Page 143 of Flame and Sparrow

“I hadn’t originally planned to bring you here to this realm, either,” he continued, “but when you volunteered, I agreed because I thought I just needed to study you closer to get the answers we needed. The trials seemed like an obvious way to extend your time here, to give me longer to figure things out. I didn’t think you—” He cut himself off, looking uncharacteristically flustered by whatever truth he’d nearly let slip.

“You didn’t think I’d make it this far, did you?” I finished for him, and waited for him to deny it.

He said nothing.

My voice cracked completely despite my best efforts to hold it together. “You thought whatever trials I had to face would eventually finish me off, so you could take what you needed and then not have to deal with me after that.”

Again, he was silent.

A hundred furious insults and curses exploded in my mind. None of them felt sufficient—and I was too hurt, too crushed, to speak anyway.

He remained calm, but all I could picture were the fires that had surrounded him on the day we’d met. Swirling flames that quickly gave way to the memory of my sister’s blood.Red. All I could see was red, all I could feel was heat and fury.

I backed farther away from Dravyn. Slowly at first, but gaining speed with every beat of my increasingly angry heart until finally I turned and ran. I had to run. I didn’t know where I was going to go, I just knew I couldn’t stay beside him for another second.

My feet pounded relentlessly across the dry earth. I didn’t look up until my lungs felt like they might give out, until the pain in my side became unbearable, a sharp stabbing with every step and breath I took.

I collapsed to my hands and knees, glancing up to see the Tower of Ascension looming just ahead of me. There was a patch of soft-looking silver-blue grass on the hilltop adjacent to the tower; I staggered my way over to it and knelt there, hands braced against the softness, trying to stop the world from spinning.

Had my sister made it all the way to this tower six years ago?

Had she taken magic from it, as Cillian asked me to do?

Was I the only one who didn’t know? I couldn’t understand why they would have kept me in the dark about these things. But I also didn’t truly believe Dravyn would lie about something like this; what did he have to gain from it?

Everything hurt.

Nothing made sense.

I wanted to keep running, but where would I go?

Dravyn didn’t follow me right away. I wasn’t sure whether this made me feel better or worse. All I knew, in that moment, was that I wanted my old, simple anger back. I wanted to hate Dravyn and his entire realm, his entire court, the way I used to.

But that anger didn’t feel the same now. Trying to wrap it around my body was like trying to protect myself with a coat I’d started to outgrow.

I shifted uncomfortably, stretching my legs out in front of me and adjusting the sword strapped against me—and I realized then that the sword was glowing.

It was moving, too, though barely. So subtly I thought it was my own trembling at first. I forced myself to go completely still for a moment, and the blade’s rattling grew more obvious in the stillness, the tip of it lifting ever so slightly toward the nearby tower. Pulling toward it.

As if it wanted me to take it there.

I didn’t have long to ponder over whether or not I should move before I heard Dravyn approaching. He stood at my side but didn’t speak right away.

“I should have told you all of this before now,” he finally said.

I didn’t look at him. I’d stopped fighting against my tears, and I didn’t want him to see them streaming down my face. I stared at my hands and quietly asked, “Do you know how she died?”

“Not all of the details, I’m afraid.”

“Tell me what you know.”

He settled down on the grass beside me, and another minute passed before he answered me. “When she fled this realm, the veilhounds gave chase. They’re drawn to errant souls—a facet of the Death Marr’s power at work. And her soul would have stood out in the mortal realm, I imagine, after all the time it spent acclimating to this one; she had no real chance to disappear. They never found the things she took, but they did find her, eventually.”

The memory of Savna returning after her month away flashed in my mind again. Her ashen skin. Her sunken eyes. Her forced smile. No wonder she’d looked so horrible—she was being hunted down.

I pulled my legs to my chest and buried my face against them, feeling more frustrated than ever. Why had I not questioned her more than I did? For all my curiosity and the endless overthinking I always did, there was clearly a blind spot where my sister was concerned.

I felt sofoolish.

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