, turning to the Palace. There, from the grand glass windows, white sheets swayed in the breeze.

And between them, on the balcony, stood Atrick Aviness, raising a hand that clutched a streak of white.

The world went silent, all eyes turning to him.

His lips parted, and he looked as if he might say something. His eyes fell to me, and what I saw in them made