Chapter 17

Dravyn

It had been four days since our return from the mortal realm, and every day had brought more challenges, more impossibilities, more weights that were steadily tipping the mortal realm toward war.

I'd spent most of the morning in my office, nursing a goblet of wine while poring over records of previous conflicts in Avalinth, until the God of Winter interrupted me with a report I'd been waiting on—one filled with more bad news from that realm below us.

I reluctantly put my notes aside, drained the last of the wine, and went to pass this news on to Karys. I couldn't keep it to myself; as much as I wanted to shoulder the burden alone, I'd promised her I would keep her informed of everything I could—the good, the bad, the in-between.

I found her in the main gardens, braiding a crown of flowers that she was attempting to place on Moth's head.

Unsurprisingly, the griffin was not being particularly cooperative; he already had one string of battered blossoms hanging from his beak. More scattered the ground, seemingly crushed and ripped apart by his paws. A few were burned almost beyond recognition.

I paused at the garden gate, watching them, wishing I didn't have to interrupt the quiet scene with more talk of war and ruin.

Karys ultimately proved more stubborn than Moth, successfully adjusting the string of white and blue flowers so that it balanced perfectly on his head. She sat admiring it for a moment, assuring the griffin of his handsomeness and sternly commanding him not to ruin her work.

She kept her back to me as she called, "You know I can feel you standing there—and sense your troubled thoughts—even if you don't speak, right?" She glanced over her shoulder, not quite meeting my eyes. "You have bad news?"

I moved closer, leaning my back against the wall she sat beside, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

Moth sprang onto the top of the wall and paced it, preening before me, tilting his head this way and that to make certain I saw what he was wearing. Now that the job was done, he seemed less interested in eating the crown and more interested in showing it off.

"We've successfully scouted the place you mentioned to me," I told Karys. "The area where your old friend Cillian is supposedly hiding out."

"Stillwind, you mean?"

"Yes."

She stood, dusting the dirt from her pants, her expression unreadable.

"Stillwind is the name given to the region as a whole, but in the center of it is a military post long used as a training ground for the Galithian army," I explained. " Mindoth's Keep , it's called. Valas sent one of the spirits who serve him into the mortal realm yesterday, and they spent the night watching the place."

"And what did they find?"

"The grounds of Mindoth have been on high alert for weeks, dealing with intruders and the occasional covert attack…mostly cloak-and-dagger antics, for the time being—but if things continue to escalate as they currently are, a full-scale battle seems imminent."

She picked off a white blossom clinging to her sleeve, tracing its delicate petals as she said, "We need to stop that battle from happening."

"Ideally, yes."

"How?" Her voice was quiet, her gaze intently focused on the flower.

"I'm not sure. I haven't spoken to anyone other than you and Valas about the matter yet. But it's part of our duty as Marr to be aware of Avalinth's major problems and conflicts…so the other middle-gods must be informed of what we've learned, at least. After that, we'll have to decide, once again, whether to intervene. And to what extent."

"Another council?"

"Maybe. Unfortunately."

She shuddered visibly at the prospect.

I didn't blame her.

"…For now, let's just go for a walk," I suggested. "There's something I need to check on—something that I've been wanting to show you. We can talk more on the way."

She agreed. We followed the well-worn path through the garden, beyond the vine-wrapped trellises, alongside fountains lined with colorful glass tiles, and finally past the stone walls and out to a point where the packed dirt trail gave way to wildness.

The land rolled out for miles before us. I breathed in the warm, spice and smoke-scented air, feeling somehow both unsettled and at peace as I took the scenery in.

I was not the first of my order, so I had not been the hand that originally shaped this territory. But I'd reworked some places in the years since my ascension, partially with the help of magic from the Towers of Creation that were scattered throughout the middle-heavens—the same magic that had aided me in creating creatures like Moth.

The area we traveled through now was perhaps the closest thing to mine . The pockets of ghostly white trees were of my design, as were the swaths of fiery red and orange flowers. While much of my territory was barren stone with bright veins of molten earth weaving through it, the ground here was covered in rippling, bluish-green grass.

I'd also rerouted and widened the creek running through it all, lifted the flat ground into rolling hills, and enchanted the winds so that they often blew warm and dry, and from a southernly direction—work that, collectively, made this small part of my domain resemble the kingdom I'd grown up in.

I'd never admitted this to anyone. In some ways, it felt like a weakness, this clinging to where I'd come from. What I couldn't seem to forget. Like a child afraid to let go of his mother's hand.

"I've never been this way before," Karys remarked, running ahead and summiting a small hill to get a better look. She circled the hilltop, surveying the land around us with one hand raked into her hair to keep the wind from blowing it into her eyes. "It's beautiful here."

"Yes," I agreed, coming up beside her. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I'd modeled it after my old home. I'm not sure why I didn't. Maybe because I found myself thinking less about the past and more about the future whenever she was close to me.

She tilted her head toward me, eyes lighting with curiosity as they took in my pensive expression.

