Page 186 of Ash and Feather

She visibly steeled herself further before she said, “Whatever happens in the end, I need you to trust me.”

I stared, searching her face for clues about the things she hadn’t been able to tell me. About whatever trial Malaphar had appointed to her. Clues about where she was planning to go, what she was planning to do.

Finding none, I planted one last lingering kiss on her lips, swallowing the last of the raindrops still clinging to them.

“I trust you,” I whispered against her mouth.

But as she kissed me back—harder than she ever had—I had the strange sensation that she was returning the fire I’d given her, only now it burned more brightly and fiercely than ever before.

Chapter 42

Karys

Two daysafter my meeting with the God of the Shade, I stood at the edge of the Hollowlands, my sights once again set on Ederis.

The heart of the elven rebellion.

In a matter of minutes, I would be driving my way toward that heart.

And my sister—fully healed thanks to the magic of Armaros—was coming with me this time.

I would be taking on her appearance with the help of Mairu’s magic, and we would both be traveling into the hornet’s nest that was Ederis with the same goal in mind.

We had mapped out our exact routes, our precise targets, and made certain we wouldn’t overlap one another. It would still be dangerous. Incredibly dangerous.

But it was the only plan we could all agree on.

Savna still had followers within Ederis. As many as Andrel, at least. And could maybe gain more, once she returned and revealed that she had survived an assassination attempt—an actof violence that hadn’t surprisedme, but which might surprise others and turn them away from Andrel’s leadership.

My original plan had been to go alone, but Savna refused to be left behind.

She would be better at winning over any extra supporters and getting them to do as she commanded, she had argued—and I couldn’t disagree. So I would focus on alerting the ones who already followed her, letting them know of our plan to refuse to continue to fight under Andrel’s banner.

Together, we would turn enough against him that he would have no choice but to rethink his goal of launching a full-scale war against the human kingdoms.

That was the first part of the plan.

Once it was in motion—and most of our enemies were moving out of the city, away from me—I would focus on making my way to the place I believed to be the ‘heart’ of the rebellion.

And there I would unleash Antaeum, which was currently quietly tucked away against my back, hidden beneath my coat.

I kept expecting Dravyn or the others to pick up on the dagger’s energy. To spot it, at least. To ask where I’d gotten it. But it went entirely unnoticed; whatever Malaphar had done to cloak its power from them, it was working.

I only hoped it proved as powerful as he claimed whenever the time to wield it arrived—a time that would have to come sooner rather than later.

Because while we stood there, plotting and preparing to sneak our way inside Ederis, the forces at Mindoth and the surrounding posts of the Galithian Army continued to mobilize and march toward us. Help was coming from neighboring kingdoms, as well—a rare alliance of human-kind all converging toward a single goal: To eliminate the elves before they could declare their full war.

As my sister and I finished finalizing our routes and reciting our goals, Valas returned from his mission of scouting out the moving human troops.

He soared down in the form of a serpentine dragon that looked remarkably similar to the shape Mairu often shifted into.

“How many?” Dravyn asked in place of a greeting.

“Two-thousand strong, at least,” Valas said, shaking away the last of the scales from his arms. “They’re marching through the Naudren Pass.”

“Approaching from the west,” Dravyn muttered. “They’ll likely set up in a blockade formation along the Hollowlands’ edge.”

“There’s a nearly permanent encampment along the west-facing edge of those lands, stretching for miles up from the human’s territory,” my sister informed us. “So they’ll be well prepared to defend themselves and outlast any siege.”

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