Page 186 of Daughter of No Worlds

Heat flooded my veins.

I began to taste Ahzeen’s rapid fury, putrid and metallic. A frenzied smile spread across my lips.

Crack!

I felt Reshaye roar to the front of my thoughts, lighting up the threads of my mind with power that stole the air from my lungs.

The world snapped back into focus.

I felt Ahzeen’s aura solidify. The moment I did, I grabbed onto it with razored claws.

I spun around just in time to see him with his arm frozen. The anger that pinched his face shifted to confusion, then fear.

The last time I stood here in this room, with a man’s life in the palm of my hand, I had been terrified of what I had done.

Not this time.

I drew the fingers of my magic around his mind and squeezed. He dropped to his knees.

A wave crested inside of me. Blood rushed through my ears as I bent over and grasped his face with one hand. His flesh withered around my fingers, spiders of black decay crawling over his cheeks.

I brought my face so close to his that the smells of his wine-sweetened breath and putrid rot mingled in my nostrils.

“Tell Esmaris I sent you,” I whispered, and drew the fingers of my magic and of my hand together until both his mind and his rotting jaw were crushed to jelly in my hands.

The wave broke, and Reshaye screamed a terrible, wordless screech as it drowned me.

Chapter Seventy-Three

Max

The impact of my body falling against the wall and a loudBang!Snapped me back into consciousness.

It all came back to me in pieces: the party, Ahzeen Mikov, the Chryxalis — and, most vividly of all, Tisaanah’s body hitting the ground.

I jerked myself upright, trying to leap to my feet and stumbling as I found that my hands were tied behind my back. I was in a small, expensively furnished room, maybe some kind of library or sitting room. No guards.

“I need you to get your bearings fast.” Nura’s voice, low and calm, snapped my eyes to my right, where she stood against the wall.

My eyes fell past her, to Sammerin, and my heart stopped. He offered me a faint smile, as if anticipating my reaction, but he leaned heavily against the wall. Blood soaked through his jacket.

Beside him, Ariadnea didn’t look much better. Her back was straight, shoulders square in the stance of a highly trained soldier. But she touched the side of her arm to the wall and to the edge of the end table beside her, betraying uncertainty that was hard to miss. Because, after all, a Syrizen without magic was simply blind.

Ascended above. We were in trouble. And all I could see, over and over again, was Tisaanah’s form falling.

“Where—”

“I assume theyweretaking us to the dungeons. But something happened. A lot of commotion back towards the ballroom.”

My blood went cold.

“They shoved us in here and just ran off to go investigate, but I doubt we have much time before they return.”

Tisaanah. It had to be.

I only barely choked back a wall of furious terror.

Step back. My mind recited a series of commands from many years ago, reverent like a prayer.Evaluate. Judge. Act. Leave no room for anything else.

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