Page 78 of Flame and Sparrow

I raced forward and reached for one of the points, bracing myself for whatever unpredictable magic was to come after I completed this trial.

Nothing happened.

I took a step back. Blinked, and checked to make certain I still saw what I thought I did.

It was still a crown.

I reached for a different point. My hands passed right through the pale light, shaking as they went.

The shaking spread through the rest of my body. I had found the solution—I was socertainof it, and yet nothing I did seemed to trigger the Star Goddess’s reappearance, or whatever the next part of her trial was.

Could there be another crown somewhere else? She’d saidmycrown. But what did that mean? I had no crown. No one in my family had since the humans and their new gods had brought so much ruin and death to us.

Was this some sort of cruel prank to remind me of that?

Maybe Mairu’s magic had not hidden me at all. They all knew what I was, who I was, and now they were—

Stop it, I silently commanded myself.

Even if these things were true, I didn’t have time to worry about them. Not if I was going to survive this.

I took a moment to memorize my location and the path leading to it, and then I sprinted a short distance until I was within sight of the lion once more. I knew my time was nearly up, but I wanted to know precisely what I had to work with.

It was worse than I’d feared.

My eyes fell upon the beast in the same moment the second to last star in its mane flickered out.

The ground beneath me buckled as though starting to give way.

I panicked and broke into a sprint, putting as much distance between myself and my timekeeper as I could. I didn’t go very far before I caught myself and slammed to a stop. I couldn’t outrun this. Running would waste time. Running would mean certain death.

Tears streaming down my face, I stumbled back to the crown. I traced it with my finger in the air, double-checking its shape yet again. I briefly closed my eyes and mentally pictured every point, every edge, wracking my stardust-dazed mind for a solution.

Over and over, I repeated every single word the Goddess of Stars had said to me, searching for meanings I might have missed.

The ground swayed. My tears became so thick I could hardly see, the sob building in my throat so heavy I could hardly breathe.

“The crown,” I repeated out loud to no one, trying desperately to keep focused. “The crown in your future sky, the crown, the crown…”

And then, very suddenly, I had the answer.

My future sky.

My sky was no longer the one in the mortal realm. Thedivinesky would be my future if I intended to ascend. It had been a trick question—and I’d nearly fallen for it.

I’d been looking for my crown in the wrong place.

I turned around and around, searching and—as expected—I noticed a section of much brighter sky far in the distance. That was what the goddess had said, wasn’t it?

An exact reflection of our own divine sky, but less brilliant.

That brighter section must have been the map of the divine sky.

I ran faster than I ever had in my life.

I couldn’t breathe, I could barely see for the tears, my skin itched and burned from the cutting stardust, and I kept stumbling on ground that was already sinking away, trying to swallow me up—but I pushed onward until I reached the reflections of the constellations I’d already found in the previous sky map.

I used these starry patterns to guide me until, finally, there it was: a tilted crown with five points, facing the opposite direction of the first one I’d found—a more brilliant reflection of the one in my old sky.

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