Page 53 of Daughter of No Worlds

Max hardly reacted. “You’re right, Nura,” he said, flatly. “It must be hard to be so fucking selfless.”

His hand slipped into his pocket and retrieved a piece of parchment, which he slowly unfolded.

Lord Savoi’s lifeless face, just a few steps away, stared somewhere over my right shoulder. Behind us, the crowd began to dissipate.

“Max—” I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say. I had so many questions, but I felt too ill to untangle them. All of my energy drained into separating my own thoughts from the fog of others’.

Max’s gaze fell to me, and something in it wrenched, a wrinkle of concern forming between his brows. “Let’s go home.”

He tore two vicious lines through the paper, and the world began to wither and dissolve around us. I clutched his arm, tightening my fingers as I realized, with a start, that he was shaking. Or maybe that was me.

The gentle, melodic silence of the garden was almost eerie as we arrived back at the cottage. Max didn’t say a word as we began striding to the house. The world was still spinning, and I think he knew that, because he didn’t try to extract his arm from mine.

I wanted to ask him if he was alright, but that was a stupid question, because it was obvious that he wasn’t. I wasn’t sure that I was, either. So instead I said, “You were right.”

Tired blue eyes slid to me. “What?”

“The man with parrot. Not the strangest thing.”

Max hissed an angry, humorless laugh, and we barely spoke again.

* * *

I had discardedmy bloody boots and bathed several times over, but that night, I still could smell nothing but death and see nothing but that lifeless face pressed against the golden steps.

The sound had been exactly as I imagined it, too. Flesh and bone.

Max’s history in the war, then, was more than I had thought. And hisfamily—

His family—

Now, some things made more sense. Max’s isolation. His cynicism. His bitterness. I knew how tragedy like that, no matter the circumstances, could so easily became a core piece of your being. Mine had. I just set it on fire and let it fuel me. It just as easily could have eaten me alive.

I slid out of bed and paced my room, peering out the window to watch the moonlight nestle into the delicate folds of flowers. I looked down at my hands, willing shudders of cool blue light to ripple from my fingertips. It folded into a butterfly before I even had to tell it to. Pretty. But too delicate, too fragile.

Whatever had happened at the city of Sarlazai had been polarizing. I had never felt such strong disgust. Suchhatred. Whatever Max had done there had won the crown their war, yes. But it had come with a heavy price.

But then, that was the nature of war, wasn’t it? I barely remembered the worst of the Threllian Wars, but I knew that even Nyzrenese victories left so many mourners. My most vivid memory of the time before the fall of the Nyzrenese senate was peering into my parents’ bedroom at night to see my mother weeping, wrapped in the arms of an aunt or family friend that I no longer remember. I don’t even recall who had died. But above all, I remember my distinct confusion. That day had been full of celebrations — more food than we’d been afforded for months, and the Strategasi himself climbing upon the capital balcony to speak of our valiant and crushing victory over the Threllian armies on some battlefront or another, to praise our honor and our hope, to assure us that peace and victory were imminent. I was five years old — I was just excited to drink milk, to eat pies baked with real sugar. I did not notice my mother’s silence or her forced smiles. And that night, as I had watched her cry, I didn’t understand.

We had won, the Strategasi had said. Weren’t we supposed to be happy?

I was too young to know the truth then. That victory meant another’s defeat, and sometimes our own defeat. That winning meant sacrifices, and sometimes ones that even our own people were not willing to make. That in war, someone always paid.

I thought of the Queen. The weapons piled high in Via’s shop. The anticipation of the crowd.

If war came to Ara, what would I do? Did I have any choice but to use it to solidify my position? Use that position to help my own long-suffering people?

The ones who had sacrificed everything for me?

My butterfly withered, as if it was being consumed by flames.

I hoped I wouldn’t have to make that choice. Perhaps because I knew what I would choose, and hated myself for it.

I slid back into bed, staring at the ceiling. Sleep felt so far away, but I closed my eyes anyway. In the darkness I saw the Palace steps, the Queen, Max’s back. The blurry memory of my weeping mother. The blood running down those stairs again, and again, and again.

Chapter Seventeen

The shadows beneath Max’s eyes the next morning told me he had slept about as well as I had. And then his pointed silence told me that he certainly had no interest in talking about what had happened the day before.

---