Page 7 of Ash and Feather

“Do you remember anything at all?” Valas prompted.

Shaking my head, I forcibly pulled myself from my thoughts, refusing to entertain them any further. I was tired. Anxious. Clearly my mind was only playing tricks on me.

Valas gave me a questioning look.

I rubbed at the chilled flesh of my arms, averting my eyes. “No. Just flashes of things,” I said. “Nothing entirely clear.”

The God of Winter was an excellent liar—and, by extension, excellent atspottingliars. But he didn’t call me on this particular falsehood. He simply sighed good-naturedly and said, “Well, time has a way of making things clearer. Maybe if we’re patient, you’ll figure it out…preferably before you set fire to every thing I love in this realm.”

“We can only hope,” I deadpanned.

I went back to picking at the burned bits of flowers and vines and sweeping away ash, doing my best to clear away the evidence of what I’d done.

Feeling Valas’s gaze upon me once more, I said, “Don’t tell Dravyn about this incident, please. He’ll worry.”

Valas sighed his disapproval but still summoned an icy breeze to help further scatter the proof of my lack of control. As he guided a pile of scorched blooms up and over the outermost garden wall, he offered his vow: “I won’t breathe a word. Of course, something tells me he’ll worry about you anyway.”

My cheeks flushed hot, though only for a moment; in the next beat, another blast of cold fanned across my face—another fireextinguished on my behalf. This time I couldn’t help giving the God of Winter a small, grateful smile.

As we cleared away the last bits of ash and debris, a new, much warmer breeze rushed in—like some great magical beast had exhaled a sparkling breath of revival over the burned remains. The garden bloomed quickly within the shimmering warmth, bursts of color and scent exploding all around us until the space was lush and full once again, and arguably, even more beautiful than before.

No harm done, I tried telling myself.The magic in this place is stronger than my mistakes.

Inhaling deeply, I started for the nearest of several decorative, black iron gates. Valas followed me through it. We walked in silence into the rolling hills beyond the garden, both lost in our own thoughts for several minutes, until a niggling suspicion began to burrow into my thoughts.

“I didn’t expect anyone to bother me all the way out here this morning,” I began, frowning. “Did Dravyn send you looking for me, by chance?”

“No onesendsme anywhere, just so we’re clear,” Valas said with a yawn. “I went to the Palace of Fire earlier because I sensed unruly company heading toward it—the God of Storms, I’m afraid. I wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything foolish at the start, but I was ultimately uninterested in playing mediator between him and Dravyn. So when Dravyn mentioned he hadn’t seen you all morning, I used it as an excuse to leave. You know, to find you and make certain you weren’t blowing anything up. Which…” He looked back at the gardens with a long-suffering sigh.

“There were no actual explosions this time, thank you very much.”

He shrugged.

I ignored the shrug and the goading smile he gave me, too busy trying to think of why the God of Storms would have descended upon the Palace of Fire without warning. We hadn’t been expecting him, as far as I knew—and the Marr generally didn’t arrive in others’ territories unannounced unless they were prepared to start a fight.

Of course, knowing Halar, he’d likely been prepared to start a fight.

And yet, I remained hopeful he’d come for another reason. “You said Dravyn mentioned he hadn’t seen me…so I take it I was a topic of conversation? Has Halar or one of his minions found something useful during their scouting?”

Valas nodded, though his eyes lacked their usual confident shine. “That was part of the reason he rushed into our territory uninvited, from what I gathered—seems one of the creatures he sent to scour the northernmost mortal kingdoms hit on something interesting.”

My nerves buzzed to life, magic humming into awareness along with them. Heat filled the air. Valas gave me a wary glance, and I summoned every ounce of control I could manage so I could speak in a perfectly level voice. “What did they find?”

“Not your sister herself, based on what I heard.”

My heart sank.

“But…” he continued after a brief hesitation, “maybe another sign that she is, in fact, still alive.”

My breath caught as though I’d been punched in the chest.

I wondered if it would ever stop feeling like a blow to my heart, hearing that Savna was somehow still alive and well, not dead and gone like I’d believed for so long.

After I’d told Dravyn what Andrel had said about my sister, he’d been the one to lead the charge, making plans for how we might comb the mortal kingdoms in search of her.

The God of Fire was driven to find her, at least partially, for my sake, I guessed; the other Marr, however, had joined in on the search because Savna had caused them trouble in the past, and most suspected she’d had something to do with the latest attack against the divine realms as well.

They wanted to find her so they could drag information and confessions out of her, and so they could carry out whatever revenge they’d been dreaming of since she’d gotten the better of them years ago.

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