Page 46 of Ash and Feather

She still looked suspicious. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, hands tucked within—still hiding her claws. She started to speak several times, only to fall silent. Looked around at the little embers still floating in the garden, as though she wasn’t sure how they’d gotten there or whether or not it was safe to let them go.

Yes; she’d clearly expected more of a fight.

She’d been fighting her whole life, after all, and we’d been enemies for far longer than we’d been allies.

And then there were the ones she hadbelievedto be her allies. Her sister—among others. Worthless pieces of shit who had betrayed her in so many different ways…

No wonder she didn’t trust anyone but herself to carry out her plans.

It stung to realize how far we still had to go. To wonder if we could ever get to a place where we might stop playing these games and truly trust one another. But now was not the time to dwell on that particular challenge we faced.

She finally agreed to my part of the plan with a stiff nod, and there was no going back after this point.

“So,” I said, detaching my tone as best I could from the uneasy feelings tumbling in my gut, “we need to figure out how we’re going to get her safely inside our target area, andkeepher safe.”

Zachar moved from his place by the wall and joined Mairu in discussing the particulars of this.

By the time their discussion finished, both had left marks on Karys’s skin—powerful, if temporary, shades of their respective magics. Shades that would last longer than the impromptu trinket Mairu had given me during my last visit to the mortal realm.

These borrowed powers would be enough to change Karys’s appearance and to keep her own divine magic in check, at least for a little while. She was part of our court, her magic derived from the same ultimate power as both Zachar and Mairu’s—so the spells would hold almost as if they were her own.

She would be fine.

I had to make myself believe that, somehow.

The others continued to talk, going over the finer points of the plan. I tried to listen and contribute, but their words quickly became nothing more than empty noise. It didn’t matter what they said, or what else we decided to do to keep Karys safe; it didn’t change the fact that I had a bad feeling about this.

All of this.

And if something happened to her, I was not sure the world could survive the fires I would unleash upon it.

Chapter 12

Karys

The Hollowlands turnedout to be nothing like I’d imagined they would be.

I’d pictured shadows upon shadows in my mind, each one concealing a danger more deadly than the last. I’d braced myself for air that reeked of rot and poison. For traps the lightest misstep would trigger. For whatever horrifying formations had earned the area the nameHollowlands; to stumble upon great gaping pits filled with endless darkness, or to look to my left and right and see the bones of hollowed-out beasts caging me in.

Instead, the landscape I found myself navigating through was almost…pleasant.

The air was balmy and smelled faintly of honey. It was dark—save for a bit of setting sunlight still weaving through the sea of branches overhead—but it was a cozy sort of darkness, like the kind that came after a well-spent day when all you had left to do was get a good night’s sleep.

Deep and gold and glowing with promise. It made me think of younger years—simpler years—when my sister and I ran wildthrough the woods surrounding our family’s farm. Those woods had been filled with old pockets of magic. Even as a mortal elf, I’d been able to sense it—and harness it, in some cases, into healing spells.

But I felt no real magic in this place. And even if I found my sister, this was not somewhere she and I had discovered together, like so many of the magical paths and make-believe castles in our old woods.

No; it was a part of her life that she had concealed from me. One ofmanythings she’d apparently concealed.

And I needed to remember that.

In an effort to remind myself of the mission I was on, I found a small pool of water and crouched down to study the face peering up at me—not my face, but that of an older, wiser looking elven woman with dark red hair curling around a pale, lightly-freckled face. My eyes were an arresting shade of violet that I had a hard time looking away from.

Mairu’s spell was very convincing; no one would recognize me.

The strange thing was that I stillfeltlike myself. Even as I stared at the unfamiliar face in the water, I felt more like myself than I had in weeks.

Maybe because I was back in the mortal realm, drawing nearer to the elves.

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