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There’s nothing there. But then he saw it again, a flicker within the dust, parting over the memory of gray shale and a barren wasteland, emerging like the ghosts Farris had whispered of.

The roar rose, and the dust turned incandescent, as if someone had set the horizon aflame.

Then the explosion erupted with all the strength of Hell’s fist.

Chapter VI

Into the Forest

Like a hound on a scent, Orpheus plunged into the forest.

Where is she?

At his back, the voices built into a droning clamor, cheers and hoots and shouts layering into one rushing wall of sound that made Orpheus’ head spin. Ahead, the light bent gently through the trees, dappled shadows painting the forest floor gold and green, no violet to be found.

But he could still feel it. Taste it. See it.

How can this be happening?

Magic. Netherflame. Here within reach and yet not his.

The crunch of the forest beneath his boots sounded too loud when he picked his way through the brush, brambles catching at his robes like they meant to hold him back—drag him down. He pushed on anyway. By the time he cleared his way to what he presumed was an actual path, the tightness in his chest ached in a way Orpheus didn’t care to dwell on. He refused to cry despite the gnawing urge to do exactly that, instead following the leaf-carpeted trail some herd of animals or former hell beast had carved through the tightly packed pines.

But there was no sign of the girl. The forest chattered on around him, a living peace that felt out of place considering what he searched for. Under different circumstances, it would have helped. The walking. The forest. The way the trees muffled the roar of the crowd and Fenrir’s coronation. How, placing one foot in front of the other made him feel like he was headed somewhere better. Somewhere different. Away from the reality he existed within. All the uncomfortable truths a better, less selfish person would have already learned how to grapple with.

Orpheus didn’t want to grapple. He’d done far enough grappling recently to last him several more years at least. He was supposed to be not-grappling right now. Lazing away in a comfortable bed while the love of his life slept quietly beside him, the scent of sun-touched rain leaking heavily through an open window, nose buried in a book, morning slow and lazy to arrive—the day a blank canvas all his to shape.

Instead, he trudged through the scraggly underbrush of an unfamiliar forest towards a blistering cold he’d thought he’d forever lost.

Wait. There it was—Netherflame!

Orpheus stumbled to halt, stillness descending like a breath held. The forest quieted in concert, like it could pick up on the unnatural bite of cold fire, and it made the shiver of his skin feel all the more disorienting. Because it was there—the cold. The icy chill he’d spent two decades of his life enduring as it crawled through his veins all because it gave him his power.

I closed all the cracks.

It was true. He’d bargained his life to do so—so how did one small girl still have access?

Beyond the thinning branches of the forest’s under-story, lazy sunlight bled into a small clearing. Orpheus stepped towards it, heart rising to a hammer as he closed the distance towards something that couldn’t be real. Because if he’d missed even one crack, then everything he’d lost—the very thing that had defined him, made him useful, made him worth something—would have been sacrificed for nothing.

He’d have given up his magic, for what?

A crackle of snapping twigs pierced the chattering forest, out of sync with his own footfalls.

Orpheus drew up stiff.

“Hello?” He hissed into the surrounding forest. “Fenrir?” He said more softly. In the distance, he could barely hear the crowd scream, an excitement that bordered on frenetic.

Right. Of course. Fenrir wasn’t here chasing after him. He was on that hells-damned stage, making up for over a decade of service to a psychopathic maniac because it wasn’t like he’d had to give up anything of worth in his pursuit of redemption.

Well, lucky him. Orpheus would chase his own ghosts—alone, if he had to.

He tore his way through the bramble towards a cold that ached deeper than his bones. Another snap of twigs. Another prick of ice. Mist churned at the clearing’s edge like little tendrils beckoning him closer, and Orpheus could not resist. He slowed to a creep, lurking within the shadows so as not to be seen—and found her.

At the center of the clearing the young girl sat, Umbralcat perched atop her shoulder, hand held out to a stripe of sunlight, a flickering violet flame dancing above her open palm.

That’s mine, punched through him, violent and raw. Give it back!

Orpheus drew up to his full height and swept out from the shadows.