Page 88 of Daughter of No Worlds

That was a good question.

I don’t,my thoughts hummed.I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go anywhere.

But I forced my mouth to comply. “There is something I must do.”

“Nothing important.”

Nothing important.

“Come here.”

I did.

“Get on your knees.”

Get on your knees,Esmaris had said to me.

I shuddered.

“No.”

“Yes.”

Yes, my mouth started to say, but at the last second—

“No.”

No. No no no.

I realized what was happening. Realized that I had never seen Zeryth use magic before. Realized there was a pressure against my thoughts, a saccharine coating melting everything into one sticky, formless blob.

This was part of the test. The test I needed to finish.

“Get on your knees,” Zeryth said again. My body froze halfway down. My thoughts slipped from between my fingers like handfuls of worms. But I grabbed onto my evasive thread of consciousness with painful ferocity.

I looked at Zeryth, straight into his white, expectant eyes.

“No,” I said.

I’m not done.

Zeryth shot one brief glance at Nura, who stood a few feet away.

Then, everything went black again.

Black and cold. A living morass of all my greatest fears, all my worst memories. Gods, no— no, I couldn’t— I was plunged into a terror that made what I experienced in Tairn look like child’s play. I was being dragged through every fear I’ve ever had, everything I had ever had ripped away from me, every face I saw in the darkness at night, all rolled into blackness and blood and the crack of the whip, the searing warmth of Serel’s lips against my cheek.

“Sit down,” Zeryth’s voice echoed.

Sit down, pretty butterfly. Rest. I know you’re so tired.

I was so tired. So tired. But —

I’m. Not. Done.

I didn’t know if I’d said it out loud, but I screamed it in my own head loud enough to drown out everything else.

I struggled to my feet, staggering like a newborn foal.

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