Flame and Sparrow (Flame and Sparrow Duology Book 1)

by S.M. Gaither

For everyone who’s ever been told they’re ‘too much’— Go ahead and burn as brightly as you want to.

Exactly two weeks ago, in the dead of night, a divine…beast had shown up on the doorstep of my house, its side shredded and bloody, its massive antlers broken and dangling from its head, a trail of magic following in its wake and leaching the life and color from everything it touched.

It had died on our threshold, its claws sinking into the doorframe as though desperately trying to hold on to Avalinth, this mortal realm that I—and the rest of the elven-kind—had been relegated to.

There had been no incense, no blessed water, no prayers. No rituals at all, just fire curling bright and wicked in the dark and a cloud of smoke rising, settling over our house and land.

For three days that cloud had hung there with seemingly no intention of moving.

Word had spread of the incident, and the human villages we sometimes frequented had shunned us even more than usual because of it.

Disrespectful heathens, they hissed,

that sometimes what was considered monstrous changed depending on the lighting.

What if I took my life before they could make me suffer further? Would it ruin whatever trial or propagandist point they were hoping to put me on display for?

And who will your tiny brains and crooked hearts worship then?”

“If you’re willing to tell me, it might earn me some more of the king’s coin.”

“I spat at the feet of your god before I destroyed his temple,” I said, “and I would do it again if given the chance. That is what I think of the God of Fire, his temples, and all who serve him—and I don’t care what he does in response to these things. I don’t fear him.”

But all he said before turning back to the path ahead was, “Interesting.”

They no longer had a temple to give to the God of Fire. So they were going to give him me.

“You can spit at me again if you’d like, but it won’t put these fires out.”

My friends had come for me. It might have been another hallucination, but I didn’t care. If I was going to die, I wanted to die believing they had tried to save me, their faces the last clear images in my mind before I burned away.

How had I survived, if the God of Fire and his promised protection had been a mirage?

I wanted to believe my mind was absorbing it all, even if I was more closely resembling a walking, brainless corpse with every passing hour.

I admired those lines as I sipped the warm liquid; the furrows around her eyes ran the deepest—likely from years of squinting at books and casting narrowed, disapproving glances at all her doubters.

The Gatterlen—also known as portal lights.

Legends said these lights were telltale signs to travelers that a pathway between realms was open and safe to use—a phenomenon that was once far more common, as there had supposedly been an age when elves could conjure up similar portals with similar guiding lights, when they had walked as freely between the divine and mortal realms as I walked between the rooms in Zara’s house.

The tales really did no justice to the realm stretching before me now.

The air quite literally sparkled,

I wanted to stare at it all forever, yet I felt unworthy of the beauty, smaller and more insignificant the longer I took it in.

“His portal revealed itself very plainly to me.” “Yes, but how many humans would be idiotic enough to actually step into a river of fire, hm?”

I nearly dropped the candle as I did. That beast. I knew that beast.

I didn’t know its name, but it was the same creature I’d seen outside my house in the weeks before my sister disappeared. The one that had died on my doorstep. The one we’d burned, whose ashes and smoke had lingered like a curse over my old life and home.

“Typical Moth.” “Moth?” “That’s his name.” “What sort of a name is that?”

“Well, it’s Ramoth, actually,”

“After some sacred mountain in some human kingdom, I think. But most of us just call the annoying, fluttery little thing Moth.”

“But they’re often lured there,” he said. “...Lured?”

“Mortals have a terrible, wonderful fascination with death. They like to play games with it. The veilhounds are sometimes drawn into the sport.”

“What is this place? Why are so many of the veilhounds here?”

“This is the edge of the middle-heavens,”

“The veilhounds guard the edge of this realm, as well as the space between it and the mortal realm—Eligas—and its pathways,”

“but you made a mistake if you believe I came here to be nothing more than your slave. I said I would serve in your court, not that you could lock me away and subject me to whatever you wished.”

Beautiful yet deadly in appearance—a quality I was starting to associate with all divine places.

“But she made them too powerful. When the God of the Shade—Malaphar—gave them the entirety of his knowledge as well, the combination of it all proved too much for them to remain satisfied with their place in the world. They rebelled against the upper-gods and had to be stripped of their magic and power to prevent a total war that likely would have led to complete ruin for everyone involved.”

“And they were relegated to Avalinth, stripped of their immortality, and left with nothing but curses and a few traces of divine power, correct?”

Moth gave his hand a sharp nip in response, making the god curse, and I promptly decided that if I was going to trust anyone in this realm again, it would be this griffin.

“I think he likes you,”

“Probably because you’re both cantankerous, stubborn little assholes,”

“If I’d realized you were also the God of Chaos, I never would have listened to a word you said.”

The God of Winter took my hand and gave it a businesslike shake. “You didn’t die an unspeakably horrifying death,” he said. “Well done, You. I’m so proud.”

“I feel…” he replied, slowly, “as though someone should have taught you not to play with fire.”

“So let’s keep the danger in mind,” he murmured, “and please believe me, Little Sparrow, when I tell you that I could set fire to every inhibition you possess, and when we are finished it will only be you and I among the ashes. I will be the only thing you can think of, and it will not be disdain that you feel toward me, I can promise you that.”

“Well, I would tell you to feel free to think of this mouth while I’m gone,” I said, “but I’m sure you were already planning to think about it.” His gaze finally fixed on me, burning with possibility and promise as he said, “Among other things.”

A monster, but a monster who had gifted me the sun. Who had offered me healing in every way he could after my trials…and then let me go when he saw no other way to aid in that healing. He was still the villain. I couldn’t forget that. It was just… In my head, I’d written our story much differently.

His voice lowered. Still annoyingly calm compared to mine, but clearly frustrated. “Tonight I just needed to make sure you were okay.”

“Sometimes we hold on to painful things, I think, because letting them go feels like letting go of the person who gave them to us.”