Page 15 of A Heart of Crimson Flames
“What in the Gods’ names is that?” Kian balked, lifting his tunic to cover his nose.
I grinned at Navin in congratulations. “Thatis dinner.”
AS THE DINNER TABLE CONVERSATION TURNED INTO DRUNKENsong, I let out a groan.
“Sweet Moon, spare me,” I muttered, dropping a quick kiss to Navin’s lips and excusing myself from the table. I’d heard these melodic songs too many times over the last few weeks. I swore I could hear them on the whistling wind, in the crunch of leaves, and the low of the oxen.
With a bellyful of dragon fire–roasted goat, I went to go sit at the front of the wagon. I craved the sight of the evening sky as we rolled farther into the vast southern forests of Damrienn. I was almost halfway through the window to the front bench before I realized Kian was sitting there.
“Too much singing?” he asked knowingly.
“Something like that,” I grumbled as I climbed the rest of the way onto the bench. I’d debated retreating at the sight of him, but that would’ve seemed weak and I didn’t show cowards like him weakness.
He chuckled, the sound so similar to Navin’s own. I hated that there were any similarities between the brothers. “I’ll admit,I missed the sound,” he said, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking about the music, not his laughter. “But I’m more comfortable with silence than song now.”
“No cheery battle songs amongst the Rooks?” I snapped and he slid his gaze to me.
It still lingered there between us, unspoken. The whole journey we’d exchanged hateful looks but neither did we acknowledge the last time we’d met at the tip of each other’s blades. A few weeks didn’t change that. Maybe a lifetime wouldn’t, either.
“I think my brother believes that becoming a Rook was the easy way out,” Kian mused, craning his neck back to stare up at a strip of stars peeking through the pines.
“Was it not?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “I traded one danger for another,” he said with a shrug. “I was a child when I pledged my sword to Sawyn. A hungry, scared child pledging myself to a sorceress who I knew thought I was as disposable as an insect. No one would mourn my death. No names carved above the mines. No altar to say goodbye.”
“Poor you,” I said tightly.
“Poorhim,” he echoed bitterly. “Whoever that child was, I didn’t get a chance to know him long. It didn’t matter which tune he’d choose, they were all sad songs after that decision.”
I shook my head. Despite his choices, he still spoke in lyrics and riddles just like the rest of the Songkeepers. Studying his shadowed expression, I watched as his mind traveled back to unspoken horrors. “Then why? Why choose her?”
He let out a long, weary breath. “It’s amazing what you’ll do when your stomach is empty and your hopes are worn raw. Sometimes the only choice is to survive or not. I didn’t think I’d survive the mines. So many didn’t...” His voice trailed off and I knew he was thinking of his father. Navin had told me so much of their father that I’d built an image of him in my mind. He seemed like a good man. One his sons both mourned, but unlike Navin, I could now see Kian radiated guilt along with sadness.
“I suppose I can’t entirely hate you for that,” I muttered.
“Entirely?” Kian asked with a rueful smile.
“I hate you very slightly less.” I held up two fingers so close together they almost touched. “Only slightly.”
“I’ll take it.” He smiled at the stars. “If it matters at all, I wish I could go back and choose differently. If I’d known what my life would become. The things that sorceress would make us do.” His breath curled in a whorl from his lips into the cold air. “The world was better the day she died. I could feel it, like a rift starting to close, a wound starting to mend.”
“You can take the boy out of the Songkeepers,” I muttered at his poetic nonsense.
“And now there is that rift again,” he continued. “Another sorceress to take her place.”
It was like someone had stomped their boot directly on my throat, clogging it, the pain radiating down through my limbs in panging waves.
Maez—my best friend since we were pups—was a sorceress.
She’d saved my life with that power. She’d saved a lot of lives from Luo, I would wager. But at what cost? How many more would she take? How long until she turned just as dark and twisted as Sawyn was herself?
“I don’t know if we’ll survive this war,” I said, pulling Kian’s gaze. “But if we do, I won’t stop until I find a way to free her from that magic.”
“You seem stubborn enough to do it,” he replied, sounding very much like his older brother then. I opened my mouth to reply when I caught sight of something through the trees. “What?” Kian asked, suddenly alert, straining to see farther than his human eyes would allow.
“I think we’ve arrived,” I said, mouth falling open as I took in the shadowed buildings circling a central spire. “The temple of knowledge.”
“Is anyone there?” Kian asked, voice dropping to a whisper.
