Page 108 of Flame and Sparrow

He nodded absently. Luckily, he seemed too distracted to care much about where I’d been. Too excited. “I’ve got something to show you. Let’s go find somewhere to sit down.”

He offered no more explanation than this before turning and heading for the courtyard.

Curious, I followed.

The excitement rolling off him quickly proved contagious; my pulse raced as I caught up to him, and my face was flushed by the time we reached a leaf-covered table made of stone and he finally stopped, plopping down on one of the table’s benches and indicating for me to sit across from him.

“What are you so excited about?” I asked, dubious.

“This,” he said, simply, as he took a small knife from a sheath tucked under his coat and placed it on the table between us.

It was a tiny, dull blade, completely unremarkable save for the symbol carved into its handle—an upside-down triangle, dissected by a second, upward-reaching triangle, creating a diamond in the center. The symbol looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it before. As I studied it, my stomach twisted in a way I couldn’t explain. The warm, healing magic that had been working through my blood seemed to stagnate as well, making my insides feel cold and hollow.

“One of Kinnara’s envoys just dropped it off,” Cillian said. “She heard about your return, and specifically asked that this be brought to our house so you could see it and test it out for yourself.”

“My return… So she knows where I’ve been these past weeks?”

“Of course.”

This wasn’t all that surprising, I supposed; elvish circles were smaller than ever these days, and they’d never been known for their ability to keep secrets. “How many others know?” I wondered aloud.

“As many as we could tell,” he said, offhandedly, as he carefully picked up the knife and traced the triangles on its handle with fingers that were stained with ink—as they often were.

“Really?” I frowned. “This is the first time you’ve mentioned this.”

“We wanted to wait until you’d had a chance to catch your breath.”

“It’s caught,” I insisted. “So tell me everything.”

Cillian’s focus was still mainly on the knife. As he held it up in front of him, I swore I felt the magic inside of me reacting again, twisting as if the blade had caught it and started to unravel it.

“Andrel wasted no time getting the word out after you left,” he said, “and Kinnara was happy to help inform as many as she could about your dangerous encounters with the gods. People were eager to learn more after news spread about the Cauldra incident and your arrest and all that aftermath.”

“I see.”

“You’re becoming something of a living martyr to our kind. You realize that, don’t you?”

I stared at my reflection in the dull blade, trying to make my weak smile more convincing, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “No pressure, right?”

“It’s just good for our cause,” he said. “The more who hear about how the humans wanted to sacrifice you to their new gods, and how one of those gods actually stole you away, the more it galvanizes them and makes them want to stand together against all of these evil things.”

“But the God of Fire didn’t steal me away,” I said, my fingers absently slipping around the bracelet Dravyn had given me, squeezing it tightly. “I volunteered to go with him.”

“Same difference,” Cillian said, shrugging.

No, it isn’t. The disagreement rang so loudly in my mind...but I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

How could I, when it would mean alienating myself from Cillian and the rest of my kind?

For as long as I could remember, the cause he’d spoken of had been mine, too, and I’d taken every chance I could to convince the world that the gods were synonymous with monsters—that wasstillmy cause.

I’d been gone less than two months; it hardly seemed like long enough to change, to throw away nearly a lifetime’s worth of beliefs.

“Anyway,” Cillian continued, “hold this for a second.” He handed me the knife and then disappeared into the manor, quickly returning with a small, cloth-wrapped object clutched in his hands. He placed the wrapped bundle on the table, and the knife in my hand briefly flashed black and began to tremble.

The change lasted only an instant, but its reaction was undeniable; I barely resisted the urge to throw it down in response.

“Cillian, this blade…why is it shaking? What is this?”

---