Page 127 of Flame and Sparrow

“Something like that.”

In truth, a potential idea had just occurred to me—how Iwantedthis all to fail at the last moment. I could survive my last trial, make it to the Tower of Ascension, gather what I needed from the tower as Cillian had asked me to do, and then the magic simply wouldn’t work.

I wouldn’t have reallyfailedat that point, so maybe…

“I don’t know all the details of what will happen, to be honest,” Dravyn said. “But I suspect the gods above us do. The one I serve wouldn’t have let your trials continue if he didn’t.”

I hugged my arms around myself, not wanting to think about what that upper-god might have seen or planned for me. I’d heard too many stories of the Moraki’s nefarious scheming.

My eyes darted toward the sky as they so often had this past week.

Still no shadows streaking across it, but my body remained tense. “I keep expecting him to pay us another visit.”

“You can relax for the moment,” Dravyn said. “It won’t happen here; the last trial will take place in the Tower of Ascension itself. You’ll be granted access to it through the two relics you’ve earned from the two courts thus far. But you don’t have to go there until you’re ready for it—I’ve persuaded him to give us that much of an advantage, at least.”

Persuaded him?

Protecting me again. Even while I stood there, trying to think of a way to steal from his realm and run away without regard to the damage I might do to him.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“So where exactly ishere?” I asked, trying to change the subject, stepping toward the crystal structures to study them closer.

“It’s my truth for a truth,” he said after a slight hesitation.

I tossed him a curious look over my shoulder.

“You told me about your sister earlier, so I thought I would show you these.”

Curiosity burning hotter, I circled the structures, tracing the ridges of pale blue crystal, noting all the places where the forgelight caught and sparkled. “You made them, I’m sure.”

“Yes.”

“Two almost identical towers…”

“One for each of my siblings.”

I froze with my hand against a sharp edge of crystal. “You had three siblings, I thought?”

“The oldest one still lives.”

Understanding took a heavy grip on my heart. “You mean…these are more memorials, then?” I asked, softly. “To go with the glass gardens?”

A long time passed before he looked my way—at my hand still braced against the crystal, not my face—and said, “I tried to save them. I heard their screams, and I was one of the first to their rooms that night. My younger brother was dead when we found him. My sister, she...” He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment before continuing in a practiced, steady voice. “She died in my arms while I was rushing her toward help. It was a blade laced with a quick-acting poison, in both cases.”

“Dravyn, I…I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what else to say.

Years of people telling me they were sorry about my sister had taught me that there reallywasnothing you could say—nothing that really made the pain go away. It was all just slapping a too-small bandage on a too-large wound, and it did little to heal the hurt festering deeply underneath.

“We had the antidote,” he continued, voice so quiet it was nearly swept away in the gentle breeze whistling through the grass. “The most talented healer in our whole damn kingdom was employed by our very palace. If I could have gotten to her faster, my sister might have lived.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said—more useless words people had also said to me. They were much easier to believe when you were the one saying them rather than receiving them.

He took another deep, bracing breath and nodded to acknowledge my words, but otherwise he didn’t reply. He turned to Farak, instead, and busied himself with adjusting the saddle’s straps and the bags attached to it.

I left him alone for a few minutes, gathering up flowers from the meadow and arranging them at the base of each monument. A question wormed its way into my thoughts as I worked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but I couldn’t seem to shake it.

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