Page 10 of Flame and Sparrow

I didn’t answer, but she looked as though I’d agreed all the same, her brows knitting together and her hands clutching a string of beads she had wrapped around her arm. I didn’t have to look closely at the jewelry to know what it was composed of: three large beads to represent the Creators—the Moraki—surrounded by twelve smaller beads to represent the middle-gods—the Marr—who served them. These chains were becoming an all-too common fashion throughout the kingdoms.

“You won’t find it here,” she told me.

“I’m not looking for anything,” I snapped. Something about her concerned, pitying expression annoyed me.

“Are you sure?”

She studied me closer. I fought the urge to shrink away from her gaze. I’d used my sister’s sparrow to magic my ears and smooth away the worst of my scars while I was sitting in the yard across the street. My dark hair had also turned pale—the complete opposite of its usual raven-wing shade—in the process, so I wasn’t worried about being seen. It was just…

Something about this girl made me feel wholly and fully exposed.

Keep walking, urged a quiet voice in the back of my mind.

I don’t know why I didn’t listen to myself.

“Never mind me,” I said instead. “You should leave this place. It isn’t safe tonight.”

Her wide eyes stared into mine without blinking, and her hand—still clutching the beads—pressed over her heart as if unconsciously protecting it from me and my blasphemous words.

Her sleeve shifted with the movement, and I saw a crescent-shaped symbol upon her skin.

It might have passed for a birthmark if not for the way the edges of it shimmered. If she used magic, the whole of it would start to shine with a faint white glow.

Marked by the middle-goddess of the Moon—otherwise known as the Goddess of the Crossroads. The deity of directions, reflections, and lost things…those most blessed with her magic could supposedly find anything.

Which explained the girl’s weird questioning; she was itching for a chance to flex her divine gifts, it seemed.

But I was not in need of her magic any more than I was in need of my own.

No magic.

No gods.

Even if Iwasmissing something, the gods and their servants would be the last ones I’d ask to help me find it.

“I mean it,” I told her bluntly. “You should get out of here. Now.”

“The gods protect their faithful servants,” she insisted. “I am safe here.”

I snorted, barely resisting the urge to spit at her feet as I’d spat at the feet of the God of Fire.

Safe.

Ha.

The gods were many things. Safe was certainly not one of them. But it would be a waste of time and breath to try and convince this girl of such things. I could see it in her eyes—the blind devotion, the determined dedication. She was already too far gone.

I should have dusted her with the poison I carried to prove a point—that her gods couldn’t even protect her from rebel heathens like me.

But I merely twisted my finger around the drawstring of the pouch filled with that poison, cinching it tighter, and I moved as though heading back toward the street.

The girl stared after me as I left. I could feel her gaze settling against my body like a dull knife between my shoulder blades, heavy and trying to pry me open.

Instead of crossing the street, I slipped around a tall row of hedges, crouching to make sure I was completely out of sight. Several minutes passed before I peered back toward the gardens.

She was gone.

I listened, but heard nothing. Breathed in deep, but smelled only an overwhelming variety of flowers all seemingly competing to be the most pungent. I took a few steps toward the gardens and knelt, hands pressed to the ground, thinking I might feel vibrations from the girl’s movements.

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