Page 42 of Flame and Sparrow

I was grateful for the thorny vines trapping me; if not for them, I might have tried to make a run for it.

The air felt thick again, settling over me as it had earlier, heavier than ever. I hugged my arms around my stomach and leaned against a tree, closing my eyes and trying to think of everyone back home and all the things I had to fight for.

* * *

My eyesblinked open at the sound of footsteps upon stone.

The God of Fire stood less than ten feet away, burning the vines the Serpent Goddess had used to trap me.

I managed to keep from jumping at the sight of him, but I couldn’t find my voice right away. I was too drowsy to think of anything to say, anyway; I don’t believe I’d truly slept, but my eyelids felt heavy, my movements sluggish despite my best efforts to sit confidently upright.

“The magical energy in the air here is already proving too exhausting for you, I take it,” said the god after a minute, sparing me a cursory glance. “Doesn’t bode well for you surviving the tests to become a member of my court.”

I tried harder to sit up straight and said, “I wasn’t exhausted. I grew tired of waiting on you, that’s all.” It wasn’t entirely true, but I wasn’t about to let him know how exhausted I truly felt.

He grunted out a response before turning his attention back to the vines. They shriveled and twisted as he set fire to them, flailing so dramatically as they fell that I wondered if the Serpent Goddess’s magic had made them sentient and capable of true suffering.

I took the opportunity to study him as he worked. He’d seemed out of place when we’d met in the prison—too big, too bold, too beautiful in the darkness. He still stood out even here, yet it was clear he belonged among the sparkling airs of this place; divinity seemed to drip from his bronze skin, from the red and black markings that were bolder than they’d appeared in Eligas. The silver in his eyes seemed bolder, too, bright as clouds caught in a full moon’s light.

Beyond his appearance, there was something in the subtly powerful way he moved, too, something in the waves of fire unraveling as smoothly as silk from his fingertips, weaving through the thorny vines, warming the air all around us…

The longer I watched him, unconsciously committing the details of him to memory, the more uncomfortably intimate it felt with only the two of us here. I averted my eyes, staring in the direction the other Marr had disappeared in, wondering where they’d gone.

“Where were you earlier?” I asked.

My tone must have come off more accusatory than I’d meant for it to because his powerful shoulders rose and fell with a huff of laughter before he said, “Off slaughtering humans and setting fire to their forests and houses, of course. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

I bit my lip. “I managed well enough without you.”

“I’ll stay longer next time, then. Burn a few more houses down.”

“By all means. Don’t let mekeep you from your work.”

He laughed again, but the sound was entirely devoid of humor. It sounded almost…tired.

That couldn’t be right, could it?

I had never thought of the gods as beings who were capable of tiring. It made him seem a touch more human. Almost. I wondered if he’d purposely appeared quieter so as not to overwhelm me...

And I dismissed the idea just as quickly, as it would be a far too considerate thing for a god to do.

Was his distracted weariness related to the strange shadow that had drawn Valas and Mairu away, then?

I filed all my questions away for later; I’d pry no answers from him in this first meeting, I suspected, but I intended to find these things out soon enough.

He spoke again after a long silence, eyeing the goblet the Ice God had been drinking from. “They couldn’t have shown you to your quarters, I suppose.”

He seemed more than a little annoyed that he’d been left to deal with me on his own.

I thought of reminding him that he was the one who’d sent for me—on his own—but decided against it, trying my best to stay pleasant. “My quarters?”

“Unless you’d prefer to sleep in the dirt out here?” He gestured to the ground, now littered with scraps of the vines he’d burned.

I chose my words carefully. “I wasn’t aware my preferences meant anything in this realm.”

He turned to face me more fully, a storm rolling through his eyes, darkening them and passing just as quickly. “I suppose we didn’t really go over the details of our arrangement, did we?”

“We did not.”

---