Page 2 of Flame and Sparrow

As if to challenge that lack of worry, a rush of wind roared between us, strong enough to lift pebbles from the hillside and pelt us with them.

Cillian’s usually stoic form broke a little. A soft gasp slipped from his mouth. He knelt and braced a hand on the rocky ground, tucking his head toward his chest as if fighting the urge to vomit.

I stayed on my feet, though I shared the same fight to keep my stomach in check—because it wasn’t a natural wind caressing my cheek and making it tingle. Not a normal breeze lifting my hair, curling the dark, normally straight strands this way and that…

It was wind caused by magic, just as it had been at my house.

And not the cursed and earthbound type that some of the elven-kind, like myself, still possessed—this magic was stronger. Deadlier.Divine. It made my eyes sting and my bones tremble before leaving a terrible taste of salt and metal on my tongue.

“It’s the same as the other week,” breathed Cillian, shaking his bowed head. He wore his fear openly now. It was written in the creases of his forehead—the only part of his face I could see—and lifting bumps along his skin, making the pale hairs on his arms stand on end. “They’re getting bolder.”

The middle-gods, he meant. The Marr. The ones who had taken our kind’s place at the righthand of the three Moraki, our Creators.

The Moraki were the three most powerful beings in all the realms, but it was the damnable Marr floodingthisparticular realm with magic, rallying humans against us, trying to choke out what remained of our kind. It was a war that had raged for generations between us, turning particularly violent in the past decade or so.

Tonight the raging violence felt closer than ever.

“Itisthe same as before, isn’t it?” Cillian asked, shockingly green eyes wide as he finally lifted his head again. “I’m not going mad, am I? The stench of the magic, the feel of it…Weallfelt it coming close the other week, didn’t we? We should have heeded the warning and laid low. They were targeting us. That much is clear now.”

Andrel ran a hand through his hair, black as fresh ink and darker even than mine. “You’re not going mad.” A humorless smile tugged up one corner of his full lips. “No more mad than the rest of us, at least.”

“It was an omen. Anomen. And we ignored it—”

Andrel clicked his tongue and began to pace, while I tried—unsuccessfully—to shove the memories of that omen from my mind.

Exactly two weeks ago, in the dead of night, a divine…beasthad shown up on the doorstep of my house, its side shredded and bloody, its massive antlers broken and dangling from its head, a trail of magic following in its wake and leaching the life and color from everything it touched.

It had died on our threshold, its claws sinking into the doorframe as though desperately trying to hold on to Avalinth, this mortal realm that I—and the rest of the elven-kind—had been relegated to.

Andrel persuaded my sister to burn its body. I’d watched from the window of my room as they dragged it into the wheat fields and dealt with it. There had been no incense, no blessed water, no prayers. No rituals at all, just fire curling bright and wicked in the dark and a cloud of smoke rising, settling over our house and land.

For three days that cloud had hung there with seemingly no intention of moving.

Even after it finally dispersed, the salt and metal taste in the air lingered.

Word had spread of the incident, and the human villages we sometimes frequented had shunned us even more than usual because of it.

Disrespectful heathens,they hissed, while refusing to buy or trade with us.Inviting curses. Did they kill the creature? Did they do it on purpose? They show no remorse, and now the curses follow. It serves them right.

My sister had been quick to snap back at them.What do a few more curses matter to us, given the hell we already endure in this kingdom?

I sucked in a sharp breath at the memory of her words, wishing more than anything that I could hear her voice. I fell back against a thick tree, grateful for its strength, as mine seemed to be failing me more and more with each passing second.

Andrel finished pacing the edge of our circle and moved back to me. He placed a hand on each of my shoulders, his intense gaze forcing me from my thoughts. “We’ll find her. I swear it.”

I managed a nod.

The heat was back on my skin, creeping up to my scalp, making my face flush. I fought the urge to pick at the burn scars that covered much of the left side of my face. It used to be a bad habit.

Used to be.

I’d stopped years ago, burying the tendency as deeply as I’d buried the memory of what had caused the scars in the first place.

It had been an accident. A slip of my hand that sent my lantern tumbling to the ground, igniting the maps shoved underneath a table—a table holding wooden carvings of upper-gods I was meant to be praying to.

The maps should not have been there.

They were pretend charts to pretend treasures, remnants of a game Savna and I had played the day before. I’d stuffed them under the shrine table, determined to keep my sister from finding them, knowing that any place with ties to the divine would be the last place she’d look for anything.

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