Page 178 of Flame and Sparrow

Maybe I never would.

I rose to my feet, unable to keep still in the chair any longer. Hugging my arms tightly around myself, I tried—and failed—to meet Andrel’s cool gaze several times before I finally managed it. “Why didn’t you tell me this before now?”

“Because she asked me not to.”

Another secret. Another deception by the sister I’d once loved more than anything in the world—and another stone added to the weight on my shoulders, threatening to make me collapse.

I wasn’t sure how I remained standing at this point.

“She didn’t actuallywantyou to try and avenge her,” Andrel said. “Not until you were ready…assuming you ever became ready. She didn’t think you had the stomach to assist with these plans when you were younger, so she didn’t want you getting tangled up in things until you could handle it.”

“And if I never developed the appetite for it? If you decided I couldn’t handle this, that I was better off not knowing…then what?”

He shrugged. “Then I would have taken this information to the grave, as I promised her I would. She trusted only me with it; she didn’t even tell Cillian, despite how close they were—probably because she knew he’d give in and tell you the truth the first time you got emotional around him.”

Fury and grief danced a nauseating twist in my stomach.

What would my life have looked like if I’d never gone to the divine realm and learned the truth for myself? I would have become just another mindless puppet in Andrel’s army, unaware of how tightly he held the strings of my life.

I considered storming from the room, but settled for moving toward the window, bracing a hand on the wall next to it and staring out over the dark yard, trying to imagine myself outside instead of suffocating in here.

In the reflection of the smudged glass, I saw my eyes shining with tears. I blinked them away. I couldn’t let my emotions get the better of me right now.

Andrel followed me to the window, bracing his hand next to mine and pressing close. Too close. I forced myself to keep silent, to hold back my tears even as he gently grabbed my arm and turned me around to face him. His gaze dropped to that arm he held, studying my wrist. Searching for the flame-shaped mark, I guessed—a mark that wasn’t there at the moment.

HowbadlyI wanted it to appear, all of a sudden, to flare brightly and defiantly before him.

“I’d started to think you were never going to prove yourself capable of the sort of things your sister managed,” he said, thumb tracing the veins along my wrist. “Then suddenly you had a divine mark on your skin, and you were charging so bravely into the middle-heavens…so you ended up a part of our grander plans, after all.”

I stared at the chipped and weathered window sill, trying to ignore his closeness. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I said, “So Savna brought divine artifacts back for your use, same as I inadvertently did.”

“Yes. When she came back from the divine realm, the two of us traveled north and gave those items to one of our allies doing research there.”

“This was right before she…” I couldn’t finish the thought.

It hung in the air until he shook his head and said, “We believed she’d be safe once she relocated the stolen objects—once they were hidden within the walls of those protected cities up north.”

My breath hitched as he dropped my wrist and cupped his hand underneath my chin instead, forcing my gaze up to his.

“I tried to hide her, too, when she came back here. I truly did, Karys. We did everything we could to throw the gods off her trail. But they were…relentless. And smarter than we gave them credit for, I suppose. Because they found her.”

Something almost like remorse darkened his bright eyes.

I didn’t let it fool me. His only true regret, I suspected, was that my sister had died before he could finish properly exploiting her.

I was so disgusted by his words, by the way he was staring directly into my eyes as he said them, that it took me a minute to remember my own lines.

Finally, I managed to turn my head, and in a voice soft and seething, I said, “I hate those gods so much.”

“I know. And you know I feel the same way.” He went along with me so easily—no doubt because hatred was the only deep emotion we’d ever truly shared. My hate was toward him instead of the gods, now, but he was too arrogant to tell the difference.

He’d realize the truth soon enough.

I tilted my face back toward him and asked, “How did she get into the divine realm in the first place?”

“The earliest weapons—created from whatever traces of divine power we could gather in this realm—were weak, but efficient enough to allow her to carve her way through one of the thinnest points in the veil. She went alone, and most of us honestly thought we’d never see her again.”

“Through the same veil you all are now trying to destroy completely, I assume?”

---