Page 115 of Flame and Sparrow

There was no more warning than this.

Flames erupted all around where Andrel stood, forcing him to stumble backward, arms flailing, to avoid catching fire. The knife slipped from his grasp and clanged against the ground. As the sound echoed through the stunned courtyard, Dravyn rushed forward and caught Andrel by the throat.

The ones pointing arrows at him took a few shaky steps forward, leveling their bows.

They fired.

Dravyn kept one hand on Andrel. He reached out again with the other, first to the left and then to the right, summoning fire to wrap up the shafts of each arrow, reducing them to ash in mid-air. The metal tips dropped harmlessly to the ground.

Fire swelled around the god, unfurling outward as his wings had earlier before sweeping forward to wrap around Andrel.

I could picture the inferno swallowing Andrel up, leaving nothing but ashes behind when the fires finally went out. Too clearly, I could picture it—and all of the violence that would follow it. I thought about nothing else. Not what Andrel and I had talked about. Not what he’d done. Not my own pain, my fury, my confusion. The only thing that mattered then was stopping this before it erupted and caused cataclysmic damage.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Please don’t kill him!”

For a long, horrifying moment, I didn’t think Dravyn was going to listen. The God of Ice held me more tightly than ever, though a quick, pleading glance at his face revealed he wore a torn expression.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him like this,” Valas said, frowning.

“You have to stop him!”

The Winter God shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking uncertain for the first time since I’d met him. A surge of frustration brought strength with it, allowing me to finally slip free of his hold, jostling my broken arm and sending fresh agony shooting through it.

It was my gasp of pain that finally caught the God of Fire’s attention. The flames around him started to settle. His head tilted toward me, but his eyes were still terrifying, glowing with such a powerful brightness that I wasn’t sure he could truly see my face through their burning.

I ran toward him anyway, clutching my arm to my chest, trying to stabilize it despite my unsteady steps. I made it to within a few feet before the heat became too intense, forcing me to stop and drop to one knee. As I buckled over, the hilt of the knife hidden under my shirt dug into my stomach, reminding me of the task I’d originally set out to do even as I tried to reason with the god before me.

“Please,” I said in a voice shaky from pain and fear. “Stop.”

He blinked, and his eyes slowly began to change, as if he could sense the terror their burning glow had sent rattling through me. His darkening gaze fell to my injured arm and stayed there for a long moment.

Valas caught up to me, kneeling and helping me better stabilize my injury once more.

Dravyn turned his head slowly back to Andrel. Released him. Took a single step back, and in a voice tight with suppressed rage, he said, “If you ever touch her like that again, I will find you, and I will not simplyremoveyour hands—I will carve them off in the most painful, gruesome manner possible.” His voice slipped into a growl, so low I could barely hear it over the pounding of my pulse. “But don’t worry: I’ll be sure to cauterize your wounds when I’m done.” A flame, wicked and blazing white, appeared in his hand. “I am a mostgenerousgod, after all.”

His threat finished, he moved toward me. Though his stride was calm, the fires around him began to swell once more. They enveloped me as he approached, but didn’t singe even a single hair on my body—they hadn’t burned me on the first day we met, and they didn’t burn me now.

As I slowly stretched back to my full height, I caught a glimpse of Cillian rushing to Andrel’s side. I stayed where I was. With my arm throbbing despite the Ice God’s soothing magic, I stared through the flames and watched my two oldest friends—the only thing I still had that resembledfamily—as they scrambled to find balance and calm the crowd that had gathered to witness this violent, divine show.

Cillian lifted his gaze toward me, and the look in his eyes...

It hurt worse than the pain in my arm.

I’m sorry, I mouthed.

I didn’t know what else to say.

He clearly didn’t either. He started to mouth several things in response, but in the end, he only stared at me in silence, looking like he was struggling to catch his breath. Then he averted his eyes and focused his attention on Andrel instead.

The rest of our allies gathered around the two of them, a few glancing uncertainly in my direction before hastily turning away from me, acting as though I wasn’t even there. I didn’t blame them; Dravyn’s fires almost completely surrounded me—it would have been madness to try and get close.

I was an outsider looking in at my own life.

Valas gave Dravyn a pointed look. “We should go.”

Dravyn nodded in agreement. Turning to me, he quietly said, “I think you should come back with us.”

I was too numb, and in too much pain, to recoil at the suggestion. Even if I wasn’t, how could I stay here in the wake of what had just happened?

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