Maybe I didn't need to tell her what I was thinking; maybe she already knew.

I cleared my throat. "Come on—we've still got a ways to go."

I pointed her in the proper direction. She nodded and raced down the hill, arms stretched out, hair flying wildly behind her. Moth soared above, his crown delicately clutched in his front claws and dangling beneath him.

The three of us eventually made our way to Galim, that pool that was connected to so many of the inter-realm waterways. But instead of following any of the rivers branching out from it, we walked due north, over more wild land devoid of any marked paths.

Though I'd often traveled to the place we were heading to, I didn't usually walk the entire way. Normally, I took Farak. Or, if the selakir was not in the mood to be bothered—which happened often—I traveled by way of wings or magic.

But I was in no hurry to deal with all the bad news on our horizon, so today I was perfectly content to walk as slowly as possible toward whatever came next. To savor the relative peace we were enjoying.

All too soon, we came to the spot where I normally touched down: the head of a twisting trail packed with fine grey sand. Following it led down into a valley, where the land grew flat and dozens of small pools awaited us.

I guided Karys to the pool in the very center, an uneven circle rimmed in cheery yellow flowers. The water, by contrast, was the color of a skull that had been left to bleach and rot in the elements. Occasionally, it bubbled with a darker substance, turning the liquid briefly to the shade of charred wood before it returned to its pale state.

"This is Elandrach," I said. "A Watching Pool. It's tied to the mortal realm, and it's one of several such pools scattered throughout the middle-heavens. Different pools correspond to different areas."

"And this one corresponds to the Kingdom of Galizur, I'm guessing?"

"Yes."

"So what can you see in them?"

"Their waters are a gauge of sorts, showing us the general state of Avalinth at a glance. The more unsettled or murky the water, the more unsettled the mortal realm is. The color changes at times, as well. In this case, those bubbles you see have been growing steadily darker for weeks."

Moth swooped down for a closer look. He carefully placed his crown on the sandy ground before trotting up to the pool and inspecting it. Karys knelt beside him, catching him and pulling him back when he leaned too close and nearly tumbled into the water. He slipped behind her, sniffing at the pool from a safer distance, while she scooped a handful of it up.

"It feels strangely thick," she said, studying it as it slowly trickled through her fingers. "Like…blood, almost."

"It's not truly water," I explained, "but a liquified concentration of special magic created by the Moraki."

She turned her hand this way and that, coating it in the thick, shiny substance.

"Some of the Marr can manipulate these pools into showing them more details about the places they represent. I'm not one of them, unfortunately."

"It's clear enough, isn't it?" she asked, softly. "A feeling of blood, and a growing darkness…it seems like an obvious omen."

I didn't disagree, though I couldn't bring myself to say this.

She paused with her fingertips hovering just above the pool and looked up at me, expectant.

"…I don't know how to put an end to this without more bloodshed," I admitted.

She stopped herself from scooping up more water, clenching her hands into fists that she pressed into the sand next to her.

"I don't think I even fully understand what they hope to gain from escalating this into a full war," I continued, wandering through the collection of pools as I spoke.

The one Karys knelt beside rippled with the darkest of warnings, but all of them had changed over the past month; I'd witnessed various shades of those bubbling warnings, and not a single surface experienced sustained calm, now.

"They must realize they can't annihilate all of the gods," I said. "No matter what weapons they manage to create, they aren't strong enough to take on the upper-gods above us. They'll overstep with their demonstrations and warmongering, and the Moraki will intervene eventually and finish them off. I'm certain of it."

Karys's breath audibly hitched, and hastily I added, "Though, obviously, I'd rather it not come to that."

She shook her head, eyes shining with an emotion I couldn't easily name as she looked up at me. "It isn't about annihilating the Marr entirely. It never has been."

I made my way back to her, my gaze curious, urging her to continue.

"It's all a ploy to get the Creators to regret their decision to cast us from their graces in the first place," she continued after a pause. "It's all some of the elves think about…all they've thought about for decades .

"When I was growing up, almost every gathering of my kind led to the same conversations about it. So even though I don't remember a time when we were the most powerful beings in Avalinth, I still grew up feeling like I had been personally cheated out of an inheritance I was owed. Like I was a victim of the tyrannical Moraki. And that if I made them regret their decision badly enough, I might be able to claw back some of the power we once had."

I didn't reply right away, trying to imagine a younger version of her sitting among a budding, rebellious movement, absorbing all the frustration and anger being poured over her.

The emotion simmering in her eyes was clearer now—a tired resolve mixed with quiet sadness, a feeling even deeper and more complicated than these pools that reached all the way to the mortal realm.

Moth took his crown in his beak and carried it to her, nudging it into her hands as if to offer a distraction. She took it absently, her fingers carefully tucking and smoothing some of the bent blossoms back into place.

"And what about now?" I couldn't help asking. "Do you still feel cheated?"

She was quiet for a time, looking back at her reflection in the pool, eyes narrowing as if trying to recognize the face within it.

