Page 92 of On Brutal Thrones

The silence closes around me. No birds. No wind moving through the branches. No footsteps from the others. I can feel my boots striking the ground, but the sound is gone.

All I can hear is my heartbeat, pounding harder and harder in my ears.

What the fuck is causing this?

The Vultures?

No.

I discard the possibility almost immediately. I would sense their magic. I always feel it gathering before they strike, even if I have only seconds of warning. There’s nothing here. No pulse of warlock magic. No gathering power.

This feels different… divine. Which means the mist probably isn’t meant to kill us.

Probably.

That isn’t as reassuring as it should be.

The Trials have separated us before. The bridge. The graveyard. The gods have never promised we’d stay together, but until now, we’ve always managed to find one another again.

This mist took that chance away before we even knew we were in danger.

Either that’s the point of the Trial, or my father is interfering again.

Rage burns through some of my fear. If Valtor has done this, if he’s deliberately separated Nyx from us when she can barely stand after everything she’s endured, I’ll find a way to make him regret it.

The thought is pointless. He’s a god. What can I possibly do to him?

I keep moving.

Time stretches strangely inside the dust. It could be minutes or far longer. My legs grow heavy, my eyes burn, and every breath rasps against my throat. I can no longer hear the others. Even the explosions have grown distant.

Then my next step sinks.

Cold water closes over my boot.

I jerk my foot back instantly, sword halfway out of its sheath before I even understand what happened.

Water. I stare down. The mist and dust vanish, but not gradually. One second I’m choking on it, and the next the air is perfectly clear, as if some enormous invisible hand swept everything away.

I spin around.

“Nyx?”

Nothing.

“Talon? Fenric?”

Silence answers me.

Behind me stands a dense wall of forest. The trees grow so close together that their trunks almost seem woven into a barrier. No dust. No explosions. No sign I came through them at all.

My stomach tightens.

“Fuck.”

I turn back toward the water.

If this is a Trial, there’ll be a threat. There’s always a threat.