Page 111 of Flame and Sparrow

He never came.

I had mixed feelings about this. It would have been easier if he’d behaved as expected—a monster doing monstrous things, leaving me with no choice but to keep making plans to slay him.

Instead, I was allowed to linger in the mortal realm, to finish healing. To plot my next steps.

Each day, Andrel and Cillian came up with new theories and shared more thoughts about what those next steps should be. More experimental weapons appeared in our home. And as afternoon on the second day eased toward evening, visitors began to arrive—some I recognized, many I didn’t.

They were all coming to see me.

To speak with theirliving martyr, as Cillian had called me. Because word was spreading faster than ever; I was the warrior who had walked among our greatest enemies, survived them, tricked them into letting me come back.

Now they all wanted to know what I would do next.

I had a chance to rally and lift up my kind like never before. To give them hope. Encourage them to rise. To finish what my sister had started, which was the greatest vengeance possible for her death. It might not have been unfolding as I’d envisioned, but itwasunfolding. Rapidly.

As the last rays of sunlight disappeared below the horizon, I was sitting in a patch of grass in the center of the eastern courtyard, studying the knife Cillian had given me and trying to prepare myself for the meeting with all our visitors.

My ears twitched at the sound of a familiar gait approaching—Andrel. He greeted me with a smile, his gaze snagging on the blade I held.

Cillian had looked at it as though it was food to fill his starving stomach. Andrel regarded it with a different kind of hunger, I thought; like a king looked at a territory he intended to conquer.

“Cillian’s filled you in on all of the ones who will be here tonight, I assume?” he asked. “All the questions and topics to be discussed?”

I nodded. There had been comprehensive notes, arranged in the way he knew I would prefer. He’d spared no details. I had all the facts. I could recite them, study them to my heart’s content…all the things I always did. All the things that usually made me feel calm and in control.

They weren’t helping me today.

I felt like my world was spinning, even as I put the knife aside and dug my claws into the soft earth.

“He’s been so excited about all these experiments and breakthroughs that he’s barely slept over the past weeks,” Andrel commented, sitting down.

“Sounds like typical Cillian to me.”

He gave me a crooked grin before tucking his arms behind his head and laying back on the grass. “You’re not wrong.”

I dug my claws deeper into the ground while Andrel studied the emerging stars, his eyes glassed over in thought.

“Can you imagine it?” he asked, after a few minutes. “That dagger of yours, plunged straight into the heart of a god? Or into whatever they have that masquerades as aheart.”

I could imagine it. Vividly. Doing so made my vision spin even faster.

“I just hope I’m there to see the first strike,” Andrel said. “The moment when everything changes.”

“I probably won’t start with the heart. I’d try something more subtle first.”

He laughed as he sat up. “Ever the calculating one.” His tone was playful, his gaze adoring. “We’ve missed that around here.”

I blushed.

“I’ve missed all of it,” he added. “All of you. I don’t think I’ve told you that enough since you came back, but…” He trailed off, laughter still shining in his eyes.

The world’s spinning slowed somewhat, steadying under the warm weight of his familiar, inviting affection. I’d been left lightheaded and unsure by that affection so many times in the past, but now it felt so…simplecompared to everything else.

“I missed you, too,” I said.

He reached and tucked a strand of hair away from my face, his touch lingering, caressing the edge of my ear. His tone dropped lower, filled with promise, as he asked, “Want to go calm your nerves before the meeting?”

I used to dream of these moments with him—of any chance for us to slip away from our larger battles, from thecauseand the chaos that always seemed to loom over us. From everything. I wanted to live in that dream now, too. Wanted to lose myself in the feel of his fingers grazing my skin, in the taste of his kiss, in the heat of our bodies tangling together.

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