Page 46 of On Burning Paths

“No,” Thorian growls, not even looking over his shoulder at our teammate. “You have to trust him to make it across.”

“Trust him?” Talon shakes his head and tries to out maneuver Thorian. And he nearly does, too, except Thorian catches him at the last minute and throws him back, so Talon stumbles before gracefully regaining his footing.

In the background, another flash of violet magic fights with the lightning for dominance.

“You’re going to let him die?” Talon roars, throwing a hand up in Fenric’s direction. For the first time since I met him, he looks frantic, his posh accent softening slightly. When Thorian doesn’t answer, Talon straightens up, growling, “You might be strong, but you can’t stop me.”

“The hell I can’t.”

“Stop—” I start, but there’s another flash across the canyon, and when I look, I see Fenric pivoting, running. The lightning has stopped. The wind is quiet.

And he’s taking the only escape route he has from the magic, directly onto the bridge.

The wind could start at any moment, and I can’t imagine he’s paying attention to it while trying to dodge the magic.

“Run!” I scream, my throat feeling cut with a thousand pieces of glass. I try to reach out to him with my magic, to make the bridge stick to him as it did me, but I’m depleted.

And Fenric doesn’t follow my directive.

Instead of running, he turns back toward the advancing wizards, says something I can’t hear, then raises one of the half-rusted blades and swings it, breaking clean through the bridge’s chains.

“Fenric!” Thorian bellows, while Talon just watches, stunned.

One moment, the berserker is there.

And the next, he’s nothing but another body at the bottom of the canyon.

15

Nyx

"No—"

I'm moving before the word is fully out of my mouth, scrambling toward the edge on my hands and knees, the gravel tearing at my palms, my heart lurching so violently I can feel it in my teeth. Large hands close around my arms from behind, Thorian's or Talon's, I can't tell, hauling me back from the drop, and I fight against them with everything I have left.

"Fenric!" His name tears out of me, raw and ragged, swallowed almost immediately by the storm.

I need to see. I need to get to the edge and look down and see him, even though every rational part of me knows what I'll find and knows I won't recover from it. I need to know. I can't just stand here not knowing.

"Fenric!"

The hands hold me back, and I stop fighting them only because my legs give out, my knees hitting the ground hard. The rain comes down in sheets and I can't catch my breath and I can't think past the image of him cutting that bridge, of his face as he went over, of the drop below that bridge that I already know is unsurvivable.

Fenric.

In a flash I see every version of him I've collected since the first day. The excitement in his voice when he emerged from the forest with a handful of berries. The way his eyes would shift from pale green to vivid, burning green. His laugh. The warmth of him, the relentless, furnace-bright warmth of him, always burning with life in a way that made everything feel more survivable.

He wanted nothing more than to free his family.

If we win, I’ll still find a way to free his family. I swear it.

I think of that first day at the banquet. The weight of his gaze finding mine across the room. The first time I ever saw him.

And now, the last.

I should have told him. On the other side of that bridge, I should have held onto him and told him that I've been falling for him since that first moment, that somewhere between the swamp and the graveyard and every dark mile in between he became something I couldn't imagine losing.

He died not knowing. I let him cross that bridge without making sure he knew.