Page 129 of Flame and Sparrow

So why didn’t I want to move?

What a damn fool I’d become.

Instead of running, I asked, “Your siblings…what were their names?”

He looked momentarily stunned, as though he couldn’t fathom why I wanted to know this in spite of everything else he’d just said.

“Sylas,” he said. “And Elora.”

I went back to the monuments for the two of them, kneeling once more at the base of each one and continuing to arrange the flowers I’d collected.

I asked him more questions as I worked, and I listened as he slowly opened up about this painful part of his past. How Sylas had been on his way to becoming an excellent swordsman and soldier, but how his heart had truly been in horsemanship and taking care of animals. How Elora had hated the pressures and expectations of court life, but still excelled at it all, and how she’d planned to go away to distant kingdoms and study at the most prestigious of institutions when she got older.

The more he told me, the more compelled I felt to rearrange the flowers in ways that seemed more fitting. I couldn’t have explained it if he’d asked, but sometimes I just saw things in my mind in a certain way—certain people became certain patterns as I got to know them. Sylas was woven circles of silver grass with blue-flower centers. Elora was wavy lines of white clover with smatterings of bold purple blossoms.

It took some time, but I was eventually satisfied with the way the flowers represented these lost souls, and I finally managed to stop my obsessive rearranging.

“I haven’t talked about this much,” Dravyn said as I stood and dusted myself off. “Mai and Valas know, of course, but only the basic details. I’ve never spoken with anyone who…”

“Knows what it’s like?”

He went very still, as if I’d just blinded him with a sudden flare of light.

“When I found the blood in my sister’s bed,” I said, voice wavering, “I wanted to burn the world down, too.” I lifted my eyes to his. “Did it bring you any peace, destroying so much? Even for a moment?”

His reply was soft but without hesitation. “No.”

I wasn’t surprised. In the years since Savna’s death, I’d more or less come to the conclusion that anger was a strange well to draw from; the more you drank of it, the thirstier you became.

I crushed a few spare flower petals in my hand, absently tearing them to pieces. “Do you think it’s possible that our kind could ever reach a peace of some sort?”

He watched the crushed petals flutter from my palm, waiting until the last one hit the ground before he said, “I don’t know.”

I nodded. I’m not sure what I’d expected him to say. I hated speaking in hypotheticals, anyway. I preferred to stick to the facts, the absolutes—the things I could map, as I’d told him.

He seemed to be trying to map me out as well, frowning as he looked me over. “I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you about some other things, either. There’s more you deserve to know.”

“Other things?” I tried to put on a brave face, to find some scrap of a joke as I had earlier. “I might need a glass of wine if it’s going to get worse than what you’ve already told me.”

He returned my grim smile before nodding toward Farak. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll talk more back at the palace.”

Chapter36

The rideback to the palace was silent and contemplative.

As our destination came into view, another flash of power briefly dulled the forgelight’s glow, sending chills crawling over my body. Farak started to rear up, but Dravyn quickly settled him, turning the beast in several circles until he stopped his uneasy tossing and trembling.

His gaze narrowed on the tallest of his palace’s towers—where the familiar, circular meeting room awaited us—and his body rose and fell with a heavy sigh against me. “I was afraid they were heading here.”

He kicked Farak back into a gallop before I could askwho?

We rode first to the small building that housed the tack we’d used. Zell was prancing around in the grass outside of it and gave a happy whinny at the sight of us, bounding over, sticking his long nose into the saddlebags, sniffing and snorting in search of something.

“He often hangs around here, hoping for treats,” Dravyn said. He shooed him away, but then pulled a small container from one of the bags, took out a dried strip of some sort of pale red fruit, and tossed it to the expectant creature—who caught it in mid air with a terrifying snap of his sharp teeth.

“Dried savos fruit,” Dravyn said, distractedly. “He’s crazy for them.”

I took the container and cautiously offered Zell more of the strips; I wasn’t above bribing the beast into liking me better.

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