Page 107 of Ash and Feather

Her voice was so cold—so unlike the sister I remembered—that I was too shocked to respond right away.

“It may look like the former, at first,” she went on, “but there is always a catch. Some price they don’t tell you up front.” Her voice softened. “Come on, Karys. You’re smarter than this.”

The softer tone made me even angrier; she was speaking to me as if I was the same person she’d abandoned all those years ago. Like I was a child, not a goddess with fire in my veins.

That fire was starting to get restless, eager to make itself known.

As it rose to the surface, however, I noticed something felt…offabout it.

The lingering effects of whatever she’d injected into my neck, maybe, combined with my separation from Dravyn. Effects that could very well become more debilitating with each moment I spent trapped here, away from the rest of my divine family.

“Why did you bring me to this place?” I demanded.

“Because.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I thought it might be…soothing, for us to return to a simpler time. And to a place where we wouldn’t be interrupted. This smaller area was easier to wrap in protection, too.”

It took a moment for the meaning behind her words to sink into my overwhelmed mind. “So there arewards of some kind around this house and its boundaries, too?”

“Of course there are.” Her tone was perfectly even. Perfectly unapologetic. “I’ve witnessed enough destruction from the gods—I didn’t want them or their monsters crashing in and destroying my chance to actually speak with you after all these years.”

“You’re worried about the destruction thegodshave caused?” Seething, I asked, “And what about the livesyou’vedestroyed? The humans you’ve killed? The damage you did to Mindoth with your bombs, and the ones you killed in Ederis before that—I saw you playing executioner for those men on the platform, you know.”

I swallowed several times, trying to keep my throat open as it threatened to swell shut. I licked my painfully cracked anddry lips, took several deep, steadying breaths—but nothing I did helped the words I wanted to say make it out.

Savna’s voice softened again as she said, “What do you know of the ones we put to death in Ederis?”

She waited patiently, until I finally managed to cough up a response. “I know you smiled when you swung the blade.”

“Because the people of Ederis needed to see a confident leader.”

“They needed to see you murder humans? People who likely had families and—”

“They stole from our storehouses. And what they couldn’t steal, they destroyed through fire and poison. They also murdered three guards in the process. So hardly what I would callinnocent souls. I didn’t enjoy putting my blade through their necks, but I know how to put on an act when needed. And our followers needed that show of confidence after weeks of dealing with losses at the hands of human-kind.”

My throat closed up even tighter than before.

“We’re just trying to survive, Ryssy.”

“Don’t call me that.” The words hissed out of me before I could stop them. “I’m not a child. I don’t need a childish nickname.”

“Right. Sorry.” She started to brush her hands together but stopped herself, clenching them into fists instead. “You understand, though, don’t you? We have a right to fight back. To survive. To maybe, someday, find a way back to an existence that’smorethan just surviving. And I thought that you and I…that together we could…”

The trailing hint of hope in her voice was the most painful part of this ordeal yet. To know that I couldn’t share the weight of that hope, no matter how badly she wanted me to. No matter how badlyI’dwanted to, once upon a time.

The words hurt, like they were wrapped in thorns that caught on the swollen walls of my throat, but I forced a reply out: “I’m not interested in fighting that war with you anymore.”

“…I see,” was all she said.

But the question lingering in her gaze was easy enough to read:Whose side are you on?

I still didn’t know how to answer that.

I just knew I couldn’t think clearly in this house. Even if the wards had not been wrapped around it. Even if she hadn’t poisoned me. Even if Dravyn and his magic had not been so far away. Even then, I suspected I wouldn’t have been able to.

Because I no longer belonged here.

And the longer I stayed, the more unbalanced I feared I would become—and what would happen if I remained trapped here? I didn’t know what Dravyn would do to get back to me. What fires he would set or what battles he would wage.

Nothing that would help settle the wars building around us, I guessed.

---