Page 116 of Flame and Sparrow

Dravyn said nothing else, only watched me closely. Patiently. He wasn’t forcing me. He was asking. Hoping, maybe. And I don’t know that I truly wanted to go with him—I just knew I didn’t want to stay where I was.

So when he held out his hand, I took it.

Chapter33

With two middle-gods as escorts,the trip between realms didn’t require the use of magical waterways or any of Eligas’s other paths. Instead, Dravyn and Valas both held tightly to me, and we traveled the same way I’d traveled with Mairu prior to the Ocean Marr’s trial.

Even with both of them helping to stabilize me, the pulling and spinning was as nausea-inducing as before, and sheer torture against my injured arm. I focused all of my energy on staying quiet. I couldn’t keep the tears from streaming down my cheeks, but I refused to be reduced to a sick, sobbing mess.

We landed outside Dravyn’s palace. Mairu rushed through the front door immediately to greet us, as though she’d been worriedly expecting us.

Before we could exchange a single word with her, the already horrific evening went from bad to worse.

It began with a curse from Valas, echoed by Dravyn. They glanced upward at the exact moment the sky began to turn black, shadows spreading out over it like ink spilled from a well. As darkness flooded every last bit of bright sky, I felt a power unlike anything I’d ever felt—in this immortal realm or otherwise. It was so immense I wanted to drop to my knees and curl into myself, to somehow become small enough to overlook. It crushed away not only what was left of the light, but also every sound outside of our breathing and my own raging, ragged heartbeat.

“I’ll speak with him alone,” Dravyn said, voice echoing strangely in the quiet.

I felt a hand against my back—Valas. His fingertips were the cold shock my body needed to start moving again. He guided me toward the palace; I couldn’t see or sense much, but I recognized the stairs we climbed, and then the sparkling, patterned stone laid at the palace’s entryway.

I heard Mairu’s voice beckoning us inside. I stumbled forward, nearly tripping over the threshold as I fretted to make sure I stepped inside left foot first. Such a stupid,stupidritual, but the urge to do it rose up and consumed me.

I felt like I’d misstepped in every way possible tonight, like I’d causedeverythingto go to shit. I had to stop it somehow. I couldn’t change what had happened, but maybe I could control what came next if I could stick to this familiar ritual, if I could find some way to impose order upon the chaos.

The obsessive thoughts pelted my mind like a hailstorm, each hard, cold piece making me want to duck for cover. I realized I was standing oddly motionless in the doorway—all my attention on trying to stay upright under the deluge of my thoughts—and I hastily stepped inside so Valas could pull the heavy door shut behind us.

Even the light in here seemed dimmed, though flaming candles burned on the walls all around us. The room was illuminated enough to allow me to make out Mairu and Valas’s faces, at least; they both seemed to be searching for something to say. I avoided their eyes as I cautiously approached the nearest window. I didn’t expect to be able to make out much of what was happening outside, but I felt drawn to look anyway.

The darkness remained absolute, but within it I did see…something. Someone. A massive, dark-haired figure surrounded in a halo of hazy, greyish-white light. Feathered wings were folded against his back, occasionally rustling in a way that suggested a dangerous, growing impatience. The sword he held seemed to be absorbing much of the light his body gave off, the symbols carved into its blade pulsing brighter with every tense moment that passed.

The knife hidden beneath my shirt vibrated against my skin, as if in response, strong enough to feel even through the special, thick scabbard Cillian had given me. I shivered along with it, praying its power was too weak for the gods around me to take notice of it once all of our current distractions went away.

“That being out there, is that…” My brain couldn’t seem to form words, as if struck dumb by his power, his presence.

“The God of the Shade,” Mairu said, softly.

“Here to address what just happened,” Valas said, steering me deeper inside, away from the window.

I briefly considered yanking the front door back open and going to meet this upper-god for myself, as foolish as that sounded.

Instead, I tucked my head toward my chest, trying to stop everything from churning around me as I asked, “Is Dravyn in trouble?”

“Not necessarily,” Valas said. “But we have laws that govern our work within the mortal realms. And the Moraki we serve generally frown upon us descending upon those realms in a fiery rage.”

“Which is why I tried to stop Dravyn from doing that,” said Mairu. Leveling a glare at Valas, she added, “You weresupposedto go calm him down, but it didn’t feel like his power calmedafter you left; I could sense it growing stronger. What happened down there?”

I stared numbly toward the window while they talked and argued beside me. Mairu managed to do several things at once, carrying on her conversation with Valas while simultaneously summoning servants and gathering supplies to tend to my arm.

Even as those servants worked, I still didn’t move, drifting in and out of awareness, until I heard Valas say, “Her path back into this realm was broken—we would have had to intervene at one point or another.”

An image of the bracelet’s shattered beads flashed in my mind, and my entire body flooded with furious, confusing heat. “Is that why he came after me? Because he sensed the bracelet shattering?”

“That was the last trigger, yes,” Valas said. “Even before that, he felt the magic in it growing restless—something about your own energy was setting it off. Then it was separated from you in a violent manner, and we suspected something was wrong. Well, he suspected it. I was busy enjoying a glass of wine, but I was nice enough to accompany him on his little rescue mission.”

“Sorry to have disturbed your drinking,” I muttered.

“I’ll forgive you this time,” he said with a crooked grin.

I wasn’t in the mood to return it. I looked at my arm, now neatly wrapped up in a makeshift splint.

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