Page 60 of Ash and Feather

Her fingers clenched into my shirt as she balanced herself. Looking down, the depth of the wounds on her fingers became more obvious than ever.

“Did he do that to you?” I demanded.

Again, she shook her head.

Nevertheless, I was calculating how many more I would have to kill to get to him when Karys suddenly stepped away from me, turned around, and strode directly toward our enemies herself.

She stopped several feet away from Andrel. Valas and I both moved closer, hands gripped tensely on our weapons, eyes scanning the restless soldiers all around us.

“How low we’ve sunk,” Andrel continued, still only focusing on Karys, “that you feel the need to employ tricks, to creep around in my presence rather than meeting me face-to-face. There was a time when we didn’t hide anything from one another. Do you even remember that? Or have these beasts taken that from you as well, along with your sense of self-respect?”

Karys stiffened, but kept her head up and her voice level as she replied. “I’m not hiding, now, am I?”

“No. Though it’s arguably worse, what you’re doing. The company you’re keeping.”

“I’ve kept far worse company than this,” said Karys.

He considered the statement for a moment before chuckling darkly. “Are congratulations in order, then?” he sneered. “I suppose I’m meant to cheer for you, now that you’ve become a filthy servant of the divine? Will you also be changing your name? How should I address you going forward? A servant of the—”

“She is no servant of mine,” I interrupted. “She is my equal. And you may address her asGoddessor not at all.”

Andrel finally turned his head toward me.

The entire circle of soldiers seemed to be looking at me as well, all of a sudden.

I fed off their glares, forgetting myself for a moment, letting chains of fire whip outward from my body. The ground beneath me heated to the point that little fissures began to spread out from under my feet.

All of it was subdued by the poisons they’d filled the air with, but there was still enough flame and fury in the display to make Andrel flinch—though he quickly recovered and hid the movement with a smile and said, “Well, I’ll be sure to start building a temple to her, in that case.”

Molten fire filled one of the cracks in the ground, pouring toward him. It moved more sluggishly than it would have under normal circumstances—the only reason he was able to dance back and out of the way before it swallowed him up in a violent, deadly rush.

I reached for my sword instead, but a hand clamped down on my shoulder, preventing me from drawing it. A cold breeze stirred, snaking around me before weaving into the streams of fire I’d unleashed, cooling them back into relatively solid ground.

“We were heading for clearer air,” Valas reminded me in a low voice.

I shrugged free of his grip.

He was relentless, stepping more fully into my line of vision and jerking his head in Karys’s direction. He didn’t say another word, but his meaning was clear enough.

We should get her out of here.

Somehow, I managed to pull my hand away from my sword.

He took the lead, grabbing Karys’s hand and dragging her toward the barrier.

I moved more slowly, watching our enemies crowding in, daring any of them to try and stop us from leaving. Once Karys and Valas had crossed back over the barrier—and I felt their magic building as they prepared to transport themselves—I finally relaxed enough to turn toward the exit point myself. I fixed one final glare in Andrel’s direction before walking away.

“We aren’t finished,” I promised him.

He gave a slight bow. “Until next time, then.”

Chapter 16

Karys

Two daysafter my mission into Ederis, I stood in the smaller of the Fire Palace’s two kitchens, obsessively counting out the ingredients to an old family recipe I’d made at least a hundred times before.

I’d memorized the steps to it years ago, yet now I found myself second-guessing every measurement, checking off ingredients only to throw them back into their containers so I could take them out in a different way, line them up in alternative rows, count them by twos instead—whatever it took until they finally feltright.

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