Page 6 of Ash and Feather

My eyes flew open to the sight of ice sweeping over the garden, quickly melting and sending currents of water splashing down, extinguishing the flames.

Valas.

I turned and saw the God of Winter resting casually against a distant, ivy-covered wall, arms folded in front of him, a mixture of concern and amusement gleaming in his violet eyes.

I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood. I didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to put out a fire for me. It likely wouldn’t be the last, either. I was simultaneously glad for his help while being annoyed that I still needed it.

The Winter God’s gaze swept over the charred remains of what had once been several beautiful twisting vines covered in pale blooms. He pushed away from the wall and sauntered closer. “Not making much progress with controlling your new powers, I see.”

“Not while I’m asleep, at least.” I shook out a cramp in my hand. “This keeps happening every time I have even a hint of a nightmare; it’s as if my magic is desperate to burn away any trace of whatever I might see. Which is why I haven’t slept in days…and why I accidentally fell asleep out here, I guess. I was more tired than I realized.”

“So what was your plan?” He arched a brow. “To stay awake indefinitely?”

“I thought the Marr were capable of such things.” I sighed. “Maybe this ability skipped over me thanks to my unusual ascension.”

“None of us are truly able to stay awake forever, for what it’s worth. We do still need to rest occasionally.” With a yawn, he added, “And some of us just like to sleep, necessary or not. The lazier among us.”

“You’re one of those lazier ones, I’m guessing?” I teased.

With a sweeping gesture at his face—at his ivory skin, his sharp jawline, his indigo eyes and other undeniably divine, handsome features—he said, “Do you think I could maintain these looks without ample beauty sleep?”

Teasing him was more fun than thinking about fires and nightmares, so I gave him a sly grin and said, “If that’s as good as it gets with ample beauty sleep, I pray you never develop insomnia.”

“Rude,” he chastised, though his grin was wider than mine; thinly-veiled insults and relentless teasing had become a major part of our shared love language. “You’ve been spending too much time with Mairu these past weeks,” he said. “She’s turning you mean.”

“I’ve always been mean,” I countered, moving to pluck a half-burned blossom from a nearby tree. “Dravyn once told me that humans who ascend tend to retain the same personalities they had as mortals; they’re simply magnified by their divinity.” I crushed the singed flower into a pile of white velvet petals and ash before turning back to Valas with a shrug.

He gave me another crooked, casual smile, but his eyes were suddenly alight with curiosity as he studied me. He didn’t say anything, but I could guess what he was thinking—the questions going through his mind were likely the same ones going through mine.

We have a lot of things to figure out, Dravyn had said.

But the six weeks that had passed since we’d stood together in the wreckage of battle had brought more questions than answers, unfortunately. I was a strange case, after all—both because Dravyn had granted so much of his power to me, and because my mortal blood had been elven, not human.

Every other ascended Marr had once been human as far as I knew. And though the elven-kind had onceallbeen semi-divinebeings who walked alongside the upper-gods, we’d been cast out of such divinity generations ago. Our race had been supplanted by a new, less powerful creation—humans.

Elves and the divine beings no longer mixed; we went together so poorly, in fact, that war had been simmering between our worlds for decades now.

So why had the Moraki allowed me to have divine magic? And not onlyallowedit, but actively moved to meet Dravyn when he brought my stabbed, bleeding and broken body to the Tower of Ascension? And whatever powers they’d given me…what did they expect me to do with them? What did they expect me to become?

I was no fool; I knew the gods did not grant favors without expecting something in return.

I parted my fingers and watched ash and petals scatter down to the scorched ground, wondering, not for the first time, what I was doing in this realm, and if it—or anywhere—would ever truly feel like where I was meant to be. I was anotherwherever I went; not a normal divine being, but also not a proper elf anymore, either.

“Do you remember what you were dreaming about?” asked Valas, a hint of concern darkening his usually carefree voice.

I narrowed my eyes on one of the fallen petals, trying to dredge up images from the tumultuous waves of my thoughts. I’d drawn a blank almost every time I’d tried this after past incidents, never able to clearly remember the nightmares that triggered my errant flames.

To my surprise, this time a few clear imagesdidemerge in my mind: rocky ground, a river roaring at my back…the same river I’d nearly died next to after my battle with Andrel, I thought. And there was the familiar knife falling toward me, too, except…

Except, it wasn’t Andrel wielding it.

It wasn’t clearwhoit was, only that it was certainly not him—though the shadow-cloaked figure did send a pang of familiarity through me.

I tried harder to focus on the shadowy face.

I regretted it almost instantly.

Because that face…that face…

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