Page 20 of On Burning Paths

"That was… incredible," Thorian says, and when I turn to look at him, meeting his eyes, I see understanding there. Like maybe he heard the things I was saying to the little ones. “Nyx Nocturne, you are the strongest person I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

“I’ll second that,” Fenric says, pulling me in and saying the words into my hair. A second later, Thorian’s arms are around me, and I realize I’m surrounded by them yet again.

The men who, somewhere between the swamp and the graves and every dark mile in between, stopped feeling like teammates and started feeling like something I don't have a word for yet. They release me, smiling, and they start toward the trees, leaving the trial behind.

I linger, then look back at the graveyard.

The Ashen are still there. I don't know what I expected. That crossing through would change things, or somehow set them free. But the shapes are still moving between the headstones, dark and slow and small. So small. There’s the ghostly outline of a child crouching near a grave. Another standing at the edge of the field, face turned toward us, as though watching us leave.

Something pulls in my chest. A hook, deep and certain.

I think of what it felt like to reach them. The way the grief had threatened to swallow me whole, and then shifted into something else entirely. The connection, recognition, the particular ache of one lost person finding another. They had responded to that. To being seen.

And now I'm about to walk away from them, leave them here, trapped in this in-between place, never able to rest, never able to find whatever comes after. The trial is over for us, but nothing has changed for them.

I think of my mother. My father. The way losing them taught me that grief left unwitnessed festers until it poisons everything around it. Someone saw these children's suffering today and walked straight through it on the way to their own ambitions.

I’m not sure I can be that person.

When I think of my parents, of their integrity, of how they always chose the harder, kinder thing, I feel it settle into place.

All at once, I know what I have to do.

7

Nyx

I walk toward the graveyard.

"Nyx." Thorian's voice is careful. Controlled. The voice he uses when he's trying not to alarm me.

I keep walking.

"Nyx." It’s less controlled this time. I hear him move, and then his hand closes around my elbow, pulling me to a stop just at the edge of the cursed ground. His eyes dart to the cemetery, then to my face, interpreting every expression with the ease he's gained over these past few days. Whatever he finds there tightens his expression. "What are you doing?"

"There's something I need to do," I say.

"You're not going back in there." Fenric has appeared at my other side, and his tone has none of its usual lightness. "Whatever you're thinking⁠—"

"I have to⁠—"

"Nyx—"

"Listen to me, there are children in there who⁠—"

"Look." Thorian's grip on my elbow tightens, and his gaze has moved past me, past the graveyard, fixing on a point in the distance. His voice drops. "Look."

I turn.

The other teams have started across.

The shifters are already more than halfway across, their eyes bound in their wolf forms. They stop and sniff, navigating easily in that form. On the other side, the Knights are making slow but steady progress, with Sir Willem blindfolded, his last remaining teammate, Sir Beric, wide-eyed and leading the way.

A second after we turn to look, the Vultures stride into the graveyard, once again wielding magic when the Ashen turn their way.

“Did they learn nothing?” Fenric mutters, shaking his head. At least this time, the Ashen are divided between the various teams, splitting their attention. Ulric faced the weight of them all.

As, I suppose, I did.