Page 11 of Flame and Sparrow

Nothing.

My chest felt tight with an emotion I couldn’t name. But I didn’t dwell on it, as I soon heard the sound I’d been longing for: three quick bursts of a whistle.

The sound of distant footsteps moving through the temple’s backyard soon followed, heading toward the forest beyond—Cillian’s footsteps. Only minutes until the first bomb went off, then.

Had the Moon-kind girl gone into the temple topay respects?

I loosed a long, slow breath.

“Not my problem,” I muttered to a tiger-striped cat lounging in a nearby bed of bright and freshly trampled flowers. It swished its raggedy tail in reply, its black jewel eyes seeming to narrow in judgment…butjudgingwas just the default expression of a cat, wasn’t it?

“I told her to leave,” I informed the beast.

It sneezed.

Heart in my throat, I stretched onto my toes and peered over the hedge in front of me, watching the dark windows of the temple for any sign of movement.

I saw nothing. But Iimaginedsmoke the longer I stared—curls of it twisting through the windows, dark and wicked, just like the ominous smoke that had risen over our farm’s fields in the weeks before my sister’s disappearance…

Just my imagination.

I shook the images off and reached for the sparrow resting against my throat, partly to keep my hands from reaching for my burned face. Even though the magic of my sister’s necklace had smoothed my scars away, I would have sworn I could still feel heat radiating from the ruined skin underneath.

A suddenpopechoed through the night, followed by a flash of bright light.

The cat hissed, leaping up and darting toward the road. I calmly followed it without looking back.

Warning flashes. Cillian had told us to expect two of them before the main explosion.We should be well on our way to escaping before the second one lights up the night.

Andrel was already several hundred feet away, strolling casually up the street. I caught up to him slowly, drifting to his side, not drawing any more attention than necessary.

Anotherpop—much louder this time. The ground shook. A few less-sturdy looking houses rattled. Several startled screams rang out at the second flash of light, and people began to stumble out of their houses, or hang out of their windows, searching for explanations.

Andrel was softly counting down the seconds. Cillian’s weapons were proving perfect, as usual, their timing a precise and predictable work of art.

Five, four, three, two, one—

Boom.

We were already far enough away that the blast of bright heat didn’t even make me flinch—though bumps did rise along my skin at the sound of splitting stone that followed soon after.

Andrel wrapped an arm around my waist. I huddled closer to him as if I was just another frightened resident of this human village, only sneaking occasional glances back at the burning temple. To any passerby, we would have looked like an innocent couple comforting each other in the wake of an unfolding tragedy.

I didn’t have to look at Andrel’s face to know there was a smug, triumphant smile threatening to spread across it.

Because everything was going according to plan.

Chapter3

We reachedthe mansion ruins around daybreak—just in time for me to escape to my favorite spot to admire the sunrise.

I waited long enough to see Cillian arrive safely behind us, and then I left him and Andrel by the main doors and climbed the tallest of the mansion’s winding, broken staircases of stone.

Rats scurried in and out of the splintered steps, nearly brushing my boots more than once. But I was used to them at this point—unbothered by them. I took little notice of the cobwebs, either, or of the dust gathered on the cracked windows I passed.

No matter how often I tore the webs down, or how frequently I wiped away the dirt and grime, these things always seemed to return impossibly quickly; it felt like we were locked in an endless battle, each waiting for the other to give up and relinquish their claim on what remained of the place.

I wasn’t in the mood to fight after such a long night, so I just kept climbing until I came to the highest point I could reach—what had once been an attic used mainly for storage. Most of the roof was gone, but the support rafters remained, weathered but intact enough to support my weight.

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