Page 55 of Daughter of No Worlds

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“This isawful,”Max said, drawing his arm across his forehead and making a face of disgust.

I couldn’t disagree.

Summer had come in the span of a few days, it seemed. I was used to the heat. But Ara’s heat was a whole different beast altogether, so wet and sticky that I couldn’t tell whether the slime on my skin came from sweat or from the air itself.

Neck craned, I watched Max stand at the top of a modest pile of rocks, wiping perspiration off his face and looking down at the lake below him. Water lapped at my bare toes.

We had stepped out of the cottage into this wall of humid heat, and Max had immediately announced, “I am not evenremotelymade for this.” Then, after a moment of pondering, he led me off much further beyond the tree line than we normally ventured, deep into the woods. I was dripping in sweat and half eaten alive by bugs by the time we arrived at this spot: a break in the forest cradling a beautiful, idyllic-looking pond.

Max yanked his sweat-soaked shirt off over his head with one hand. As he curled his back in a stretch, the tree leaves above flickered light and shadow over the muscles of his shoulders. He crouched to kick the crumbled fabric out of his way and those delicate flecks were shattered by the brutal scar that sliced across his back.

I stared more intently than I meant to. The Queen’s words echoed in my head:Captain Farlione is nearly solely responsible for the end of the Great Ryvenai War.

This was a body that was capable of things powerful enough to end a war. Powerful enough to commit whatever acts had inspired such intense, divisive reactions in that crowd, the awe and disgust that had shocked through me like lightning.

Gods, I had so many questions.

Max peered down only briefly before he hurled himself off of the rock in one sleek, graceful leap. His head bobbed back up a second later, shaking his wet hair out of his face. “Much better. Your turn.”

I looked from the rocks to the water and strangled a whisper of uncertainty in my stomach.

I mimicked his path up the cliffs, then removed my wrapped shirt and trousers, leaving me in my undergarments — a chamois shirt and shorts. They were far less revealing than many of the things I wore every day in Esmaris’s servitude, and even in those days, I was never thought twice about having so much of my body exposed. Now, I didn’t feelself-conscious,exactly, but I was acutely aware of Max’s gaze.

That distraction, however, was far from my mind as I hung my toes over the edge of the rock and looked down.

Seconds passed.

“Are you afraid?” Max asked, at last.

“No,” I lied.

The cliff was only about ten feet high. Not far.

“There is…very little water in Threll,” I added, haltingly.

“You don’t know how to swim?”

When I finally made myself look at Max, he was suppressing a smirk of amusement. “I promise I won’t let you drown. Unless, of course, you’d rather not jump.”

“Of course I will,” I said, as if suggesting otherwise was outright ridiculous. And then, since I knew that that tone of voice meant I had to follow through…

I squeezed my eyes shut and then a moment later I was falling, falling, until the water slapped me.

And then I was sinking, surrounded by cold and darkness.

Fear seized me as my limbs flailed.You said you wouldn’t let me drown, you ass!I wanted to screech. But of course, I couldn’t speak, or breathe, or see—

Until I felt a force solidifying beneath me, as if the water itself was propelling me up and up.

My face broke the surface and I sputtered, coughing. My hands instinctively shot out in a wild flail, grabbing at Max or at anything that might keep me afloat.

“Relax, Tisaanah. Stop moving long enough to feel it.”

Feel it?

And then I noticed: I was floating all on my own. The water pushed up beneath my feet, catching me and supporting my weight. I curled my toes, squirming as the current caressed them.

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