Page 71 of Flame and Sparrow

“Exactly.” The Ice God’s smile was grim, his expression the closest to serious I’d ever seen it.

I leaned against the window sill again, gripping it tightly to steady myself. “The trial that she failed…do you know what it was?”

“Not the details, I’m afraid. No one aside from the upper-gods really knows what goes on inside Amalith; even my own ascension is mostly a blur that I only occasionally visit in my dreams.”

“And there’s no way of knowing what trialsImight end up facing, is there? Dravyn said the initial two are devised by the courts outside the one you intend to join, but he spoke as though it was up to the Marr of those courts to devise whatever they wished, whenever they wished, and there was no real way of predicting what would happen. It seems to be in the nature of all the Marr to keep me constantly guessing.”

His smile turned sly again. “Ah, so you’ve noticed that.”

I didn’t return his smile. This conversation was making me sick to my stomach.

We were quiet for some time, both of us staring out the window. The herd of selakir had disappeared, so I focused instead on the black ground far in the distance, on the cracks of fire splitting it and the billows of smoke and steam rising up from it. I felt a strange kinship with that breaking earth, watching it buckle and try to resist the fiery rage building underneath.

“You look worried,” Valas commented. “Don’t tell me you’re losing your nerve before we even get started?”

I narrowed my eyes on a particularly dark plume of smoke exhaling from the earth, shooting up into the sky. “I don’t like not having all the facts,” I said quietly. “Oranyof the facts, in this case.”

I could feel his gaze on me, and I braced myself for whatever other mocking words he had for me.

“Let me see what I can find out for you,” he offered instead.

Chapter21

Later that night,I found myself too restless to even consider going to sleep. Valas had stopped by my room after the Marr had their meeting and delivered what he’d been able to find out, as promised—but it wasn’t much.

The Sun Court had insisted on leading the way, he’d learned, which meant my first trial would be devised by one of the four Marr who served in that Sun Goddess’s court—Storm, Star, Sky, or Moon. Maybe some combination of the four.

“If I was the betting sort,” he’d told me, “I would be prepared to face something of the Star or Moon Goddess’s design.”

I spent more than an hour after he left sitting cross-legged on the bed, trying to list the facts I knew about these goddesses, searching for anything and everything that might help prepare me for their trials.

Normally, making such lists brought comfort.

Tonight, it only seemed to be making me more anxious.

Tossing my notes aside, I went into the washroom, splashed several handfuls of cool water onto my face, and took a long look into the gold-framed mirror.

With the meeting between the gods finished, and no more visits from any outsiders expected tonight, Mairu had let the cloaking magic around me relax. I knew this…yet my reflection still startled me, as it was the first time I’d looked upon my actual face in weeks. It wasn’t much different, truly—my pointed ears and old scars were simply more visible now—but even the subtle change provided a glaring reminder of who I was and why I was really here.

More anxious than ever, I left my room, setting off without any real destination in mind. I quickly thought of one, however—the atrium I’d been brought to when I first arrived here. Or, more specifically, the room full of colored glass I’d glimpsed from the center of that atrium.

I moved like a ghost through the palace, passing only a few other beings at this late hour. Some looked my way, but none of them spoke. Nobody lingered, either. They all seemed to know who I was, but they hadn’t yet figured out how to act around me, so they simply averted their eyes and moved out of my way as quickly as they could.

The doors to the glass-filled room were closed when I reached it. Two guards stood outside—more of those strange, lanky creatures with greyish-black skin and slender, flame-swirled hands. Even after a month spent in this realm, I realized now that I’d never spoken to their kind before, and they’d never spoken to me. I wasn’t even sure they’d understand me.

I tried anyway. “Can I go inside?”

Their eyes—a red shade similar to Moth’s—brightened and then narrowed as they looked me up and down. I felt like I was being scrutinized to my core, but they ultimately let me in without an argument. One of them even provided me with light, reaching his long arm up and cupping the torch beside the door, leaving a flame on its end when he backed away. He did the same with the torch on the other side before bowing out of the room, leaving me alone to take in the sight waiting for me.

It was incredible.

There were no overhead lights, but that seemed to be by design; the torches felt more intimate, their light dancing softly through the glass, illuminating it just well enough for me to see the unbelievable amount of detail and variation in each sculpture. And these glass sculptures…there were somany.

Glass-filled shelves lined the wall on either side of me, and throughout the room there were tables with bordered edges, organized like raised garden beds full of blossoming glass. Two of these gardens featured figures that were all the same color—one in all greens, the other entirely in shades of blue—but the individual figures were varied and followed no patterns that I could make sense of, no matter how hard I tried.

I stepped toward the blue garden. A particularly intricate figure had caught my eye—a willow tree with limbs that seemed impossibly thin and elegant. I didn’t dare pick it up, as it looked far too delicate, but my fingers were stretching toward the trunk when I heard someone clear their throat behind me.

“The trials, whatever they end up being, will almost certainly be easier if you’ve slept beforehand.”

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