Chapter 2

Karys

Six Weeks Later

I woke up surrounded by flames.

The world seemed to be moving in slow motion, my body growing heavier as the seconds crawled by and the fires built higher, tongues of crimson and crackling heat lashing out, blistering my skin.

I breathed in deeply. Too deeply. Smoke flooded my lungs. The choking fit that followed succeeded in waking me completely, and I rolled from the bench I'd fallen asleep on, hitting the ground hard.

My surroundings spun, but distinct, bright colors and bold shapes soon began to emerge from the jumble—canopies of silver-green leaves and twisting vines, clutches of golden flowers, statues made up of elegant edges and smooth-polished stone.

" Elestra ," I heard myself whisper, reminding me of where I was.

What I was.

Elestra was a garden meant for middle-gods—a lavish, beautiful meeting place at the center of the Shade Court's four territories. A place that was no longer off-limits to me, its energies now inviting rather than overwhelming. Saying its name out loud grounded me somewhat, making it easier to believe this garden and the middle-heavens surrounding it were both real.

I was really here.

And I had really set all the magnificence surrounding me on fire…a response, I assumed, to yet more nightmares I could scarcely remember.

Frantically, I lifted my hands, trying to remember the words, the control I'd practiced with Dravyn over the past weeks. He could extinguish fires like this with little more than a whispered command. A wave of his hand. A tiny, deliberate breath.

Myself, I was still finding it much easier to start fires than to put them out.

I let my eyes flutter shut and focused on the feel of my fingers, zeroing in on each tip as I moved them one by one. I tried my damnedest to ignore the very real heat blanketing me, the beads of sweat soaking the nape of my neck, the acrid smoke that felt like it was leaving permanent scorch marks on my lungs….

Those things are all secondary to you , Dravyn had tried— repeatedly—to make me understand. The fire isn't in control of you, you're in control of it.

I clenched my eyes tighter, determined to block out the flames. More sweat built on my skin, trickling down, pooling against my lower back. High above, a branch crackled and ignited, sending a whoosh of heat over me before it severed from its tree and thunked against the ground, making me jump.

Just as I started to truly panic, a cool breeze caressed my cheek, followed by a distinct tinkling and cracking sound.

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 once all been semi-divine beings 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 only allowed it, 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 an other wherever 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 images did emerge 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 clear who it 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 …

"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 at spotting liars. 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 fire extinguished 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 one sends me 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.

Which was why I was desperate to reach her first.

I had to prove that she wasn't an enemy, just as I was not their enemy—that she'd been tricked as I had, and the situation was more complicated than any of us could have imagined.

It was yet another point of contention between me and the keepers of the heaven I now resided in.

The countless impassioned arguments I'd had with the other Marr—many of them with Halar—had done nothing to sway their thinking on the matter. So I simply had to find Savna before they did, to find some way to prove that my sister was not the monster they believed her to be…and I needed to do it before my former allies mounted another attack against the divine. A more successful attack.

Every day felt closer to war, to a crossroads we wouldn't be able to turn back from. And I felt as though I held the key to stopping it all, but my sister was the locked door—and she was nowhere to be found.

I pressed a hand to my stomach, trying to settle the uneasy twisting in its depths.

"I didn't stick around to listen to the God of Storms rage and blather on, as I mentioned." Valas's tone was grim, all trace of his teasing smile gone. "I'm sure Dravyn will fill you in on the details, however…though I wouldn't go to him until Halar has made his exit, if I were you."

"I am not afraid of Halar," I snarled. "I would even be willing to speak cordially with him and help coordinate his search efforts, if he'd deign to ask for such a thing."

"Wouldn't count on that." Valas picked at a thread on his tunic. Like all the clothing I'd seen him don since we met, it was finely made, the woven patterns glistening in the hazy light of the middle-heaven sky, as though spun from some combination of magic, frost, and moonlight. "The God of Storms still thinks you aren't telling us everything you know about your sister and the other rebel Velkyn."

My blood boiled, sending another wave of heat snapping through the air and drawing another wary look from Valas.

"I wish that was the case," I grumbled, willing my magic to settle again after a brief struggle. "I'd give anything to actually have more information than what I've already told everyone." I shook my head in exasperation. "You believe that, don't you?"

"Will you set me on fire if I say no?"

I managed a halfhearted grin. "There's always a possibility."

"Then I've never believed in you more than I do in this moment."

My grin gave way to an actual laugh as we walked farther from Elestra, continuing our teasing and chatting. At least I had him to take my mind off all the painful, confusing things. He reminded me, in some ways, of Cillian—one of my closest friends from my old home.

Cillian .

What had become of him?

The last time I'd seen him, he'd been helping me escape that old home and a raging, murderous Andrel. I likely wouldn't have gotten away without his help…but what price had he paid after I left?

I didn't even know if he was alive or dead.

Weeks ago, at my request, Mairu had descended into the mortal realm and went to search my old home. Cillian hadn't been there. No one had—the once bustling nest of elven rebels had been entirely abandoned.

Just one more mystery we needed to figure out.

I'd accidentally stopped walking, my gaze sliding out of focus as I stared into the distance, overwhelmed by all of these mysteries. It took a cold nudge—Valas's magic—to bring me back.

"Sorry," I said, shrugging off the chill. "I was just thinking about…well, it doesn't matter. Did you say something?"

"I asked if you'd like me to carry you back to your palace?" He stepped back to me, offering his hand. Magic crystals of white and blue were already swirling around the tips of his fingers, but I shook my head.

