Page 2 of On Burning Paths

I need to do this.

Clenching the dagger tighter, I look down at Fenric.

He's dead weight against me, his head in my lap, his breathing shallow and wrong. I ease him off me as carefully as I can, lowering his head to the ground, and his face doesn't change. He doesn't stir. I brush the sweat-matted hair back from his forehead and make myself stop.

Magnus is right there. Wounded. On the ground.

A few yards away, Thorian has Antone by the collar, slamming him into a tree with enough force to shake the branches overhead. Antone throws out a hand and a burst of violet magic catches Thorian square in the chest, sending him stumbling back a step. Just one step. He rights himself and stalks forward again, jaw set, as though the magic is nothing more than an inconvenience. Antone scrambles to put distance between them, hands already moving, lips already shaping the next incantation.

Neither of them is looking at Magnus.

There's no one to handle this warlock. No one but me.

If I don't do this, he will get back up. He will heal. And then he will finish what he started, and Fenric will die anyway, and so will I, and it won’t matter how carefully I laid him down or how much I wanted to save him.

It's them or us. That's all this is.

I've known that since the moment the Trials began. I just didn't think what killing another person would actually be like. It was stupid of me.

I push to my feet.

Magnus is still on the ground, one hand pressed to his bleeding side, trying to get his knees under him. He hasn't looked at me once. Maybe he's forgotten I'm here. Maybe he thinks I'm not worth worrying about.

I close the distance between us and drive the dagger down.

At the last second, he twists just enough. The blade catches his shoulder instead of his neck, and he lets out a snarl, more anger than pain, and throws out his free hand. Not at me.

At Fenric.

It's a small burst of magic, violet and fast, more reflex than aim, and it hits Fenric in the chest like a stone hitting water. Fenric seizes. A sound comes out of him that I have never heard a person make, and I yank my dagger back out of Magnus and spin toward Fenric without thinking, without meaning to, every instinct I have pulling me away from Magnus and toward him.

It costs me.

By the time I look back, Magnus has his feet under him. He’s hunched and bleeding, but he’s already moving toward the trees. I start after him and stop. Fenric convulses again, his whole body rigid, and the sound he makes this time is worse.

I go back to him. I drop to my knees and grip his face in my hands and his skin is so hot it almost burns my palms.

Thorian slams Antone into a tree, reaches down and grabs Antone's sword from his hilt, and turns, clearly wanting to rid himself of them once and for all.

"I can kill them," Thorian growls, and when his eyes meet mine, they're fiery, a rage in them that turns his normally brown irises practically pitch black. "They're almost out of magic for their little tricks, and when they are, I won't need a sword to finish them off. I'll just snap their necks."

He says it so simply, so certainly, and something about that certainty does something to me I don't entirely expect. This is a man who has survived everything the gods have thrown at him. A man who looks at two warlocks and sees a problem he can solve with his bare hands. There's a part of me, the part that grew up soft and sheltered at the manor, that knows it should unsettle me.

It doesn't.

What unsettles me is Fenric. His low noises of pain are getting louder, his body so hot it's making me sweat under my leathers, and whatever Magnus hit him with is just making him worse.

“There’s no time!” I drag Fenric closer, knowing that if I can’t get him to water, if I can’t cool him off, the temperature will surely kill him. I don’t even know where water is, or how to tell if it’s safe. Thorian led us there last time, and I’ve only managed to drag Fenric’s body an inch.

“Nyx, we won’t get another opportunity like this–”

"Please!"

The word seems to snap Thorian out of his rage. He lets out a frustrated growl before resheathing his new sword, leaving the exhausted warlocks sprawled on the ground, their chests heaving as they struggle to catch their breath.

Their magic is gone.

Another heartbeat and Thorian would have killed them both.