Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2)

by Carissa Broadbent

  We had sparred hundreds, thousands, of times before. Just like she always did, she struck first. I dodged, then blocked, then danced backwards. Even after all this time, my muscles knew her patterns intuitively. I conjured a wall of flame, bright enough to sear her outline from the shadows that hid her, and she staggered backwards, only to immediately recover. I caught a glimpse of a grim, satisfied smirk on her lips.

  I saw that smile and I thought of the expression she had worn when she brought Tisaanah to my doorstep. When she told me of her Blood Pact. Tell me I haven’t been grooming her for this, I had begged, and she had been so traitorously silent.

  I blocked another strike. The familiar tendrils of Nura’s magic reached for me, irrational fear nagging at the corners of my mind. Nothing compared to what she was capable of. Just as I was still keeping my flames closely restrained, far away from her flesh. We were still playing.

  She thought that she knew me so well. She had claimed so many of her sparring victories because she thought she knew me better than I knew myself. Often, she was right. But she had never expected this.

  I had underestimated her. But she had underestimated me, too.

  I let myself slow, deliberately, backing against the stone wall.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said, laying out the trap of my hesitation. And just as I knew she would, she took it.

  It happened in a split second. She lunged, not only with her knives, but with her magic, shadow swelling around her like wings. And in the same moment, I let mine rise to meet it. My flames roared into a river that coiled around me and lunged for her, clashing with her darkness, blinding us both.

  I had never been hit with Nura’s magic so directly. Even though I braced myself, it still took my breath away. To describe the sensation that flooded over me as “fear” would be like describing a monsoon as a drizzle.

  One blink, and I was looking at Kira’s face as she fell against the floor of her shed, fire tearing up her clothing, her hair.

  I was hearing Reshaye’s whisper, {Now you have no one but me.}

  I didn’t know whether the floor beneath my feet was the stone of the Scar or the bloodstained tile of my family’s estate. I didn’t know whether the flames at my hands were reaching towards Nura, or towards my siblings, or towards the people who had lived in Sarlazai. My mental walls, meticulously crafted, tore apart like paper.

  Still, I pushed forward, resisting the urge to fall to my knees. Down here, my magic was rawer, brighter, hotter. Our power collided in a burst so wild that it consumed us both, and seconds later, we were both flung against opposite walls of the ravine.

  My breath came in ragged gasps. Sweat plastered my hair to my forehead. Through the warping mist of the Scar, Nura and I looked at each other, wide-eyed — as if we had both surprised ourselves with the extent of our power.

  I flexed my hands, coaxing magic back to my fingertips.

  And then, we began again.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Max

  I was standing in my bedroom at my family’s estate. Look, Max. Just came out of its silk today. Kira’s hands held out a glass box. A little red butterfly was within it. Its wings were on fire. I looked up and Kira’s face was rotting.

  No.

  I was in the Scar, fighting for my life, for Tisaanah’s life, for a title I didn’t even want. The world shook as my back slammed against the wall. No time to catch my breath. No time to hesitate. I fell back, dodging Nura’s next strike, and surging towards her.

  No.

  I was in Sarlazai. Nura was looking up at me. I trusted her. I loved her. If they want to shit in their own beds, they can lie in it.

  {You do always try so hard.}

  No.

  I was leaning over Nura, our magics roaring around us both, light and darkness and fire and fear threatening to smother each other out. She was blocking me with a blade — but my staff was more powerful. Her eyes were wide, and through her anger, her lethal determination, I caught a glimpse of fear. Her stance buckled.

  For a moment, I could see an opening. One strike to her throat. I was fast enough. I could make it.

  But it was a lethal shot.

  I hesitated. Went for her shoulder instead of her neck. Too slow. She countered.

  No.

  I was in my old apartment in the wake of Sarlazai, the wake of my family’s deaths. I was drowning, drowning in grief and anger and rage. Nura was there. She peeled her clothes off. Her body was decimated, covered in burn scars, disfigured. She crawled over me and whispered in my ear, This is what you do.

  No.

  Yes. And you think you can rule? You have destroyed everything you’ve ever touched.

  Nura’s scars beneath my hands.

  Tisaanah’s scars.

  Atraclius’s warped, bloody glasses.

  Everything you’ve ever loved.

  The burning butterfly. Tisaanah’s face as she waved to me, the Towers’ doors closing over her goodbye.

  No.

  No.

  I was here. Here, in the Scar. Fighting for the title of Arch Commandant. Fighting for everything.

  Magic was so thick in the air that it burned my eyes, my skin. Nura’s shields against the fire that surrounded us were beginning to wear down — her cheeks were red and slick with sweat, little strands of her hair singed. If I had imagined the end of the world, I might have thought it would look something like this, with every familiar grounding force of the earth stripped away in favor of nothing but wild, uncontrolled destruction.

  I lunged, she dodged, I pivoted. Struck, just enough for her to fall. But I was unstable — she brought us both down. She was on top of me, her knife clutched in one hand and magic crackling at the other. My staff flew from my grasp. I could have called it back to me with a single thread of magic. I didn’t. Just as Nura didn’t use her knife. We were far past the point of steel. Past pretending that those weapons mattered.

