Page 3 of Flame and Sparrow

One of the maps had been drenched in ceremonial oil spilled from somewhere above, Mother had decided afterward. It was the only explanation for how quickly things had ignited—so quickly that the flames had leapt from the table and statues, setting fire to my clothing and hair before I could escape.

My sister—the one who had finally managed to put out the flames—swore it was magic. That the statues were cursed, as were all things dealing with the damnable gods. Cursed and just waiting for a chance to burn their fallen, disobedientmistakes.

I’d dreamt about the same thing for weeks afterward. The upper-god of the Shade glaring down at me, making me feel small and insignificant andwrong…And then fire catching on his wings, wrapping up his body that turned out to be made of nothing more than wood.

But the statues never truly burned in my dreams. The gods were always still there when the smoke and flames cleared. Always glaring back at me with their cruel, carved smiles.

“Karys.” My eyes blinked open at the sound of Andrel’s tired, hoarse voice. I didn’t remember closing them. Didn’t remember slumping down against the tree, or drifting off, but apparently I had—the first hints of daylight were filtering through the tangled trees. Birds were chirping. A rooster crowed somewhere in the distance.

Loud.

It was all so terribly loud. Like I didn’t belong here, and every noise threatened to announce me, to give my presence away.

Andrel offered me a hand. I let him pull me to my feet. My knees buckled and my stomach churned more violently than ever, but I stayed upright. He began to walk, and I followed without bothering to ask where we were going.

As we walked, my hands twitched and fumbled for solid things to hold. I pulled my bag around to my chest and pawed through its pockets, my fingers eventually closing around something I couldn’t resist pulling out.

A thin but strong cord of leather came first, and then the carved wooden charm that hung heavily from its center. A sparrow-shaped charm. A gift from our father to Savna—he’d given me a matching one, but I’d lost it just a few months later. I’d been devastated.

This was not how I’d wanted to replace it.

I stopped walking, my thumb tracing the wing curled around the bird’s body. It was well-made, fluid and alive-looking, as if it might unfurl those wings at any moment and take off despite being made of thick wood.

Andrel slowed, glancing back at me, frowning.

I tried to speak. Failed.

“We’ll find her,” he said again.

My heart felt as if it might crack in two. But I trusted Andrel nearly as much as I trusted my sister. He had a way of making impossible things seem not onlypossible, but probable—not just to me, but to everyone who spent more than a few moments in his presence.

I clutched the tiny sparrow tight in my palm, and I didn’t argue with him.

* * *

Weeks passed.

We didn’t find her.

Months passed.

Nothing still.

The days rose and fell like violent waves against this jagged and rocky stretch of my life, and soon I came to more fully understand what Savna had known from a much younger age—that the gods took whatever they wanted and did not give back.

I saw the devastating pattern of it all so clearly now.

The Marr were the ones who had taken our identities, after all. Called us the unworthy ones. The mistakes. The Fallen. They had tried to erase us, crush us, made the humans hate us, turned us all against one another so that they could distract from whatever atrocities they wanted to commit in order to further take over this realm.

Taking, taking,taking.

My mother had been among those who gave willingly. But my father had rebelled, and he’d died when I was thirteen—an accident, we’d been told.

I no longer believed that.

Mother had withdrawn into herself after his death, spending her days drifting like dandelion fluff in the wind, her only outings to the shrines popping up at a relentless pace across our kingdom, her only words coming in the form of prayers and one-sided conversations with the statues in those shrines. She’d been a follower of the gods before; now it became her entire identity.

I’d tried to take on the same identity, for a time. I hadn’t wanted her to be taken from me, too, so I’d knelt and prayed side-by-side with her for nearly five years—until one dreary spring morning when she packed up and disappeared, off on a pilgrimage to prove her devotion to the new gods of our world.

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