On Burning Paths (Shield of the Gods #2)

Chapter 1

Nyx

The ball of fire swells in the warlock Magnus's palm, its white-hot center pulsing brighter with every heartbeat. In the distance around us, the other teams fight, exhausted from the cursed swamp, but still out for blood. It seems like the perfect background noise for our deaths.

I tighten my arms around Fenric, pulling him against my chest even though I know I can't shield him from magic capable of melting steel, nor use the simple dagger in my hand to save our lives.

His breathing is shallow against my shoulder, his body limp from whatever the berserker transformation has done to him.

Whatever the swamp water had done to him.

"Everything's going to be okay," I whisper.

The lie catches in my throat.

Smoke curls through the burning forest around us, carrying the stench of sulfur and scorched wood. Somewhere beyond the flames, Thorian is still fighting. Or at least I hope he is.

I don't know if he survived. The thought only adds to my heartbreak.

When I volunteered for the Trial of Souls, I knew there would be countless ways to die. I just didn't know what any of them would look like. No one did. That was the point.

I never imagined it would end like this. Not cornered beneath a tree with Fenric barely conscious in my arms while two warlocks, untouched by most of the horrors we've endured, decide we're easy prey.

I hate them for that.

While the rest of us bled, starved, and fought for every breath, they waited.

They'd sailed over the swamp on magic, untouched by its horrors while the rest of us lost teammates, had the cursed waters sucking away at our magic and our bodies and souls, and barely survived.

Then they descended to kill whoever was left standing.

Cowards.

Magnus raises his hand higher. The heat rolling from the fire makes my eyes sting. If this is the end, at least it will be quick.

I lower my head against Fenric's and close my eyes, silently praying that wherever souls go after death, my sister Lyra will someday forgive me for failing to save her.

A sound tears through the air. Not fire. Something else.

I open my eyes in time to see Magnus jerk violently forward and crash into the ground.

Thorian stands over him, his sword dripping blood onto the scorched earth. His broad chest rises and falls with heavy breaths, his dark hair mussed, his expression carved from fury. A dark stain spreads through Magnus’s robes where Thorian's blade caught him, soaking the fabric at his side.

For the first time since I met Thorian, he actually looks winded.

"Thorian," I whisper.

Before relief can truly settle over me, the warlock Antone throws up a hand behind the demi-god, magic already gathering in his palm.

Thorian moves with a quickness that seems other-worldly, first stomping on Magnus’s back as he tries to get up, then spinning in time to deck Antone across the face with the hilt of his sword.

The warlock’s nose explodes into a spray of red as Thorian rears back with the blade, ready to cut clean through the warlock’s neck.

I squeeze my eyes shut at the sound of Thorian's blade drawing back. A beat of silence. Then a sharp crack splits the air, followed by the hiss of something hot. When I open my eyes again, the sword is melting from tip to hilt, molten steel running in rivulets down his fingers.

The smell of burning flesh fills the space, and I look at Thorian, who must be in pain from that level of heat. But he doesn’t look to be in pain. At all.

“Fucking classic,” Thorian growls, throwing the hilt of the sword to the ground and flicking off the molten metal like it’s nothing more than warm water.

Antone’s eyes get wide, and he back pedals, clearly trying to get more space between himself and Thorian, but Thorian stalks after him, a murderous glint in his eyes.

“Magnus!” Antone calls, but Magnus is still moaning on the ground, clearly not used to physically fighting. The dagger shakes in my hand and I stare at the warlock, a few feet from Fenric and me.

Fenric’s head is limp, his hair flat against his head with sweat from the fires burning all around us.

Flames climb tree trunks and drip from the canopy, the swampy forest ablaze with the fire balls the warlock team, The Vultures, were throwing around haphazardly.

We can’t stay here for much longer, but we also can’t run with the warlocks right at our heels.

Something must be done.

Magnus is still on the ground, barely moving, one hand braced in the dirt as he tries to push himself up. He can't seem to manage it. Thorian's kick to his back, and his wound, have taken the strength out of him, and all he can do is drag his knees slowly beneath him, trembling with the effort.

