Page 96 of Flame and Sparrow

“Is it notexhaustingto be angry all the time?”

“Is it not exhaustingto run your mouth so incessantly as you do?”

“It’s mostly an automatic function after all these years. Doesn’t take much effort on my part.”

I very nearly cracked a smile at this, but turned away before it happened, folding my arms across my chest and studying the garden on the other side of the window.

The flowers in that garden never changed. They had been the same brilliant shades of red and white since the first morning I’d spent here, their perfect petals never so much as curling on the edges.

They were beautiful, and yet this garden was becoming one more thing I hated about this place—I used to love documenting the flowers changing with the seasons around my home, watching for patterns in how they flourished and faded. It diminished the beauty of a bloom, I thought, if you never got to see what it looked like when it was barren.

I felt Valas staring at me. After a few minutes of this he asked, “Is it Dravyn?”

I didn’t reply.

“He was in a bad mood this morning, too—you two are quite the pair. I think you should go talk to him.”

The lack of sleep and everything else made my voice edgier than normal. “And I think you’re underestimating just how little I care about your opinion,” I told him. “So,solittle. Like, so little you could not measure it with the world’s smallest measuring stick.”

“World’s smallest measuring stick?” Mairu repeated as she suddenly entered the room. “Are you two really in here talking about Valas’s dick?”

The God of Ice yawned, and without looking at her he said, “Do you just lurk in doorways waiting for the opportunity to make jokes at my expense?”

“Sometimes, yes,” said Mairu, taking a sip from the drink she carried before shrugging. “I have to entertain myself somehow.”

“Have you considered doing work of some sort? Focusing on fulfilling the noble causes set forth by our Creator, maybe?”

“What, like all the time?”

“Just a suggestion.” He stretched his long legs out before him, regarding her with a cocky look. “Also, let’s be honest: I heardzerocomplaints from you about my measuring stick the last time we were—”

Mairu held up her hand, and the Ice God’s lips puckered strangely together, sealing off whatever he’d been about to say.

“That’s impressive magic,” I had to admit.

The Serpent Goddess gave a little bow, but then she sighed. “Unfortunately, it never lasts.”

As she spoke, a thin layer of ice formed on her hand and began to spread its way up her arm. She grimaced as it crept toward her throat, crackling and shining as it went. “Okay, okay—truce.”

The ice around her shattered, and Valas’s lips were released from the goddess’s controlling magic in the next instant.

Valas shook his head vigorously and rolled the tension from his shoulders. “That’s such an unsettling feeling.”

“I can do much worse,” Mairu said with a sweet smile.

“Or you could try being nicer and using your powers for good.”

She scoffed at this before turning to me. “Come on, Little Spitfire. I think you need a change of scenery. You wanted to see my home in this realm, didn’t you?”

I agreed after only a moment of hesitation, eager for a break in the too-familiar rhythms of the morning as well as a chance to take notes on new things.

She led me outside before turning to me with a concentrated look, smoothing my skin and rounding my ears with her disguising magic—just in case we run into unexpected company, she told me. Then she reached out her hand.

An odd energy rose around us, accompanied by a sudden, gentle wind.

I stared at her, uncertain.

“We’ll travel faster this way,” she explained.

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