Page 144 of Flame and Sparrow

“One of those hounds was killed during the hunt,” Dravyn said. “We don’t know how. But the second succeeded. Although…”

He fell silent for several beats, until I lifted my head from my knees and cut him a sideways glance, urging him to continue.

“They aren’t usually violent when they kill. Typically, they leave only a shell of a body with no obvious cause of death when they drag a soul off…I was surprised to hear you say you found blood in her room.”

“So she put up more of a fight than the hound anticipated.”

“Seems like it.”

“Good.” I angrily wiped away fresh tears with the heel of my hand. “I hope she made the beast suffer, and I hope the Death Marr felt its suffering until the very end.”

Dravyn didn’t respond to this, which only made me angrier.

The only reason I didn’t continue lashing out at him was because of Moth, who chose that moment to return to us. He swooped down and burrowed between my chest and raised knees, forcing me to rearrange myself to create a proper resting spot in my lap for him. He settled down into this spot with a heavy sigh, his eyes fluttering shut as though the conversation had been exhausting for him, even though he’d only observed most of it from the sky.

I focused on the solid weight of the griffin instead of the weight continuing to build around my heart, kneading his fur until he was purring softly, drifting toward sleep.

“You still don’t know how she managed to kill that first veilhound, do you?” I asked Dravyn.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him shake his head.

A memory of the Death Marr’s words rang in my head.

It would have been almost akin to killing a god, and it would have required a very specific type of weapon to do the job.

I now had a likely answer to this question, I realized—the weapons Cillian had shown me.

More pieces of the bigger picture fell into place the longer I sat there.

The reason they had never found whatever my sister had taken from this realm, I guessed, was because these things had likely been drained of their divine energy, which had then been used to create the anti-venom Cillian told me about. Over five years ago, it seemed they’d already been able to create some version of these impossible weapons…and someone had used one to kill the divine creature trying to hunt my sister down.

I could think of no other explanation.

But who had wielded the weapon?

Had Savna herself truly slain the first hound, or was it one of our other allies? Andrel? Cillian? Kinnara?

The possibility that it was someone other than Savna made my chest ache all over again—because it was more proof that I’d been lied to by more people. That the ones I considered the closest friends I had left, myfamily, had kept me in the dark about the things they were truly doing, the kind of war they were truly planning to wage.

All these questions tumbled relentlessly through my mind. Meanwhile, I could feel Dravyn’s eyes on me. The urge to tell him what I knew was eating at me again, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Once again, I felt like I was standing in the very center of two entirely different worlds, the ground beneath me threatening to split and swallow me up if I didn’t leap to one side or the other. I knew I couldn’t stay in the middle, yet I couldn’t move.

“Please talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“That you were using me,” I repeated, more broken than angry, now. “This whole time, you only wanted to bleed me dry of whatever information I carried. Nothing more.”

“Karys, I…”

I finally turned to fully face him, narrowing my gaze, daring him to try and deny the accusation.

He sighed. “That’s how it started.”

That should have been the end of it. The last thread between us broken, the sign for me to stop talking to him, to stop trying to understand. I don’t know why I kept looking at him. Why I stayed where I was and asked, “How does it end?”

He held my gaze, and I held my breath, though I wasn’t sure why, or what I was even hoping for at this point.

“I’m not sure anymore,” he said.

Chapter39

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