The Marr could travel with ease to any place with at least a modest concentration of their magical energy. In theory, I should have had the same capabilities.

But my first few attempts had been nothing short of disastrous.

It was easy enough to let Valas or one of the others whisk me along as their passenger—as I'd done in the past—but now that simply reminded me of yet another way I was failing to figure out my new existence.

"Thank you," I said, "but I'll manage on my own."

He grimaced, likely recalling the last time I'd tried to transport myself while in his presence; I'd managed to get as far as surrounding myself in flames before I panicked. Rather than letting the fires lift me and carry me away as they so elegantly did for Dravyn, I'd struggled against the feeling of losing control and being pulled off my feet. My flailing had led to a few accidental fireballs…and I may have set one of Valas's favorite cloaks aflame in the process.

He'd quickly extinguished it, of course, but had teased me relentlessly about it ever since.

"Don't worry," I told him, dryly, "I'm not going to attempt magic. Nothing is going to get incinerated. Or blown up."

"Thank the Creators for that."

"I'm just going to take the longer way back to give Halar more time to finish his rampaging, as you suggested."

He looked momentarily skeptical about me agreeing with his advice, but quickly shrugged it off. "Good. That means I can go back to minding my own business at my own home, perhaps get some more of that beauty sleep, which—as you so kindly pointed out—I so desperately need."

"I've been told I'm honest to a fault," I said sweetly.

"An honest pain in the ass," he said, just as sweetly.

Despite our joking tones, concern still lingered in the depths of his gaze. For a moment, I thought he might insist on escorting me back to the palace, regardless of my wishes—but then he gave me a little salute, bade me farewell, and took several long strides before leaping backwards into a flip that sent shining particles swirling through the air. I blinked and he was gone, leaving nothing more than that icy dust as proof he'd ever been here at all.

"Show-off," I muttered, turning to scan the fields around me, seeking the creature who had carried me from the Palace of Fire to the Garden of Elestra in the first place—Zell'thas, one of the selakir, a creation of Dravyn's.

I spotted him quickly, the shifting oranges and reds of his fiery mane like a pulsing beacon against the silvery green hills.

He gave a high-pitched whinny as he caught sight of me. The sound was similar to one a horse might make, yet slightly off in a way that might have been eerie if I didn't love and trust this creature so much. He resembled the horses of the mortal realm in appearance, too—closely enough that he could be mistaken for one from a distance—but as Zell drew closer, the differences became more apparent; the small antler-like appendages, the softly glowing eyes, the impossible shades of gold he shifted between as he moved. He was clearly a divine creature born of far more magic than anything in the mortal world below us.

I didn't have to whistle to bring him to my side; he was already trotting toward me as though he'd sensed my need to move, to be carried away from my latest mistake. It wasn't the first time he'd seemed to anticipate me over these past weeks. He had been born partly from Dravyn's power, after all, so whatever increased connection my gifted magic had given me with Dravyn, I suspected I shared it with his creations, too.

As I rubbed Zell's favorite spot on his neck before swinging onto his back, I wondered again about just how deep the connection between Dravyn and I went. Not for long, however; all my questions faded mercifully into the background when Zell launched into a gallop.

This was one of the few times I was able to forget about all of the trouble surrounding me, here lately—while balanced on the selakir's back, soaring across the fields, smoke and embers swirling and blurring the world around us.

Zell was a marvelous creature, fast as the wind with grace beyond measure. Little fires bloomed and died wherever his hooves fell, and I marveled for a moment at how easily they came and went and how smoothly we soared along, wishing I could manage anything half as effortless when it came to moving through this realm.

I hardly ever needed to guide Zell; I only had to ask him to take me to Dravyn, and he always managed to do the rest. So I tilted my head back, pulled my hair free of its braid, and focused on the feel of the wind caressing me. Breathing in deep lungfuls of floral and spice-tinged air, I studied Nerithyl's strange sky as we bounded along.

There were no clouds within this sky, nor any proper sun or moon or stars. There was only a magical sort of… haze that shifted colors according to whatever divine energies dominated it at any given moment. Sometimes it took on the colors of the mortal realm's skies, other times it was nowhere close to them. The light shining within it depended on the gods below it; most of them could conjure up various illuminating objects if they desired it, even though they didn't need light to see in the dark. Dravyn was particularly skilled at shaping fire into miniature suns, and he'd done it often while I was getting acclimated to this realm, trying to mimic the heavenly bodies of the world I'd left behind.

Today, the sky was the color of rich cream, and the illuminated magical orbs wrapped within its haze— forgelights , Dravyn called them—were fading. It had been days since he'd hung them; he'd been too distracted by other things to keep up with them, I guessed.

I caught a flash of something much brighter than those fading lights, and my eyes narrowed.

"I'm not surprised," I told Zell with a sigh.

The selakir twitched his ears and picked up his speed, gleefully unaware of, or at least unbothered by, the comings and goings of gods.

I squinted harder, and I became sure of it, then: Despite what Valas had said, he hadn't gone straight back to his own territory. It looked as though he'd tried to camouflage himself, wrapping his form in magic that took on the same off-white sheen as the sky. But his wings gave him away—every occasional flap of the ice-glazed feathers created a brief, telltale shimmer.

Keeping an eye on me, though he would never admit to it . I was almost certain Dravyn had sent him, now. The state of things—and whatever Halar had come to discuss—must have been more serious than Valas had let on.

I leaned forward, urging Zell faster, a foreboding feeling settling in my gut as the Palace of Fire took shape far in the distance.