"Not entirely. We were stripped of our stronger magic, that's true—but we weren't stripped of everything . And we weren't completely wiped away as we could have been. We had other chances, other ways we could have rebuilt. But once you've had so much power, I suppose it's hard to learn to live with less. Most humans now refer to us as the Fallen , but we actually called ourselves that first. And now we have extremists alienating us further and further…" She shook her head, placing the crown back on the head of a surprisingly accommodating Moth, then rose back to her full height while swiping sand and bits of flower crown from her palms.

"I'd always thought it was more complicated than what many of my kind insisted," she went on, "even before I met you. I didn't want it to be complicated , though. Blind hatred is easier, after all." Her heavy gaze fixed on me. She sighed. "Sometimes I wish I could still hate you the way I once did."

She mirrored the grim smile I gave her as I closed the space between us, taking her hand in mine.

"If only," I said.

She stared at our intertwined fingers as she continued. "I'd started to think I could be a bridge between our two worlds—that maybe that was the destiny the Moraki had intended for me when they allowed me to accept your magic, even though I was…well, you know what I was."

I found myself wrestling with the same question as before: "And what do you think now?"

She lifted her eyes to me. "After what I witnessed in Ederis…I'm not sure. I don't know how I can walk back across the divide, face my sister, and…"

I waited patiently for her to finish. When she didn't, I merely gave her fingers a little squeeze. I wouldn't force her to keep talking. Especially not when I didn't know what to say or what to think, either.

She moved away, weaving through the pools until she found a long stick next to one of them. She used it to trace lines and circles in the sand, as if mapping out our next moves.

Moth intently watched the tracing, his flame-tipped tail flicking back and forth. More than once he started to grab the stick only to be stopped by a stern look from Karys.

"We have to go to Mindoth's Keep, don't we?" she decided after a few minutes of silent debate. "To protect the humans there, de-escalate the battle somehow. That's ultimately your charge as a middle-god…" She trailed off, forehead creasing in frustration, as if she'd just remembered that she, too, was technically a god.

I could hear her thoughts relatively clearly. They grew louder with her increasingly troubled emotions, just as mine had when I'd hesitated by the garden gate earlier.

But I could have guessed what she was thinking even without our connection.

Where was her ultimate obligation supposed to lie?

I decided to stick to talk of strategy instead of trying to answer that question. It was easier.

"They'll be expecting us to come to the aid of the humans they're attacking," I said. "Which means they'll be prepared, if and when we do."

"So they're escalating things because they think they have enough power and weaponry to deal a blow to both humans and the gods?" she wondered.

"I'd call it hubris on their part, but…who knows what sort of weapons we'll be dealing with? I suspect—as do many of the other Marr—that part of the reason for their assault on this realm weeks ago might have been about stealing things they could take back and corrupt into fuel for their weapons. I'm sure there are things that were taken while we were busy battling at the Tower of Ascension."

"I hadn't thought of that." She went back to mapping out her thoughts in the sand, her brow creased in concern.

"So walking into Mindoth will not be without significant risk," I said. "At the very least, the humans of that training compound will potentially glimpse weakness in our ranks. They'll see these weapons that can actually do harm to the middle-gods."

"Which is likely part of the goal of the elves," Karys said. "It's the same reason my fellow rebels and I destroyed temples and did our best to slander the role of the divine—to make the Marr seem more like flawed, fallible creatures."

I nodded slowly, understanding. "To weaken the hold we gods have over humans, to encourage them not to worship us, and to keep us from becoming a united force against them."

"Exactly."

"An ambitious goal," I said, frowning. "And again, I wouldn't have thought it within the realm of possibility months ago, but now…"

She made a frustrated noise before swiping away whatever she'd been drawing in the sand. Her fist clenched more tightly around the stick as she looked over the ruined lines and symbols.

She started to attempt several more diagrams, but never managed to commit to any of them for longer than a few seconds.

Her thoughts raced. I could sense the anxiety surrounding them, could hear occasional bits and pieces of them—a jumbled mess of ideas, questions, plans. Nothing that took root. Every promising idea was met with painful realizations before circling back to a single defeated question, the same one I'd been asking myself all morning.

How do we even begin to fix this mess?

As if she heard the echo of this question in my mind, she turned to me with a decisive look and a quick suggestion. "You promised you would help me practice magic the other evening. We never got around to that, did we?"

"No, we didn't." I arched a brow. "I was ambushed in the stairwell, as I recall, and the rest of that evening is a blur."

My sensitive hearing caught the sound of her heartbeat speeding up.

"A pleasant blur," I added with a grin.

Another quick flutter of her heart, and this time my pulse skipped with it as images of that stairwell encounter flashed in my mind. My stomach clenched. My cock twitched at the thought of her pressed against the wall, surrendering to my strength, her skin hot and body quivering at my touch…

She tossed the stick aside. "Well, back to business this afternoon, then," she said, clearly trying to focus through what I assumed were her own heated memories. "If we'll be heading into what sounds like a war zone, then I need to be ready."