Page 180 of Flame and Sparrow

The drafty, depressing room around me was doing nothing to fuel my problem-solving abilities, so I decided to leave it behind.

As I wrapped my fingers around the cold iron doorknob, I glanced one last time at the wolves by the fireplace before turning my back on the room, steeling myself for the acting I knew I still had to do outside of it.

The door didn’t budge when I pulled.

Something on the other side was holding it shut.

I willed myself not to panic. Took a deep breath. Tried again.

Still stuck.

I pounded my fist against the old wood. Lightly, at first, but growing increasingly harder, more frantic, as the seconds passed.

It was at least a full minute before I heard quiet laughter on the other side, followed by Andrel’s voice drawing closer, finally acknowledging the sound of my fist.

“You know, I gave you multiple chances to prove your loyalty to us.”

I pressed my fingers to the door. Extended my claws, digging them into the wood, stripping away several small chunks of it.

“I was sohopingyou would come clean to me and admit that you’d buried that bag of yours on the edge of my land,” Andrel went on. “Because surely you realize how helpful its divine contents could be to us? Especially after all I told you of our plans.” Hetsked. “If you were truly on our side, I don’t think you would have tried to keep such valuable things to yourself.”

The room reeled around me.

I couldn’t seem to force air into my lungs.

If my shattered bracelet had given them enough power to create a massively destructive weapon…

Gods, I was such afool.

I never should have brought any of those divine things back to this realm.

But that was so typicallyme, wasn’t it? Unable to put the pieces of my past down until it was too late, forever dragging them along behind me and letting them trip me, weigh me down. Everything I had ever tried to let go of had claw marks on it, just like this door before me did now—markers of my stubbornness and refusal to change.

Even now that I desperatelywantedto change, my mistakes kept holding me back.

But I refused to let them stop me.

My gaze flew toward the window, calculating. I was three stories up, and I hated heights, but I’d climbed my way down from worse.

Knowing I’d have to be quick—before he realized I was attempting escape and met me outside—I wasted no more time with the door. I sprinted to the window and tried to yank it open, cursing as I struggled with the damaged, rusted latches.

Before I could free the window, a strange sound—a metallicclunkfollowed by a low hissing—snapped my attention back toward the door.

Something small and grey had been rolled beneath it. I realized what it was, and I tried to snatch it up and fling it out of the window, but the latches still would not budge. I yanked my arm back, preparing to launch it through the glass instead.

But I was too slow.

The weapon ignited with a flash in my palm, filling the room with a white mist that smelled of damp earth and bitter herbs.

Wolfweed powder.

A variation of the same poison he’d used on the innocent humans the night at the Fire God’s temple. Poison that paralyzed bodies but left the mind untouched, so they could remain aware of whatever horrors were befalling them.

It had acted slowly on those humans.

This was a much, much more potent version; the entire room was already hazy with it, and my muscles were already beginning to seize up after only a few breaths.

I fell against the window. My hands tugged uselessly at the bottom of it, trying one last time to free it even as I started to lose the feeling in my arms. Then my hands. My feet. My legs.

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