I could reach him before he ever got to his feet. It’d be so easy to end one of our competitors right now. I grip the dagger tighter. My heart thunders in my throat, my brain fuzzy, rearing up against the idea of killing another person. Yet I need to.

I need to do this.

Clenching the dagger tighter, I look down at Fenric.

He's dead weight against me, his head in my lap, his breathing shallow and wrong. I ease him off me as carefully as I can, lowering his head to the ground, and his face doesn't change. He doesn't stir. I brush the sweat-matted hair back from his forehead and make myself stop.

Magnus is right there. Wounded. On the ground.

A few yards away, Thorian has Antone by the collar, slamming him into a tree with enough force to shake the branches overhead.

Antone throws out a hand and a burst of violet magic catches Thorian square in the chest, sending him stumbling back a step.

Just one step. He rights himself and stalks forward again, jaw set, as though the magic is nothing more than an inconvenience.

Antone scrambles to put distance between them, hands already moving, lips already shaping the next incantation.

Neither of them is looking at Magnus.

There's no one to handle this warlock. No one but me.

If I don't do this, he will get back up. He will heal. And then he will finish what he started, and Fenric will die anyway, and so will I, and it won’t matter how carefully I laid him down or how much I wanted to save him.

It's them or us. That's all this is.

I've known that since the moment the Trials began. I just didn't think what killing another person would actually be like. It was stupid of me.

I push to my feet.

Magnus is still on the ground, one hand pressed to his bleeding side, trying to get his knees under him. He hasn't looked at me once. Maybe he's forgotten I'm here. Maybe he thinks I'm not worth worrying about.

I close the distance between us and drive the dagger down.

At the last second, he twists just enough. The blade catches his shoulder instead of his neck, and he lets out a snarl, more anger than pain, and throws out his free hand. Not at me.

At Fenric.

It's a small burst of magic, violet and fast, more reflex than aim, and it hits Fenric in the chest like a stone hitting water.

Fenric seizes. A sound comes out of him that I have never heard a person make, and I yank my dagger back out of Magnus and spin toward Fenric without thinking, without meaning to, every instinct I have pulling me away from Magnus and toward him.

It costs me.

By the time I look back, Magnus has his feet under him. He’s hunched and bleeding, but he’s already moving toward the trees. I start after him and stop. Fenric convulses again, his whole body rigid, and the sound he makes this time is worse.

I go back to him. I drop to my knees and grip his face in my hands and his skin is so hot it almost burns my palms.

Thorian slams Antone into a tree, reaches down and grabs Antone's sword from his hilt, and turns, clearly wanting to rid himself of them once and for all.

"I can kill them," Thorian growls, and when his eyes meet mine, they're fiery, a rage in them that turns his normally brown irises practically pitch black. "They're almost out of magic for their little tricks, and when they are, I won't need a sword to finish them off. I'll just snap their necks."

He says it so simply, so certainly, and something about that certainty does something to me I don't entirely expect.

This is a man who has survived everything the gods have thrown at him.

A man who looks at two warlocks and sees a problem he can solve with his bare hands.

There's a part of me, the part that grew up soft and sheltered at the manor, that knows it should unsettle me.

It doesn't.

What unsettles me is Fenric. His low noises of pain are getting louder, his body so hot it's making me sweat under my leathers, and whatever Magnus hit him with is just making him worse.

“There’s no time!” I drag Fenric closer, knowing that if I can’t get him to water, if I can’t cool him off, the temperature will surely kill him. I don’t even know where water is, or how to tell if it’s safe. Thorian led us there last time, and I’ve only managed to drag Fenric’s body an inch.

“Nyx, we won’t get another opportunity like this–”

"Please!"

The word seems to snap Thorian out of his rage. He lets out a frustrated growl before resheathing his new sword, leaving the exhausted warlocks sprawled on the ground, their chests heaving as they struggle to catch their breath.

Their magic is gone.

Another heartbeat and Thorian would have killed them both.

But any more time might kill Fenric.

In the distance, there’s the sound of fighting. The others are getting closer to us. Thorian might be able to fight two of them on his own, but that won’t stop the other two Vultures from coming after us. And we’re not really in a place to fight back. At least not Fenric and I.