Page 55 of Flame and Sparrow

My heart dropped into my stomach as I remembered a facet of the power he was known for: He was reading my mind.

“Let’s try again,” he said. “Tell me the true reason you’re here, or you will never see a world outside of this domain again.”

Moth started to shake free of whatever spell the shadows had held over him. The Death Marr let him go, but the dark ropes of his power continued to swirl threateningly around us as he added, “And neither will this little beast.”

I managed to grab the griffin and secure him in my arms. He hissed and pawed at the air but didn’t resist when I jerked him behind me, positioning myself between him and the middle-god. He settled against my back, talons clutching my shirt, head occasionally butting anxiously between my shoulder blades.

Remembering Valas’s words—that Moth was prone to bursting into flames when surrounded by strong emotions—I forced myself to breathe more calmly.

“I have a question about another beast,” I said to the God of Death, staring at his pale forehead rather than his eyes. “One that I believe you created and unleashed upon my realm of Avalinth.”

He didn’t outright object to being interrogated, so I carefully took the burned tapestry from my pocket and held it out to him.

He barely glanced at the woven image before he answered my unasked question. “I’ve never sent the veilhound beasts to that wretched mortal realm you speak of.”

I didn’t believe him, but accusing him of lying didn’t seem like a good way to get more information. He spoke again before I could reply, anyhow.

“But they’re oftenluredthere,” he said.

“...Lured?”

“Mortals have a terrible, wonderful fascination with death. They like to play games with it. The veilhounds are sometimes drawn into the sport.”

Sport?Indignant heat flooded my body. Nothing about what had happened with the dead beast, or with my sister’s ensuing bloody disappearance, had felt like a game to me.

I couldn’t mention these details, of course.

Instead, I gripped the torch I held more tightly and, as calmly as I could, I said, “You speak as if the gods are guiltless—but they play plenty of games of their own, in my experience.”

The god drew up straighter, his terrible eyes widening and his mouth curving as though I’d issued a challenge.

He said, “I’ve a game I think you’ll enjoy.”

I started to recoil at the unsettling tone of his voice. He stopped me with a quick motion, lifting one of his shadowy, root-like hands and sending the black ropes of his power circling more tightly around me. Several of the dark vines slammed against my shoulders, forcing me down to my knees.

Moth fluttered high above, frantically mewling and hissing, snapping uselessly at the shadowy magic. He was getting smaller, farther away, while I felt like I was sinking into the rock, cold dirt shifting down alongside me, burying me alive.

Moth’s cries faded entirely into the distance.

Everythingfaded for a moment, only to rush back, jarring and shifting my stomach so violently that it almost made me vomit.

After settling the churning in my gut and then finally catching my breath, I shakily rose back to my full height and found myself alone on a cliff overlooking the strange purple ocean I’d seen from a distance earlier. It looked less like water up close, more like sludge, and it was nearly a straight drop down into the waves of it, broken up only by a few sharp, jutting rocks. A single misstep and I would meet a very painful, messy end.

You will never see a world outside of this domain again.

Terror gripped me, but curiosity wasn’t far behind as I caught sight of the creatures pacing a stretch of shoreline down below.

Veilhounds.

The glowing line of white energy I’d seen earlier was emanating from them, it seemed like.

The God of Death materialized beside me as I crouched on the clifftop, his arrival heralded by a frigid, foul wind.

I braced a hand against the stone for balance as I leaned down and tried to get a closer look at the creatures below. “What is this place? Why are so many of the veilhounds here?”

“This is the edge of the middle-heavens,” he said, as though this information should have meant something to me.

I briefly closed my eyes, trying again to picture the layered map of the realms I’d once studied. I didn’t recall an ocean or anything of the sort on that diagram, but I doubted any mortal cartographer had ever captured this realm in its entirety—or even come close to it.

---