  My own memories were unraveling, Nura’s magic tearing apart the fabric of my mind, but through nothing but force of will I staved her off. Her eyes were bright and glistening.

  I was still holding back.

  We both knew it.

  She tugged on an old memory, one that made us both wince. A lonely little girl and an ill-tempered little boy, hiding from a party. I’ll just call you Max.

  “I can win,” I said. “You know that I will.”

  “Then do it,” she ground out, through clenched teeth.

  Sammerin’s warning rang out in the back of my head.

  “I don’t want to win that way,” I said. The world had fallen away. There was nothing around us but our magic, and the magic of the Scar. “Yield, and this is done.”

  It was like talking to the winds of a hurricane. I didn’t know why I bothered. There was only the faintest glimmer of hesitation on her face. Then raw fury drowned any remaining remnants of our old fond memories.

  “No,” she whispered.

  And then the world fell apart.

  I didn’t have a name for what she did, then. My head felt like it had been split like an egg, memories pouring out like runny yolk. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Through the fog and the pain, I saw Nura’s blood running down her arm. Saw a crushed glass bottle in her hand.

  I knew Nura’s magic. She was powerful. But this — this was something else. This was worse. How far had she made it with her experimentations in deep magics? It occurred to me that I’d never asked.

  A certainty snapped into place. Seconds and I would be gone.

  I saw death standing there, waiting. I’ve been expecting you for so long, it whispered. Are you finally here?

  Not this time, I replied.

  I opened my second eyelids.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Tisaanah

  My knuckles were white. I saw the whole Scar light up with crimson light, as if it were a wound split open, and my heart stopped.

  I knew what I was seeing. And beyond that, I could feel it
— Max’s deepest magic, the strange kind that called to the foreign powers that lived within me, too.

  Sammerin hissed a curse beneath his breath. “I told him not to.”

  “He had to,” I murmured.

  Yet, a part of me was relieved. I know how powerful Max’s magic was. Nura was good, but she wasn’t that good. If Max had resorted to this, it meant he was desperate, yes. But it also meant he would win. He’d have to win.

  But then, I felt something in the air shift.

  There was no other way to describe it — it was like a sound I couldn’t hear was scratching the insides of my ears, vibrating and roiling within my bones. Every hair on my arms stood up. The contents of my stomach all soured at once, and I staggered back from the rail, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth.

  Beneath it all, there was something more. A certain sick, slithering familiarity.

  Sammerin gave me an odd look. “What’s wrong?”

  The Syrizen’s stances went weak, then rigid. Even Anserra stumbled, her hands tightening around her spear. “What is that?” she muttered.

  Ariadnea turned her face to me. “You feel it too,” she said, and I nodded.

  Dread clenched in my stomach.

  I rushed to the railing and peered over. I couldn’t see anything but flickering orange light and the mist of the Scar’s magic. But a dark pressure was building, building, building in the back of my mind.

  “Something is wrong,” I muttered. “I’m going down—”

  I turned to Sammerin and froze.

  He was looking past me, a strange expression on his face.

  “Ariadnea,” he said, quietly.

  I turned.

  The Syrizen were standing crooked, like marionettes held by weak strings — so different than their perpetual rigid grace. It took me a moment to see what Sammerin did: that the delicate veins beneath their skin, clustering around the scars in their eye sockets, had become a familiar shade of black.

  I noticed this only for a split second, before Ariadnea’s spear lit up, and she lunged for Sammerin.

  Chapter Eighty

  Max

  I had made a terrible mistake.

  I didn’t notice, at first, overwhelmed by the power that stormed through me. My body unraveled. I was everywhere and nowhere at once. The flames around us roared and billowed, the heat cracking the ground beneath us.

  The force of it was enough to make Nura let out a gasp and leap backwards. Her magic was severed, like a string sliced with a rusty blade. I tried to rein in the power of it, but it was so much more than I had anticipated. Another burst, and Nura was slammed against the rock wall. She dropped to her knees, then fell to the ground in a heap, unmoving.

  Dread.

  One thought cut through my mind: I didn’t want to kill her.

  I didn’t know if I had. I barely thought about my victory. I had won, after all. She had stopped fighting.

  This realization didn’t even have time to settle.

  I felt raw power tear through me, yes. I felt fire and magic and strength. But I felt something else, too. A presence that had been lurking, waiting for its opportunity to step inside.

  And I had just opened the door.

  Something in the air shifted violently, all at once, like the world was suddenly inverted. I felt sick. I felt wrong.

  I tried to close my eyelids — close myself off from this soured piece of magic — but it was running too hot, too fast. Something beyond me, stronger than me, was pushing it forward. If the magic was water, then this felt like a monster had reached up from the murky depths, grabbed my ankle, and yanked me under.

  One second, I was about to declare victory. The next, I was drowning.

  There you are, a voice whispered, just as I lost my grip on the world.

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Tisaanah

  Ariadnea charged towards Sammerin. Her movements were odd and choppy, but just as skilled. A split second, and that spear would have been buried in Sammerin’s chest. But he was fast, too. His hands went up, and Ariadnea’s body locked, twitching and fighting against his magic.

