Page 68 of The Crow Games

“I can hear you lot whispering sometimes. I don’t have all the details, but I know you’re up to something.”

“Emma, if you think we mean you or Liesel harm—”

“I don’t think that,” she said, crossing her arms over her middle. “If I did, we’d have left you for another coven already. The Guardians are recruiting everyone who will listen, you know?”

“I know.”

“And as far as I’m concerned, you and that Bram warlock, well, you’re just the same as—”

“We’re not the same,” I bit out. “I’m not some handpicked puppet of a god who wants yet another throne all for himself. When I speak, you never have to wonder whether every convincing word out of my mouth is the truth or mind magic.”

Emma lowered her chin, a gentle acquiescence. “Similar, then, only he admits what he is, at least. But you and the others, you hoard secrets like a mole hoards worms for winter.”

Maybe now was finally the time to put the truth out there and see what Emma did with it. I scooted closer to her, boots shuffling along the bone floor. Sometimes at night when I couldn’t fall asleep, I’d rehearse what to say should this situation finally present itself. “Look, Emma, I . . .”

She raised her hand, and I fell silent. “Hoard your secrets, if you want. Just promise me I’m not making the wrong choice keeping this blood vow you forced on all of us. I don’t much care what happens to me. I know I earned my place in the games. But my sister didn’t. Promise me, Maven, come what may, you’ll get Liesel out of the Otherworld.”

I met her gaze head-on, and an icy shade of determined blue lit her irises.

“I promise,” I whispered, and immediately I regretted it, because when had I ever successfully saved anyone? And I hoped to the Crone herself that I wasn’t lying. That’s what I wanted for all of us. Freedom. And the guilty god dead.

Emma got up and left without another word.

From the comfort of my bed, I readied Asher’s journal and began to read. It took a moment for me to get back into the flow of the language my first coven had made in my name. Soon I was sailing along, inhaling Asher’s words.

The patient poet was talented. His centuries of careful practice hadn’t been wasted. The rapture he expressed toward life, his verses about creation, and his devotion to the craft of words left me breathless. At one point I just lay on my mattress, the journal open to the page I’d devoured twice resting over my heart, trying to absorb it all straight into my soul.

I read late into the night by a dimmed gaslight, renewing my spirit with every line.

The first time Asher knocked at the wall between our beds, I ignored him, too distracted by a poem about the stars and how they talked to each other. The second time, he was more incessant, and I knocked back.

“If you don’t say anything,” Asher grumbled into the vent, “then my mind will convince me you hate them all.”

“Your mind is not very nice.” Lying on my back, I grinned up at the ceiling. “But you told me not to say anything.”

“I told you not to say anythingcritical. If you’ve anything nice to say . . . well, that I’d prefer you shouted.” I could hear his smile in his voice.

“I’m not going to shout. People are sleeping.”

He sighed. “Fair enough . . . I’ll just . . . wait. Impatiently.”

I bit my lip, letting the quiet drag on, tormenting him a little for fishing. There was no way he didn’t know how talented he was. He would have to be the most obtuse reaper who ever reaped to be oblivious to such skill.

“It’s brilliant,” I admitted. “You’re brilliant. And it’s working. My spirit has never been higher. I feel like I could win in a footrace against a two-headed wolf-garm. I couldn’t—don’t ask me to try it—but itfeelslike I could.”

His shadows poured through the vent in a rapid rush, like steam bursting from a pipe. His sudden appearance knocked a chuckle out of me. He stood in my bedroom, stoic and still as usual. The only evidence of his pleasure was his mouth in a droll twist, but his magic gave him away. It pranced and danced and billowed between us.

“Your poems about the little girl,” I said, “the one with missing front teeth who made you play hide and seek in the back of the Schatten . . .” My throat went tight, and I had to clear it. “Those were my favorite.”

“Her smile made me feel like royalty,” he said, staring off, remembering her. “I’d have given her anything she wanted from that moment on. Absolutely anything. All she had to do was ask, but all she wanted was sweets and for me to tell her silly jokes until the train reached the end of the line.”

I hadn’t felt this renewed since Lisbeth was taken from me. Grateful, I gushed at him some more until a flush darkened his cheeks, his smile coy.

“I saw every thought in your head, and I liked them,” he said, and I caught myself reaching for the tendrils of his magic, encouraging them to twine around my hand, between my fingers. “You’re right. It’s only fair you get to have all of mine now too.”

He lined the back wall with his old journals, plucking them one at a time from his shadows and stacking them in neat rows like bricks. Thousands of years of thoughts and verses, all for me.

The intimacy of that, knowing every thought . . . The rush of the games didn’t allow for much pondering. Quiet moments were too few and far between, but it struck me then as remarkable that Asher now knew me better than anyone else in all the realms.

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