Page 120 of Ash and Feather

I started to once again consider the elaborate, more complicated plans I’d made on the way here; it was looking as if I might need one of those schemes to actually make my way into the dungeons…

Then he slowly, quietly said, “You pulled me from the rubble in Mindoth. I owe you a debt. And if there is one thing I have learned since picking up this crown, it is that debts make it even heavier to bear.”

I stared without speaking as he made one last edit to his letter before finally folding it up and preparing to seal it closed.

“I’ll grant you clearance to enter my prison holds,” he said. “Speak to whomever you wish, but once your business is done, you will leave the palace as quickly and quietly as possible. I have enough complicated meetings ahead of me without having to explain to my advisors why I’m letting you do this.”

I nodded my thanks and immediately turned to leave, not wanting to give him an opportunity to change his mind.

“One last thing.”

I paused in the doorway and turned to face him, listening.

“I don’t know what obligations you middle-gods have to this realm, but…if you find the one you’re looking for, you should take her back to your heavens and keep her there,” he said. “Leave the mortal wars to mortals. We don’t need any more meddling deities.” He busied himself with stamping his seal onto his folded letter as he added, “And don’t worry—the elves will not threaten your power or the hierarchy of gods for much longer.”

Those last words settled heavily over me, making me hesitate longer than I should have. “It sounds like you’re underestimating them,” I said.

Like a disaster waiting to happen.

He gave a dismissive snort.

“Fallon—”

“You are not welcome here any longer.” His face flushed brighter from the effort of keeping his words calm. “Get out. Now. Before I change my mind about letting you into my dungeons.” His eyes flashed up to mine, shining with impatience. With warning.

So I went.

I had come here with only one real purpose—I would not be diverted from it now.

But as I stepped from the room, into the dark halls filled with grim-faced guards and anxious whispers, the sense of foreboding in my chest became so heavy I could scarcely breathe.

Chapter 29

Karys

I saton the floor of my old bedroom, using a stubby pencil and the few scraps of paper I’d scrounged up to create a series of drawings.

One after the other, I was recreating the runes I’d noted along the yard’s edge, rendering each one in painstaking detail.

I was determined to memorize them. To figure out the patterns they’d been set in. To make some sort of sense out of this power the elven-kind had created.

After Andrel’s visit last night, I’d tried several more times to walk through the rune-powered wards. Each time had left me more dazed and drained than before. My magic—and alongside it, my divine strength—seemed to be dwindling more with every passing hour, as I’d feared it would.

Being separated from Dravyn wasn’t helping, either.

I didn’t know how much longer I could withstand it all; I needed to be smarter about plotting my escape.

So I was done with reckless charging. I was calmer, now, and approaching things in my usual methodical way. I had stacks ofpapers hidden under my bed already. I snuck out every chance I could, creeping my way along the edges of my prison—close enough to make the symbols on the ground flare more brightly, but not close enough to subject myself to the full extent of the ward’s draining power.

If I could figure out what patterns had created that power, then I could find a way to undo it, I reasoned.

As I finished filling another page with a recreation of the last symbols I’d seen, my ears twitched, picking up the sound of my sister coming in from outside.

Even after years spent apart, I could still recognize her steps. Her tendency to tap her feet. To sway in place. She rarely moved quietly, and this evening was no exception; she fumbled around in the kitchen for a few minutes, banging pots and clinking glasses, before making her way toward my room.

I hastily shoved my newest drawings under my bed and stood, walking to the window.

It was a dreary evening. Fog blanketed the yard, making the already secluded house feel even more cut off from the world beyond it.

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