Page 129 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

Seeing the things they’re most afraid of everywhere they turn…

Something clicks in my head with a jolt of inspiration. I hug Ivy tighter, but my mind is already racing with the thought that’s struck me.

After pressing a kiss to her forehead, I ease back a little so I can rifle through my cloak’s pockets. I still have the stolen letters I’ve kept tucked away in the temple’s book.

Did I misconstrue the phrasing in my initial translation? Bryfesh is a complicated language with odd nuances.

“What?” Ivy asks as I unfold the letters.

“I’m not sure yet.”

I scan the brittle page to the spot that prompted my idea to send fire at the scourge sorcerers. The devastation of the Great Retribution—making them fear the death they could imagine meeting from the flames...

Staring at the words again, a startled laugh slips out of me. The phrasing could be read that way, if I assume the writer was talking in metaphors. But most literally, they mean that the scourge sorcerers of old literally saw pictures of death projected in the flames.

Images of themselves succumbing to wounds? Or of their already-dead corpses?

The letter writer isn’t specific about it. They might not have known the details. But I could have gone about our initial attempt in too vague a way.

If simply hearing the names of the dead could make the scourge sorcerers falter, then what would happen if they saw the actual deaths—or their own—right in front of them?

My expression must give away the exhilaration that’s swept through me, because Ivy twists toward me. “You’ve figured something out.”

As I look up at her, my excitement wavers.

I let her down before. I sent her to carry out a strategy that wore her down without accomplishing anything significant in our favor.

I can’t be certain that my new interpretation is any more correct than the last one. Or that even if it is, it’ll make all that much difference with the current group of scourge sorcerers.

My entire body balks. I should keep the idea to myself until I find some way to be sure.

But even as I make that decision, I see how the light that’s come into Ivy’s eyes is dwindling quickly in my silence.

For just a second, seeing me uncover reason to hope helped her find her own.

She shakes her head with a twist of her mouth, obviously taking my lack of answer as a refusal. “It’s all right. Probably better not to put more ideas in my head.”

My rejection of her remark wrenches through me with more force than my initial reluctance. “It’s not that. I just—I don’t want?—”

What can I say that would make anything better?

Gods help me, how can I ask her to believe she can recover from the trouble she’s found herself in if I won’t push past my own mistakes? If she can come back from riven madness, don’t I need to give myself another chance to do something right too?

I square my shoulders and look down at the letter again. “I think I might have misunderstood what the writer was saying when I read this before. The fire didn’t frighten the scourge sorcerers into giving up because they were worried it’d burn them to death, but because the gods showed them images of their deaths like pictures on the flames.”

Ivy’s eyebrows leap up. “We definitely didn’t try that the last time. And it did unsettle them just having you talk about the dead…”

She pauses, the glow that’d lit in her face snuffing out again. “But we can’t paint pictures on fire with a brush and palette. The only way we could use the same tactic is with magic.”

And she’s the only one of us with a “gift” that could accomplish anything close.

I slide the letters back into their hiding spot and brush my fingers over her cheek. “Perhaps we’ll find another way to use the concept. It’s always better to know more so we have more possibilities to draw on.”

“Spoken like a true Estera dedicate,” she says with fond amusement, and leans in to kiss me. But the despondent air hasn’t left her.

I’ve given her something, but what can I really say about her magic? I have none at all of my own, chaotic or not.

At the tread of footsteps beyond the doorway, we both tense, but it’s Rheave who appears at the entrance a moment later.

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