Page 67 of On Brutal Thrones

No pressure.

I lower myself to my knees and press my palm against the dirt. I do nothing except breathe.

Then… I reach for the field.

When I entered these trials, I could barely lift a sword. I was a lady accustomed to the comforts of my manor, not a warrior trained to survive whatever horrors the gods decided to throw at us. Thorian had strength and experience. Fenric had his instincts and ferocity. Talon had skills I was still discovering. And I had spent much of those early days wondering what I could possibly bring to a team like this.

But I'd found my place. In the caves and the graveyard, I'd done things none of them could have done. We'd survived because each of us brought strengths the others lacked, and somewhere along the way, we'd become a team.

Now, with three men I love standing behind me, I have another chance to do my part. They can face whatever these flowers throw at us, but perhaps I can find a way to keep us from having to fight them at all.

I press my palm more firmly against the earth and pray that this works.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

That realization sends a fresh pulse of fear through me. I’ve used this magic before, but always when instinct took over. I’ve never stood in front of an entire field of murderous plants and deliberately asked my power to get four people safely through it.

Behind me, one of the enormous flowers slams into the ground. The impact shakes the dirt beneath my knees.

Right. No pressure.

I close my eyes and try to remember the feeling of the roots answering me. The strange sense that the earth was alive beneath my hands, waiting for me to reach for it. My finger starts moving before I decide what to draw. One line. Then another, curving back across the first. I hesitate before adding a final mark.

The rune means nothing to me. At least, nothing I can put into words. But it feels right.

Warmth gathers beneath my fingertip. I suck in a breath as the rune’s glow brightens, its light pulsing beneath my touch.

“Nyx?” Fenric asks quietly.

“I think it’s working.”

“You think?”

I glance back at him. “Do you want to do it?”

His mouth snaps shut.

Despite everything, a laugh almost escapes me. Then the ground beneath my palm pulses, and every trace of amusement disappears.

I feel them. Not one plant. Hundreds.

Roots twist through the earth in a vast tangled network. Vines curl beneath the soil. The enormous flowers have roots thicker than my arms, spreading outward and tangling with everything around them. For one dizzying second, I can feel so much life that I nearly jerk my hand away.

Instead, I push my magic into the rune. Please. I don’t know if the thought matters. I don’t know if the plants understand words at all. But I picture what I need. A path.

The golden light beneath my hand shoots forward.

I gasp as it races into the field, slipping beneath towering stalks and twisting vines until a narrow trail of glowing earth stretches toward the distant clearing.

For several seconds, none of us moves.

“Did you do that?” Talon asks.

“I must have.”

“Yet I don’t feel comforted… weird.”

“Enough,” Thorian says. He has his sword ready as he studies the glowing path. “We move quickly. Stay close to Nyx.”