  “Ariadnea…” The tone of his voice alone said everything we were both thinking — what the hell is wrong with you?

  Neither of us had time to ruminate on that question.

  The others lunged for us.

  Sammerin reacted fast. But there were five of them, too many for his magic alone to stop all at once. Two dove for me. Sammerin flung his magic out to them, made them stumble just long enough for me to evade.

  On instinct, I tried to use my own magic, but it sputtered weakly at my fingertips. Useless.

  The tip of Anserra’s spear sliced my arm. I dodged clumsily, then grabbed Ariadnea’s weapon, which she still clutched with hands locked-up from Sammerin’s paralysis.

  Sammerin’s attention faltered as another Syrizen struck him.

  Shit.

  I dodged another blow and gave the spear a powerful tug. Ariadnea released it just in time for me to swing it back around, use it to block Anserra’s strike. But I was off-balance. I stumbled. My back hit the ground. Anserra fell over me, blocked only by the spear braced in my hands.

  She was so close now that I could see in vivid detail the dark veins around her eyes. Gods, had they spread further even in these last seconds?

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  Because I knew, implicitly, that this was not Anserra. Not anymore.

  She did not answer. Her face remained blank. Instead her body lurched, hand reaching for the knife at her hip — preparing to stab my unprotected midsection. But a hundred sparring sessions with Nura had taught me how to respond to such a move. I countered, throwing my weight over her. A second later, and our positions were reversed.

  She thrust.

  I grabbed her wrist.

  It could have gone either way as we pushed against each other.

  Then I tore the knife from her. Still expressionless, she moved to strike again, but I was faster. My blade met her throat, opening a river of blood down the front of her black jacket.

  Anserra’s body went limp all at once, and for a moment, expression flooded back over her face, doll-like stillness giving way to a twisted gasp of dismay. She fell over me.

  I acted next on nothing more than instinct.

  I had no magic of my own. But I had managed to take it from Irene, and from Max — even from Stratagram ink. The Syrizen drew from deep levels, just as I did. Could I steal Anserra’s magic, too? I didn’t know. It was a ridiculous guess.

  Still, it was the only one I had.

  I sliced my hand, and pressed it to the wound of Anserra’s opened throat.

  She let out a sickening, gargling moan. Her magic flooded me. It hurt, burning my veins. She went slack. When I pulled my hand away, black rot consumed her throat…and I had magic, even if only a fragment stolen from someone else’s life.

  I had no time to be disgusted.

  I pushed her off of me, grabbed the spear, and leapt to my feet. Another Syrizen was lunging for me, and I whirled just quickly enough to block her with Anserra’s spear. With considerable effort, I forced my magic through it. Il’Sahaj always took my magic beautifully, but between the unfamiliar weapon and the unfamiliar magic, this was clumsy and sluggish. Worse, I rarely fought with spears. My body still moved as it would wielding a sword, and the length and weight of the weapon was awkward.

  Pain lit my abdomen. I was bleeding. I stumbled. Then countered. Despite my poor fighting, I managed to land a strike. Black and red, blood and rot, bloomed over the Syrizen’s side. She staggered, and I yanked her closer. Grabbed her face with my open hand. Tried and failed to ignore the sound she made when her expression came back, only for a second before decay overtook her face, and her magic flooded into me.

  She fell. I whirled towards Sammerin. He had grabbed a dagger, which he was now yanking out of the limp body of one of the Syrizen. Ariadnea was the only one left, frozen mid-strike, fighting against the hold
of his magic.

  He turned to her, then hesitated. His magic faltered, just long enough to leave her an opening to attack.

  I didn’t think. My spear was through her back before her blow landed.

  She fell.

  The spear made a sickening sound as I pulled it out of the limp body, one that I barely heard over the staticky ringing in my ears. Sammerin slowly rose to his feet, his gaze lingering on Ariadnea’s lifeless face, then rising to meet mine.

  I had never seen Sammerin look outright frightened before. Once, Max had told me that during the war, he would gauge whether they were really in trouble by the expression on Sammerin’s face. If Sammerin looked panicked, he’d told me, that’s how he knew they were really in trouble.

  We were really in trouble.

  “I’m going down,” I said.

  “We’ll cover each other,” Sammerin replied, but I shook my head.

  “No. Go to the surface.”

  His eyebrows lurched. “You can’t go down there alone.”

  “We do not have time to argue about this.”

  In the distance, I could hear footsteps on the stairs. More Syrizen? They could be coming for us.

  Frustration flickered across Sammerin’s face. “You can barely use your magic. You can’t go down there alone.”

  “We cannot let this become another Sarlazai,” I shot back. “We’re too close to the Towers. And the city. And…” My hand reached into my pocket, closing around the two feathers there. I hesitated.

  I did not believe that Ishqa had lied to us. Still, that didn’t mean I trusted him, or believed that he could help us. But I did know that the magic I felt in the air, the magic that had tainted the blood of the Syrizen, was different. Inhuman. Perhaps the very magic he had warned us of.

  I thrust the feathers into Sammerin’s palm.

  “If I do not come right back, burn these,” I said, and he shot me a perplexed look.