Page 40 of Ash and Feather

“If it will help you to sleep,” he said, “I won’t go anywhere.”

I nodded, and he slid his arm around me, letting his hand come to rest lightly against my lower back. I curled closer to him,laying my head on his chest. His heartbeat was soft, fluttering, like a tired bird ready to collapse into its nest.

And collapse he did; now that he’d turned back to me and stopped fighting the urge to leave, he seemed to give into whatever weariness he felt. His eyes closed. His breathing slowed. Even the fiery flush of his skin cooled slightly.

It was rare to see him relax like this. Maybe he was doing it partly for my benefit—to help me feel less like an outsider; most divine beings didn’t think of sleep nearly as much as I still seemed to. Maybe he wasn’t even truly asleep.

I didn’t try to rouse him, but I continued to study him, thinking.

The moment felt, like it so often did with him, as if I’d drifted into a dream where I couldn’t quite tell what was real and what was make-believe.

And though I tried to stop my thoughts from racing, they soon traveled once more to last night, to waking up to the sight of him coming undone. I wondered again about what he’d seen and heard in his old kingdom, and what would happen next time he went there…

No, whenwewent there.

How did this end between us?

How elsecouldit end, except unhappily?

His old kingdom hated the world I’d come from. So did most of the gods I now lived among. This council tomorrow, and everything that would follow it, regardless of what was decided…

Where was I supposed to stand among all this?

A tear slid down my cheek. I hastily wiped it away before it could drip onto Dravyn’s bare chest. But more followed, along with a sudden rush of despair so violent it nearly made me choke.

As quietly as I could, I slipped from Dravyn’s grasp and rolled away from him.

Breathe, I reminded myself.You have to keep breathing.

But how could I?

I didn’t belong in this new world, no matter how hard I practiced or how much magic I learned. I felt like an imposter in my own skin, and I feared I always would. Even if Dravyn called meGoddess. Even if he treated me like one.

I stretched a hand toward the fireplace. Twisted my fingers and managed some semblance of control over a bright ember, drawing it up into a tendril of flame and making it dance to a silent tune in my mind.

Goddess, I tried telling myself.This is what I am now.

But all I could think about were the ties I still had to the world below. To my sister. To the rebels I had once considered my family…myeverything. Even the tune I sang in my head—the one I made the dancing flame keep time with—was an old song my sister used to sing me to sleep with.

The Death God had insisted I needed to kill those things off.

Maybe that was true.

But what difference would it make?

Dying did not undo a life that had been lived.

In my case, all the pieces of that life were still waiting for me in the messy realm below. I would have to face them sooner or later. And my sister…

As I lay there, scarcely breathing, my cheek sticky with dried tears, her face became all I could think about.

Soon enough, I’d made up my mind.

Whatever the council decided tomorrow, I was going to find Savna, and I was going to find a way to put all the broken pieces of us back together.

Chapter 11

Dravyn

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