Page 13 of Ash and Feather

Moth abandoned his scraps under the table and climbed into my lap instead, nuzzling my hand until I started to absently pet him.

After several moments, I managed to find my voice, even though it came out thin and shaking. “Belethyn…we have to go there, don’t we? We need to collect evidence for ourselves. Notjust about my…about thisGodwalker…but also…what if this is the place Cillian and Andrel have relocated to as well?”

Dravyn’s face became an unreadable wall.

Frustration bubbled up inside me, expanding until it lorded over all the other emotions I was fighting with. My skin flushed, my muscles drew taut, and the flames in the hearth danced dangerously bolder and bigger. Moth lifted his head from my lap and gave a wary purr.

Without a word, Dravyn looked to the fireplace and exhaled, settling the building flames with all the effort of extinguishing a single candle. But despite the ease of the motion, he looked visibly more weary when he turned back to me.

The space between us seemed to expand as it darkened, as he fixed me with an expression that was still guarded, but clearly concerned.

“You can’t expect me to just stay here and wait for more reports to trickle in from the likes of Halar, or from others who don’t have the same connection to the elves that I do,” I argued. “If there’s a chance my sister is out there, or if—”

“I don’t think it’s safe for you to step outside of this realm until you’ve managed better control over your new powers. No one acclimates to these things in a matter of weeks. You’re doing better than most, but it would be unwise to push it at this point.”

I started to hurl several arguments at him only to catch them at the tip of my tongue and drag them back.

He had a point, loathe as I was to admit it.

I tried to keep my composure. Tried to make my expression as placid as his, even though all I was suddenly thinking about were my nightmares and the infernos that had followed them…

The gardens had grown back easily enough, thanks to the magic in the soil there. I’d set a few fires within the palace itself, too, but Dravyn or his servants always managed to put them out,and within no time at all these places were always restored. No lasting harm done.

But a mortal garden—or house…or worse, an entire town—wouldn’t fare as well, and we both knew it.

And with that thought came another frustration, another question: What else did webothknow?

Quietly, I asked, “Could you sense what happened earlier? Were you able to see what I…what I did in the garden?”

It took him a long moment to reply. “I’m not doing it on purpose, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate my power from yours. And when you call on the fire I shared with you, sometimes I see flashes of whatever that fire is surrounding. And sometimes I hear your voice…” He hesitated. “You don’t see me in the same way, I take it?”

“No. Not as of yet, anyway.” I went back to stroking Moth. The downy fluff of his fur and the silk of his feathers were soothing to focus on. “Although as I was approaching the palace earlier, I could feel your frustration and anger toward Halar, I thought.”

Dravyn opened his mouth to reply, only to close it and fall into a thoughtful silence instead.

I averted my eyes, still unsure of how I felt about this latest development between us. There were few secrets I wanted to keep from him at this point, but I was still not used to feeling so…known.By anyone, really—much less a god I used to hate so intensely.

Somehow, our deeper-than-ever connection made the loss of my former life and identity feel all the more jarring, and thus, the need to see my sister—and to reconcile all the lost and mixed-up pieces of me—felt all the more desperate.

“It’s not uncommon for divine beings who share the same threads of magic to be able to hear one another’s thoughts and communicate mentally, even over long distances,” Dravynreminded me, taking command over a flame in the fireplace as he spoke, twisting it this way and that. “But it’s usually more subtle and more controllable.” He tilted his gaze toward me. “Perhaps once you have a better handle on—”

I shook my head, cutting him off.“Never mind it,” I said. “It’s just as well. You saw the truth, and you have a point—there’s a chance that I would do the same thing in the mortal realm, where the consequences could be much more dire.”

I got to my feet, placing Moth in the chair instead of my lap. I could no longer keep still. My frustration felt like a living thing crawling over me. I needed to shake it off.

Dravyn watched me for a moment before he came closer, taking hold of my arm to stop my restless wandering and fidgeting. “If I hadn’t believed you could wield the fire I offered,” he said, “then I would not have given it to you. You just need time.”

“Time.” The word slipped from my lips in a whisper, dripping with bitterness. “What time do we have, with everything that’s happening?”

He didn’t reply. I felt foolish and weak in the shadow of everything we faced, like a child staring down a wolf with nothing but a stick for a weapon.

I considered storming from the room as Halar had done, but Dravyn grabbed my other arm and fixed me in front of him. He brushed a hand across my cheek, wiping away a tear I didn’t even realize had fallen. I felt even more foolish. Crying was not going to bring me any closer to my sister. It would not give me the strength to keep my feet in the shifting, relentless waves of our battles, nor would it help me wield the fire burning wild inside my body.

I broke free of Dravyn’s hold, scrubbed away the beginnings of more tears with the heel of my hand, then went back to the desk and the map upon it. I needed to trace a clear path ofsome kind along the parchment. A visible route to…something. Anything.

“What is the name of the village where they’re concentrating their efforts?” I asked again.

As before, there was a hollow, haunting sort of pause before he replied. But this time, no one interrupted us, so he eventually managed to answer me: “Ederis.”

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