Page 14 of Ash and Feather

“Ederis…why does that sound familiar?”

His entire body went rigid—a reaction that passed so quickly I might not have noticed had it not been accompanied by an equally abrupt shift in his power. I felt the fluctuation in his magic like the snap of a sail in a sudden wind, jolting me more sharply into awareness.

And after only another moment of thought, I remembered where I’d heard the word before.

“Ederis…that’s the elven city you destroyed when you first ascended, isn’t it?” The assassins who killed his younger siblings were said to have hailed from there, which was the reason he’d targeted it—yet more painful knots in the tangled web that was our histories.

All of the air seemed to be fleeing the room as he thinly, quietly, said, “Yes.”

I braced both hands against the table, pressing against it for balance.

“Apparently, despite the destruction I caused, the roots of that city run deep and they held fast.” He spoke without emotion, as if reading directly from a script so he wouldn’t lose his nerve. “And now, the revitalized version of it is proving an even more dangerous hotbed of rebellion and power than what was previously there.”

I stared, unseeing, at the map beneath my fingers. My mind was full of horrific images of gods and elves clashing while countless humans were caught in the crossfire—and one elf keptcoming to the forefront of it all. The same one my nightmare in the garden had been about.

Godwalker…

Was my sister really at the center of this newest, burgeoning uprising? What was she planning to do next? If she was in Ederis, did that mean…

“This city and the rebellion gathering and festering there…” The words cracked as they crawled from my dry throat. “It’s close to your old kingdom.”

Dravyn nodded, staring blankly at the map under my hands as he said, “The past, it seems, is not finished with either of us.”

Chapter 4

Dravyn

I pacedthe roof of the tallest western tower, staring out over miles of grey ground and cracks filled with molten fire, focusing on nothing in particular while I tried to decide what the hell I was meant to do next.

The sky was growing darker. It matched my mood, and so I couldn’t bring myself to summon another orb to brighten it; too many other things were weighing too heavily on my mind, anyhow. And my magic—namely, the strange way it had been ebbing and flowing since Karys’s ascension—was certainly not the least of these things.

I stretched my hand out and summoned a small flame. Whispered to it, twisted my wrist, watched the tendrils of red and orange move in accordance…

Effortless enough.

But then again, it was a weak spell. And Karys was not far away from me at the moment. That was the one element that seemed to be consistent with my wayward-as-of-late magic: It was stronger whenever I was close to her, for better or worse.

So I hadn’t gone far—just to find some clearer air. Meanwhile, she had insisted on staying inside and looking closer at the maps I’d had out, gleaning whatever extra information and ideas she could from them and the books stuffing the shelves.

I could feel her easily from where I stood, like a second heartbeat pulsing and fluttering through my body. The beating of her magic had been restless for the first hour after I’d left her, but it seemed to have leveled off now…so one of us was clearing their mind, at least.

With a sigh, I closed my hand into a fist, extinguishing the fire in my palm. It was time to admit defeat; this clearer space had done nothing for me. My thoughts still drifted in hazy, aimless patterns, unable to decide on a solid shape, much like the smoke now slipping through my clenched fingers.

Swatting that smoke away, I went back inside. I wandered the halls for a bit until I felt a pull—as I so often did lately—that led me back toward Karys; I returned to the small library and found her still in the middle of it.

The bookshelves, I immediately noticed, had been rearranged in the short time I’d been away. She had color-coordinated them, then lined them up according to the height and width of their spines.

Despite my weary mood and battling thoughts, I felt a small smile curving my lips.

It wasn’t the first time she’d done something like this. I could picture the scene even though I hadn’t witnessed it; she’d likely started off trying to clean up the mess Halar had made, only to get carried away. Those books were easier to organize than most of the messes we were facing, and finding ways to impose logical order on things brought her comfort, I knew. So I didn’t begrudge what she’d done—even though it meant I likelywouldn’t be able to find the next book I went looking for without a struggle.

Reimagining the space had apparently worn her out; she’d pulled a stool up to the table where the map of the northern kingdoms was still laid out—one of the only things untouched during her redecorating—and she was resting with her head upon it, her breathing slow and steady.

Asleep, it looked like.

It had been such a long time since I’d seen her surrender to sleep like this that the sight of her stillness concerned me for an instant.

“Seems like it worked,” came Rieta’s voice.

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